The first visualization demonstrates each college’s ‘score’ (on a scale from 1-100, 100 being the highest score attainable) (red) against the cost of tuition at that college (yellow). We used the new dual axis feature to display both measures but on different axes. Use the zoomchart below the main chart to examine points more closely.

The second shows scores for all colleges where tuition is 20,000USD or less. The trend lines show that even though there is a large gap between the top and the bottom college in terms of score, there is not a huge discrepancy when it comes to tuition fees. This could be useful if, for example, you wanted to choose the best college possible with a tuition budget of 20,000USD.

The third chart, the line chart, displays fall 2009 acceptance rate vs. score per college. You can see that generally, as score increases, the rate of acceptance decreases.

The heatmap visualization shows the 10 most expensive tuition colleges. Displayed inside the circle is the cost of tuition. You can see that a lot of the expensive colleges are gathered in the north east.

The grid simply lists all the colleges in order of score (highest first). I put acceptance rate on the size measure so the acceptance rate is demonstrated via the blue bar. As you move down the list you’ll see the blue bar (generally) grow.

Dataset: COLLEGE RANK VS. TUITION [Many Eyes]

Don’t forget to check out our other example dashboards in the showcase section.

Click the picture below to access the dashboard

Create your own here!

Industry: social networking

For who: anyone!

Data Source(s): Google Spreadsheet from The Guardian data blog

Viewing tip: Make the dashboard fullscreen by clicking the “Fullscreen” button in the bottom left hand corner of the dashboard.

Don’t forget to check out our other example dashboards in the showcase section.

The dashboard contains 3 visualizations which all show different relationships.

The first, the treemap, shows the number of users in July 2010 in relation to the percentage penetration (number of people on Facebook as a percentage of the country’s population). The size of each individual box within the treemap shows the total number of Facebook users in the country. The strength of the color shows the percentage penetration, with the darkest blue being attributed to a higher percentage of users, and the lightest blue being attributed to the lowest. As you can see from the visualization, the USA has more than 3 times the number of users as any other country in the data, but not the highest number of people on Facebook as a percentage of the country’s population. As it is difficult to distinguish different shades of blue when the data is so close, you can hover over the points to get more detailed information. By doing this we can quickly see that Hong Kong has the highest concentration of users with regards to its population. Another (perhaps easier) way of finding this out is by simply altering the filters for the data which can be found underneath the attributes box on the right hand side.

The second visualization is the geovisualization, or heat map. We have chosen graduated circles to display the information but you can change it back to the original heatmap format by clicking on “Rendering Mode” in the bottom left hand corner. Here we see the relationship between the population and the percentage penetration. The size of the graduated circles show proportionately the population size, and the number inside demonstrates the percentage penetration. A very simple but a highly visual representation, the heatmap is probably the best way to get an overall geographical idea of where Facebook’s users are around the world.

Lastly, our third chart is the classic pie chart. It is better to use this type of chart when there is not too much data (pie charts work best with smaller data sets because after a certain point the data becomes impossible to read) so we have used the filters to filter out any country with a population of less than 10 million. This gives us a nice overview of the relationship between the percentage penetration and the number of users. We have also chosen to display the percentage penetration measure by size, to make it really clear which countries have a high percentage (USA, UK) and which have a low percentage (India, Mexico). Bime automatically chooses different colors for each segment which make the chart aesthetically pleasing and easy to read.

Don’t forget to make each visualization fullscreen when you look at it, by clicking the little box in the top right hand corner of each chart, so you can really see the details of your data set. Alternatively you can view all three together fullscreen by clicking “Fullscreen” in the bottom left hand corner of the dashboard. If you want to export a PDF or an image of your visualization, Bime makes it super easy to do this – no more messing around with printscreen – simply click the “Export PDF” or “Export Image” buttons at the bottom of the dashboard (N.B. heatmaps cannot be exported). Equally you might choose to export your data to an Excel spreadsheet.

Datasource: The Guardian.

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The great thing about the heatmap is that it is not simply a pretty picture – hover over the heatpoints and you can bring up the detailed data lying behind them by clicking on it. This is particularly helpful when different areas of focus are close together, like on the dashboard below (click the image to access it). Use the drop down menu above the heatmap to enable the control menu. By clicking on “Rendering mode” you can switch between the heatmap or graduated circles view. You can filter your view by states by checking or unchecking the relevant boxes under “attributes” on the right. You can also filter by the measure (profit) by using the slider below the list of attributes.

Geographic data visualizations can help businesses answer fundamental questions, such as:

- What geographic area do we serve?

- Are our sales territories and client clusters properly aligned?

- What areas of potential clients might we have missed or overlooked?

Now we’ve discussed why an organization might need geocoding, but how does it make use of it? Here is one example of many.

Geocoding as a Marketing Tool

Many businesses use geomarketing to perform specific market/region data analysis for the purpose of making sound business decisions. Geomarketing allows businesses to analyze customers on digital maps, acquire valuable market data, and plan their next move, whether this be at a local, national, or global level. This enables organizations to better coordinate all of their domestic and international sales and marketing operations – for improved efficiency.

For marketers, these types of visualizations are critical for targeting demographics for customer profiling and for customizing marketing messages to a specific audience – based on the geographic location of potential customers.

Bime’s geo visualization allows you to see where you are in the real world, quite literally, using the Bime functionality on top of Google Maps. We’ve been using this feature for a while now – just as a line graph is probably the most effective way of displaying time data, the heatmap is definitely the way to go for geographic data. With this, you can visualize where your staff, clients, suppliers, or any other facet of your business is concentrated. As we outlined above, this can do wonders for your organization, and equally importantly, keep you one step ahead of the competition.