Sparklines are fun to tinker with and can provide quick glimpses of data. Here are some not-quite-realtime twitter sparklines, built with this small and useful tool and a bit of scripting. 30-days of twitter: How about a change plot: Or, if you like, the straight-up histogram:

Way cool:

(image page at flickr)

We Feel Fine aggregates and provides clicky-feely visualizations of expressions of emotions online, via text found in blogs, flickr pages and google.

I spent a good chunk of today trying to figure out why a single dumb plot was coming out all hinky; these guys have colored affect balls swirling apparently effortlessly around your mouse cursor. I feel inadequate, sure, but I feel wildly enthusiastic, as well. This is cool stuff.

(Via Chris at Ruminate.)

Link: TagCrowd

Create your own tag cloud from any text to visualize word frequency.

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• This link is dated Friday January 12, 2007 with keywords data, tags, tools, visualization

Link: [R-pkgs] tm 0.1 uploaded to CRAN

tm provides a sophisticated framework for text mining applications

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• This link is dated Thursday January 11, 2007 with keywords data, r-project, statistics, text

Link: R-Help: Tables with Graphical Representations

Some discussion of integrating small graphics with tabular data

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• This link is dated Friday September 1, 2006 with keywords data, graph, r-project, tools

Link: Libre Map Project - Free Maps and GIS data

"The purpose of the Libre Map Project is to aggregate and make digital maps and related GIS data available for Free."

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• This link is dated Wednesday June 21, 2006 with keywords data, gis, maps

Dataninja was just the right site to stumble across tonight. The production of an “economist and (future) economics PhD student,” Dataninja is packed full of good data and workflow stuff: Techniques to convert from spreadsheets to LaTeX code, tips for working with Stata, R pointers (including homemade reference cards), applescripts, programming tools, links to data sets, and more. As they say, read the whole thing.

Packed full. It’s a great resource.

I very much enjoyed Drek’s thoughts about data today, and I am looking forward to his following up on this post with some discussion of important elements of research design: For example, the differences between collecting experimental data, conducting various sorts of field research, and performing simulations.

Outrage fatigue has set in, making it hard to get steamed about stuff like this anymore. These guys just stand up and lie, with contrary evidence right in front of them. We get lies about the economy, lies about the tax cut, and lies about going to war.

The same continues to happen with regard to Tim Lambert’s ongoing whacking of John Lott with the honesty stick. On the efforts among Lott supporters to debunk a study that contradicts their own “research,” Lambert points out that, contrary to repeated claims otherwise, the study’s data is publicly available from ICPSR.

I checked, and yep, Lambert’s right. It took exactly seven seconds and a single click of a “search” button to find the study and whole mess of downloadable data.

Evidence. Right there. Data. Available. How do people get away this this crap? Unfortunately, the ability to readily disprove an egregious lie—er, excuse me, “extension of the truth” as I’m told we’re calling it now—seems to be easier done than said.

Edit: Oops. Accidentally dropped the “S” from ICP*S*R (to the joy of political scientists?).

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