Data Visualization

What, Why & How?

Gilles Tanson, Mustafa Kaptan

Visualization

What?

Visualization

to vis·u·al·ize:

to form a mental vision,
image, or picture

(of something not visible
or present to sight, or of
an abstraction)

 

to make visible to the
mind or imagination

 

Visualization - Why?

  • Large amounts of data everywhere
    • Social networks
    • Climate simulations 
    • Medical scanners

 

  • Present data in an understandable way
    • Trends
    • Outliers

Anscombe's Quartet

Anscombe's Quartet

Anscombe's Quartet

Examples

Visualization

How?

How ?

  • Map data to a visual representation, consists of:
  • Graphical primitives:
    • Points
    • Lines
    • Areas
    • Surfaces
  • Visual Channels:
    • Position
    • Color
    • Shape
    • Size
    • Slope

SVG - What?

  • Scalable Vector Graphics
  • Defines vector-based graphics in XML
  • Embed into HTML (HTML5)
<html>
<body>

<svg width="100" height="100"> 
    <circle cx="50" cy="50" r="25" 
            stroke="red" stroke-width="4"
            fill="yellow" />
</svg>

</body>
</html>

SVG - Basic Elements

  • <rect>
  • <circle>
  • <ellipse>
  • <line>
  • <polyline>
  • <polygon>
  • <path>
  • <text>

SVG - Renderıng

  • Retained mode
  • Client calls do not cause rendering
  • Instead update an internal model
    • list of objects
  • Maintained within the library's data space
  • Library optimizes rendering
  • Overhead

SVG - Why?

  • Scalable & resolution-independent
  • Human readable
  • Easily minified and GZipped
  • Good browser support
  • Photoshop like capabilities
  • Styleable & interactive
  • Is a W3C standard
  • Integrates with DOM
  • Accessible

DOM

  • Document Object Model
  • W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standard

  • Can be accessed with JavaScript

Canvas

  • Is part of HTML5
  • Allows dynamic, scriptable rendering of 2D shapes and bitmap images
  • Can display graphs, photo compositions, animations or real-time video processing/rendering
  • Interactions (e.g CreateJS)
  • Real-Time-Physics (e.g. PhysicsJS, Matter.js, Newton, etc.)
  • Uses Immediate Mode​ to render objects

Canvas - Examples

Canvas - Examples

Canvas - Code

<canvas id="myCanvas" width="800px" height="800px"></canvas>
<script type="text/javascript" src="script.js"></script>
var canvas = document.getElementById("myCanvas");
var context = canvas.getContext("2d");
context.fillStyle = green;
context.fillRect(10, 10, 100, 100);
canvas {
  border: 1px solid black;
}

Canvas - More

insert more examples

Use cases

All of these examples use the power of visualization to draw attention to their product. (or just for fun)

Comparison: SVG vs Canvas

Pros:

  • CSS can control appearance

  • Can be drawn with Programs like Adobe Illustrator

  • Drawings can be interpreted (XML)

  • Possesses DOM

  • Keeps image quality

  • Resolution independent

Cons:

  • Not meant for pixel manipulation
  • Large file size (XML document)

Comparison: SVG vs Canvas

Pros:

  • Works with JavaScript: more efficient  

  • 2 or 3 dimensional (bitimage)

  • Manipulation of single pixels

 

Cons:

  • Has no  DOM
    • Drawings cannot be interpreted (only a bunch of pixels)
  • Resolution dependent

Visualization

 d3.JS Library

D3.js

  • Data-Driven Documents
  • Mike Bostock
  • latest version (4.2.5) - (21.09.2016)
  • Bind data to DOM
  • Apply transformations

D3.js + SVG

d3.select("body")
  .append("svg")
  .attr("width", 100)
  .attr("height", 100)
  .append("circle")
  .attr("cx", 50)
  .attr("cy", 50)
  .attr("r", 25)
  .style("fill", "yellow");

d3.js - selectıon

d3.select(selector)  // Selects the first element
// Returns "selection" -> subclass of array
// Selector can be a selector string
var anchor = d3.select("a");

// Selector can be a reference (this, document.body)
d3.selectAll("p").on("click", function() {
  d3.select(this).style("color", "red");
});

d3.selectAll(selector)  // Selects all elements

// Selector can be a string
var paragraph = d3.selectAll("p");

// Or a reference (this.childNodes, document.links)
d3.selectAll(document.links).style("color", "red");

d3.js - Selection

var paragraphs = document.getElementsByTagName("p");

for (var i = 0; i < paragraphs.length; i++) {
  var paragraph = paragraphs.item(i);
  paragraph.style.setProperty("color", "red", null);
}

W3C:

D3.js

d3.selectAll("p").style("color", "red");

D3.js - Method chaınıng

var body = d3.select("body");
body.style("color", "black");
body.style("background-color", "red");
d3.select("body")
    .style("color", "black")
    .style("background-color", "red");

D3.js - Example

- What do we want?

