CSE512 Data Visualization

Useful Resources

Tools

Visualization Toolkits

A variety of useful toolkits have been designed to help support information visualization applications. Some include support for the full visualization pipeline from data to interactive graphics, while others focus only on a subset, typically graphics and interaction.

  • D3 - A JavaScript library for data-driven DOM manipulation, interaction and animation. Includes utilities for visualization techniques and SVG generation.
  • Vega - A declarative language for representing visualizations. Vega will parse a visualization specification to produce a JavaScript-based visualization, using either HTML Canvas or SVG rendering. Vega is particularly useful for creating programs that produce visualizations as output.
  • Processing or p5.js - A popular Java-like graphics and interaction language and IDE. Processing has a strong user community with many examples. p5.js is a sister project for JavaScript.
  • Protovis - JavaScript visualization language, predecessor of d3.
  • HTML/JavaScript/XML - use standard web technologies to build the visualization. You may use libraries such as jQuery and the Google Maps API to help build your visualization.
  • Leaflet – a popular open-source mapping library
  • Flare - Visualization toolkit for Adobe Flash
  • Prefuse - Visualization toolkit for Java
  • Improvise - Java system supporting coordinated views
  • InfoVis Toolkit - A Java visualization library, from INRIA France
  • Piccolo - A Java library for zoomable UIs, from U. Maryland (Java and .NET)
  • VTK - A scientific visualization library (C++ with wrappers for other languages)

Visualization Tools

  • Tableau for Students - get a free Tableau license as a student
  • Tableau Public - a free version of Tableau which publishes to the web
  • Voyager - a web-based data exploration tool from IDL.
  • GGplot2 - a graphics language for R
  • Lyra - an interactive visualization design environment
  • GGobi - visualizations for multivariate data
  • Improvise - a visualization tool supporting a variety of visualization types
  • ParVis - software for parallel coordinates
  • TimeSearcher - interface for time-series data from U Maryland
  • TreeMap - tree-mapping software from U Maryland

Network Analysis Tools

  • Gephi - an interactive graph analysis application
  • NodeXL - a graph analysis plug-in for Excel
  • GUESS - a combined visual/scripting interface for graph analysis
  • Pajek - another popular network analysis tool
  • NetworkX - graph analysis library for Python
  • SNAP - graph analysis library for C++

Color Tools

Web Development Tools

  • Beginner? Start with Sublime Text with Emmet and SublimeLinter/JSHint
  • Like IDE and willing to pay? Webstorm is a good option.
  • Dash is great for quick documentation look up in Mac.

Tutorials & Tips

In addition to our workshops, these tutorials could be useful for Assignment 3, final project, and your future visualization work.

HTML, CSS

Javascript

d3.js

Git & Github

Data Sets