Visual Representation of Data

I was intrigued by the different data representations we explored during our on campus day. Looking at these images and brainstorming our own ways of representing some sort of data made me curious about what tools are already in place for creating these visuals. These visual representations could be very effective in schools having students use skills like summarizing, comparing and contrasting, analyzing and sorting. In my search to find some of the tools that could be used, my boss told me about a workshop she attended that involved visual representation of data. The presenter Dr. Henry Thiele gave an example of how presidential speeches can be compared by using tag clouds. The first image is a tag cloud made using George Washington’s inaugural address from April 30, 1789. By looking at this cloud, students could see the hot topics of the day.



Having students compare this speech to a more recent one like George W. Bush’s inaugural speech from January 20, 2001 would be enlightening. Students would see the concerns of the people from today. Then Thiele suggests comparing George W. Bush’s first inaugural speech to his second. Students would very easily see the shift of concern of the American people.




These tag clouds can be created using any electronic text at a site called TagCrowd. This site offers other ideas for using tag clouds ~ take note of the idea of using these as name tags at a party:).

Another site that uses a visual representation of data is a search engine called Quintera. This site would help researchers think of other possible search terms to use because these ideas are represented in a tag cloud around the initial keyword used in a search.

During our on campus session, we saw a visual representation of the most important news stories of the year. This type of visual can be created using a site called Universe. Before you check the site out, watch this YouTube video I found, which shows the introduction of this site by Jonathan Harris. There are many interesting examples of data representation in it.




Have fun exploring these sites!

Works Cited
Thiele, Henry C. “Tagging: It’s Not for the Playground Anymore!” IL-TCE Presentation. Pheasant Run Resort. 28 Feb. 2008.