- Scatterplot

 

- What do we have?

- Data array

[{"x": 1.0, "y": 1.1}, 
 {"x": 2.0, "y": 2.5}, 
 {"x": 3.0, "y": 3.6},
…]

d3.js - example

d3.scatterplot(data)  // Deprecated

d3.awesomeScatterplot(data)  // Awesome

Nope.

d3.js - example

svg.selectAll("circle")
  .data(data)
  .enter().append("circle")
    .attr("cx", function(d) { return d.x; })
    .attr("cy", function(d) { return d.y; })
    .attr("r", 10);

Q: But we don't have any circles yet, how did we selectAll ?

d3.js - example

Instead of telling D3 how to do something, tell D3 what you want.

- Mike Bostock

D3.js - Data joın

  • Circle elements to correspond to data
  • One circle per datum
  • Tell D3: "circle" corresponds to data
  • Data join

D3.js - Data joın

  • Data + Existing elements -> UPDATE
  • Unbound data -> ENTER
  • Unbound elements -> EXIT

Text

enter

exıt

update

data

elements

d3.js - example

svg.selectAll("circle")  // New empty selection

   .data(data)  // Join data -> enter, update, exit
   // Empty selection -> Update, Exit are empty
   // Enter contains a placeholder for each new datum

   .enter()  // Enter selection
   .append("circle") // Append circles for each datum

   .attr("cx", function(d) { return d.x; })
   .attr("cy", function(d) { return d.y; })
   .attr("r", 10);

Hard coded HTML

<div class="chart">
  <div style="width: 40px;">4</div>
  <div style="width: 50px;">5</div>
  <div style="width: 70px;">7</div>
  <div style="width: 80px;">8</div>
  <div style="width: 60px;">6</div>
  <div style="width: 30px;">3</div>
</div>
var data = [4, 5, 7, 8, 6, 3];

d3.select(".chart")  // Empty selection 
  .selectAll("div")  // Empty selection
    .data(data)      // Join data, get enter
  .enter().append("div")  // Select enter, append div
    .style("width", function(d) 
                    { return d * 10 + "px"; })
    .text(function(d) { return d; });

D3.js

Project - Issues

 

  • Communication between the groups
  • To develop one app for 3 platforms is a difficult task

  • Integration of Features difficult because every group has a different approach

  • Server problems

  • Being up to date in every group

  • Which framework should we use (start issues)

Project - Issues

Project - Issues

Lessons learned

  • Better Communication with other groups
  • More meetings in person!
  • Hackathons

  • Rather have fast decisions than the "best" decisions

  • Every group needed to have a contact person

  • Why we switch to webpack?​

    • “Makes it possible to require() text files like our css files as strings”

Sources

  • By Birger Eriksson - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18034500
  • http://www.w3schools.com/graphics/svg_intro.asp
  • https://d3js.org/
  • bost.ocks.org/mike/
  • http://codepen.io/antonietta/pen/BjGWYx
  • https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/an-introduction-to-the-raphael-js-library--net-7186
  • https://onepagelove.com/tag/html5-canvas

Thanks!

questions?

d3.js - update & exıt

  • http://niceone.org/examples/d3-selections/
var numbers = [15, 8, 42, 4];

// Updates the visualization 
function update() {

  // Update selection: Resize and position existing 
  // DOM elements with data bound to them.
  var selection = d3.select("#chart")
    .selectAll(".bar").data(numbers)
    .style("height", function(d){ 
      return d; 
    })
    .style("margin-top", function(d){ 
      return 100 - d; 
    });

  // Enter selection: Create new DOM elements for added 
  // data items, resize and position them and attach a 
  // mouse click handler.
  selection.enter()
    .append("div").attr("class", "bar")
    .style("height", function(d){ 
      return d; 
    })
    .style("margin-top", function(d){ 
      return 100 - d; 
    })
    .on("click", function(e, i){
      numbers.splice(i, 1);
      update();
    });

  // Exit selection: Remove elements without data from the DOM
  selection.exit().remove();

  // Update text field for display of current data set
  d3.select("#data-field").text("numbers: [" + numbers.join(", ") + "]")

};

update();



// Add a new datum to the set
d3.select("#add-btn").on("click", function(e){
    
    numbers.push(Math.round(Math.random() * 100));

    update();
});

SVG BROWser support

Raphael.js

  • Raphaël object manages drawings in the canvas
  • Can draw vector graphics (SVG)
var paper = new Raphael(document.getElementById('canvas_container'),
            500, 500);
var circle = paper.circle(100, 100, 80);
for(var i = 0; i < 5; i+=1) {
    var multiplier = i*5;
    paper.circle(250 + (2*multiplier), 100 + multiplier,
    50 - multiplier)
}
var rectangle = paper.rect(200, 200, 250, 100);
var ellipse = paper.ellipse(200, 400, 100, 50);

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