The Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards selects the best data visualisations, infographics, and information art. Created in 2012 by David McCandless and Aziz Cami, the Awards were created to celebrate the beauty and excellence of visualizing data. The organization also hosts mini-challenges throughout the year to “keep your dataviz juices flowing.” They are community-driven, do not require a large entry fee and provides a free award party sponsored by Kantar . Readers can sort through the winners of the past three year by the different levels and categories.

Using token analysis, he compared the first 35,000 words of lyrics of rappers to the first 35,000 written by Shakespeare and Herman Melville. Shakespeare, he explains, used 28,829 words in his writings and estimates he knew over 100,000. On top of the 85 artists is Aesop Rock with 7,392 unique words. The bottom is DMX with 3,214. The Awards second place or Silver as the site calls it, was Timm Kekeritz’s Weather Radials , which breaks down the weather for 35 cities worldwide. The Bronze was taken by The Depth of the Problem by The Washington Post , illustrating the challenge of searchers looking for wreckage of Flight 370. With over 100 entries for 2014, the Awards are sure to continue celebrating the best data visualisation available.

From music videos to the flight of a single stork to sports analysis, 3D data visualization covers it all. In 2008, English rock band Radiohead released a music video for House of Cards created using a scanning system capturing 3D images through structured light for close ups and 64 laser rotating system with a 360 degree radius, shooting 900 times per minute for wider shots such as landscapes. The result is an all 3D data visualization video.

422 South is a data visualization, computer generated imagery (CGI) and visual effects company in the United Kingdom. In March, they published a CGI 3D data visualization video entitled “ 3D Data Visualization Reel-2015 .” They describe the video as “the world as seen by data” and begin with tracking a day in the life of an urban seagull. The video composition goes on to follow seals dodging ships in the North Sea, lightning strikes vs. lottery winners, rush hour traffic in Los Angeles, international meat trade routes, the world’s busiest two runway airport and many other topics. The 3D data visualizations are powerful.

Lastly, 3D data visualization helps athletes and sports enthusiasts analyze games and improve performance. GameSetMap explains how the data is displayed and used for tennis matches. For example, one data visualization example displays serve patterns during the World Tour Finals in 2014. Further down the site, a 3D heat map shows where the ball was most frequently during a match between two right handed players over 5 sets at the US Open. The data consisted of 10s of thousands of data points which are unmanageable without some sort of analysis.

Presenting data in a visual form such as a chart, graph or picture is SAS Institute’s definition of data visualization. The analytics software and service company’s What is data visualization web page explains that human brains process charts and graphs faster than spreadsheets or reports. Yet, many still find charts and graphs boring. Enter interactive data visualization offering more details and changing the ways data is viewed. Users can click on parts of the visual to find more information and remain interested.

Data visualization is important because it often allows people to see things which were not apparent before they viewed the data in a visual presentation. Patterns emerge that are not as visible on a spreadsheet and the data can be consolidated regardless of the amount.

SAS does offer advice for generating the best data visualization possible. One tip is to know your audience and how your audience processes information. Second, understand the data and what you want to communicate. Third, choose the best but simplest form to convey your visual information.

All that is great for a business but what is data visualization for the average Joe? If the data exists, it can be made visual whether for use or entertainment. WebdesignerDepot .com offers 50 Great Examples of Data Visualization , including some of the data visualization tools that create them. For example, Narratives 2.0 creates music visualization.

Tag Galaxy allows the user to search Flickr tags and view all images via a globe graphic. Viewers can see a larger version by clicking on a picture.

Visualizing the Bible provide a visual representation of 63,000 textual cross-references in the Bible. It is more for its attractive appearance and is not interactive.

Finally, Visual Complexity is a collection of visualizations categorized and ready for viewing. For example, one contributor created a summary of his son, daughter, cat and his own movements through their living room over one hour in 2008.

Rock and Roll has undoubtedly been one of the most powerful and influential musical genres throughout last hundred years. Various artists and bands have created music which liberated and energized millions around the globe. Silicon Valley Data Science dedicated an interactive data visualization to 100 years of Rock history which focuses on musical influences among Rock artists.

Viewers can visualize data on singers and bands as circles. Musical influences are charted as lines drawn between the circles. Red circles correspond to an artist or a brand of interest. Golden circles represent influencers and the blue ones correspond to the artists who were influenced. By highlighting a red circle the data visualization displays basic artist information along song stats. Interestingly songs are rated on sad to happy and low to high energy bar charted continuum. On this screenshot you can see a data visualization example of The Doors musical influence. It seems this band drew its inspiration from The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. In its turn Jim Morrison&co talent influenced Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. The right section of this data viz represents a temporal component of this interactive graphic. It shows when the bands started and how long they have been together. This part of the viz is a bit convoluted, but overall it is a creative example of how music history data can be visualized.