Two Cool Visualization Examples

I’m always looking for great examples of data visualization and I’ve recently come across two that I found on the blog Strange Maps:

1.)  The first shows the distribution of different names for soft drinks across the U.S.  As “pop” drinkers from the Midwest, we still find it strange that New Yorkers say “soda” and even stranger when they don’t even know what “pop” is!

2.)  The second is a really good example of how visualization tools can capture change over both time and space.  The New York Times has a nice graphic that shows how countries have fared with respect to Olympic medals over time.

The ONE Campus Challenge

ONE, the nonpartisan campaign to end poverty and fight HIV/AIDS globally, has started a new promotion to engage college students in this cause.  The ONE Campus Challenge is a competition for college campuses to raise awareness for the ONE campaign.  Joining the challenge is simple and schools earn points for membership alone.  Additionally there are a number of things that students, faculty, alum, and other school supporters can do to earn points for their school.  The challenges are geared toward education and awareness and vary in level of difficulty.  One of the easy ways to earn points for your school is to blog about ONE, so this is part of my contribution to the effort.  It’s a worthy cause that does not require a lot of time or effort to support.

Introduction

I developed an academic web site last year to have a place to put information about my teaching and research activities at UAlbany.  Due to some time and technical limitations, I haven’t been able to develop that site quite the way I had planned.  Now I have decided to try a new approach that I hope will save me some time and also allow me some additional functionality.  I decided to experiment with WordPress since I could create Web pages and a blog on one site.  While I’ve maintained a personal blog for almost a year now, I haven’t been blogging much about professional life and academia.  Lately I have run across several interesting things that I’ve wanted to share with students and colleagues (e.g., sites, books, new publications, etc.) and this has tempted me to start a new blog dedicated to professional issues.  It will take a little time to get this site updated, but here is my latest presentation of self on the Internet.