New Era in Visualization Emerging
August 11, 2008
Traditional tools can’t deal with petabyte and larger data sets. The Department of Homeland Security and the National Science Foundation have tapped Georgia Tech “as the lead academic research institution for all national Foundations of Data and Visual Analytics (FODAVA) research efforts. Seven other FODAVA Partnership Awards will be announced later this year, all working in conjunction with eleven Georgia Tech investigators to advance the field.” News of an initial grant of $3 million was reported by the university earlier this month. You can read one version of the announcement here in PhysOrg.com’s article “New Grant Supports Emerging Field of Massive Data Analysis and Visual Analytics.”
I think this is important because US government funding does have in impact on information-related innovation. Data mining, text mining, and search have blossomed with government support. A recipient of US government money is asked to look for ways to push the innovations into the commercial channel. The idea is for government funds to “give back” to citizens.
My view of visualization is mixed. Most of the startling visualizations such as Australia National University’s three dimensional rock are interesting but not practical. Last week I marveled at a collection of wild and crazy visualizations. The problem is that most visualizations get in the way of my understanding the data. A good example is Indiana University’s visualization of movies. I still have a heck of time figuring out what the visualization depicts. For me, using it is out of the question. You can see this visualization here.
My hunch is that visualization will be in my face in the months and years ahead.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2008
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