Size Matters: How Visual Analytics Will Bring Numbers to Life The increasing volume of quantitative data in modern communication is calling for more effective visualization design techniques to improve clarity and decision-making. The LAVA visual analytic design language proposes a new vernacular to take big data to big audiences. Big Data. The Internet of Things. Cloud Computing. Predictive Analytics. Any trip through today's information technology news will surely include some of these terms. Just as the Web and social media allow more people and institutions to connect with each other to exchange sentiment and ideas, a parallel system exists to do the same thing with quantitative facts. An ever-more automated array of sensors and monitors embedded in our businesses, governments, physical infrastructures, vehicles, the environment, and even our bodies, are being added to the more traditional practice of manual observation and data entry in the effort to record and store the daily up-and-down states of stuff we care about. The variables are called Measures, and include things like sales, windspeed, steps taken, or heart rate. The things being measured are called Entities, such as a car model, an airport, your family, or your heart. Combining Measures with Entities creates Metrics - Sales at a cash register or of a car model, windspeed at the airport, steps taken by your family today, your resting heart rate. Metrics are how we understand quantitative data from the world around us. Analytics is the science of working with metrics to make better, more informed decisions in our work and lives. Visual Analytics is the expression of metrics geometrically - with lines and shapes versus with numbers in spreadsheets - so as to make them easier to understand and interpret. As more metrics are made available and relevant to more people, presenting them visually is a key aspect of ensuring that audiences find them legible - or clear and able to be read - and readable - or enticing and likely to be read. While these dual masters of function and elegance are present in all design practice, visual analytics require a balance skewed in favor of clarity, efficiency, mathematical precision, and measureable audience cognition.

Why do leopards grow spots when tigers grow stripes? Is the universe round, square, or some other shape? How do the dimples in a golf ball give it greater lift? Is there such a thing as a public mood? If so, how can we accurately take its pulse? Only one tool of the human mind has the power and versatility to answer so many questions about our world—mathematics. Far from a musty set of equations and proofs, mathematics is a vital and creative way of thinking and seeing. It is the most powerful means we have of exploring our world and how it works, from the darkest depths of the oceans to the faintest glimmers of far-away galaxies, and from the aerodynamics of figure-skating jumps to the shadows of the fourth dimension. In this captivating companion to the landmark PBS series Life by the Numbers, acclaimed author Keith Devlin reveals the astonishing range of creative and powerful ways in which scientists, artists, athletes, medical researchers, and many others are using mathematics to explore our world and to enhance our lives. On this exhilarating tour you will explore deep-sea volcanoes with oceanographer Dawn Wright, go behind the scenes of blockbuster movies with special-effects designer Doug Trumbull, and probe the strange lives of viruses with microbiologist Sylvia Spengler. Listen to astronomer Robert Kirshner describe how he is charting the curve of space; discover how biologist Mike Labarbara visualizes the way a Tyrannosaurus rex carried its massive frame; and, along with brain researcher Brad Hatfield, peer into the mind of an Olympic markswoman at the moment she takes a shot. Glimpse a future of wearable computers and silicon "butlers" with computer scientist Pattie Maes, and watch a lilac come to life on screen with "computer botanist" Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz. Lavishly illustrated and beautifully written, Life by the Numbers brings mathematical exploration and invention to life through the stories of some of the most creative practitioners of the art. It imparts an appreciation of the ingenuity and the sheer fun of seeing our world through mathematical eyes.

If you found maths lessons at school irrelevant and boring, that’s because you didn’t have a teacher like Bobby Seagull. ***As seen on Monkman & Seagull's Genius Guide to Britain*** Long before his rise to cult fandom on University Challenge, Bobby Seagull was obsessed with numbers. They were the keys that unlocked the randomness of football results, the beauty of art and the best way to get things done. In his absorbing book, Bobby tells the story of his life through numbers and shows the incredible ways maths can make sense of the world around us. From magic shows to rap lyrics, from hobbies to outer space, from fitness to food – Bobby’s infectious enthusiasm for numbers will change how you think about almost everything. Told through fascinating stories and insights from Bobby’s life, and with head-scratching puzzles in every chapter, you’ll never look at numbers the same way again.

A clear, practical, first-of-its-kind guide to communicating and understanding numbers and data—from bestselling business author Chip Heath. How much bigger is a billion than a million? Well, a million seconds is twelve days. A billion seconds is…thirty-two years. Understanding numbers is essential—but humans aren’t built to understand them. Until very recently, most languages had no words for numbers greater than five—anything from six to infinity was known as “lots.” While the numbers in our world have gotten increasingly complex, our brains are stuck in the past. How can we translate millions and billions and milliseconds and nanometers into things we can comprehend and use? Author Chip Heath has excelled at teaching others about making ideas stick and here, in Making Numbers Count, he outlines specific principles that reveal how to translate a number into our brain’s language. This book is filled with examples of extreme number makeovers, vivid before-and-after examples that take a dry number and present it in a way that people click in and say “Wow, now I get it!” You will learn principles such as: -SIMPLE PERSPECTIVE CUES: researchers at Microsoft found that adding one simple comparison sentence doubled how accurately users estimated statistics like population and area of countries. -VIVIDNESS: get perspective on the size of a nucleus by imagining a bee in a cathedral, or a pea in a racetrack, which are easier to envision than “1/100,000th of the size of an atom.” -CONVERT TO A PROCESS: capitalize on our intuitive sense of time (5 gigabytes of music storage turns into “2 months of commutes, without repeating a song”). -EMOTIONAL MEASURING STICKS: frame the number in a way that people already care about (“that medical protocol would save twice as many women as curing breast cancer”). Whether you’re interested in global problems like climate change, running a tech firm or a farm, or just explaining how many Cokes you’d have to drink if you burned calories like a hummingbird, this book will help math-lovers and math-haters alike translate the numbers that animate our world—allowing us to bring more data, more naturally, into decisions in our schools, our workplaces, and our society.

Data, Statistics, and Useful Numbers for Environmental Sustainability: Bringing the Numbers to Life is an accessible reference for researchers working in environmental and sustainability fields who need to communicate the latest data and statistics to reinforce their own research or message. The book compiles the most-needed numbers into one resource and covers a variety of relevant topics, including materials, energy, environment, city planning, electronics, and waste. This handbook is clearly indexed and full of comprehensive tables, making it easy to find answers. Researchers in environmental and sustainability-related fields will find it an invaluable resource. Collects and presents important environmental data in one accessible resource Provides key information needed for effectively communicating environmental and sustainability issues Offers a clear index Includes detailed tables throughout for ease of access

A foundational work on historical and social studies of quantification What accounts for the prestige of quantitative methods? The usual answer is that quantification is desirable in social investigation as a result of its successes in science. Trust in Numbers questions whether such success in the study of stars, molecules, or cells should be an attractive model for research on human societies, and examines why the natural sciences are highly quantitative in the first place. Theodore Porter argues that a better understanding of the attractions of quantification in business, government, and social research brings a fresh perspective to its role in psychology, physics, and medicine. Quantitative rigor is not inherent in science but arises from political and social pressures, and objectivity derives its impetus from cultural contexts. In a new preface, the author sheds light on the current infatuation with quantitative methods, particularly at the intersection of science and bureaucracy.

What Lynne Truss did for grammar in Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Andrew Hodges now does for mathematics. Andrew Hodges, one of Britain’s leading biographers and mathematical writers, brings numbers to three-dimensional life in this delightful and illuminating volume, filled with illustrations, which makes even the most challenging math problems accessible to the layperson. Inspired by millennia of human attempts to figure things out, this pithy book, which tackles mathematical conundrums from the ancient Greeks to superstring theory, finds a new twist to everything from musical harmony to code breaking, from the chemistry of sunflowers to the mystery of magic squares. Starting with the puzzle of defining unity, and ending with the recurring nines of infinite decimals, Hodges tells a story that takes in quantum physics, cosmology, climate change, and the origin of the computer. Hodges has written a classic work, at once playful but satisfyingly instructional, which will be ideal for the math aficionado and the Sudoku addict as well as for the life of the party.