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Data as Art: 10 Striking Science Maps
By Dave Mosher March 8, 2011 | 7:00 am | Categories: Art, Tech
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The computer age triggered a seemingly endless stream of scientific data, but such incoming mountains of
information come at a cost. The more data you amass, the tougher it is to comprehend what you're dealing
with.
In a push for better perspective, a group of information scientists in 2005 created a decade-long competitive
art exhibit called Places & Spaces: Mapping Science. From artistic pop-culture plots to illustrations of the
state of scientific collaboration (above), the founders hope winning entries inspire researchers to present
their troves of data in clever and digestible ways.
"Good science maps give you a holistic understanding of how the data is structured," said information
scientist Katy Börner of Indiana University, a founder and curator of the exhibit. She is also author of the
Atlas of Science, a collection of the maps gathered over the years. "You don't just have to use maps to find
your way home. They can be ways to get global overviews on topics."
The exhibit's advisory board follows a theme and some core criteria to pick 10 winners each year. This
year's winning entries for the theme "science maps as visual interfaces to digital libraries" were announced
this week. Exhibit-ready versions of the maps are scheduled for display in mid-June.
We showcase some of our favorite winners here, in addition to a few that didn't make the final cut. Some
maps are too small to properly appreciate here, but we include links to high-resolution versions for each of
them.
Above:
Scientific Collaboration
Inspired by a map of 500 million Facebook friends published in December 2010, research analyst Olivier H.
Beauchesne created this winning visualization of international collaboration that occurred from 2005
through 2009.
Each arc represents a collaboration between scientists in different cities mined from studies, books and trade
journals found in Elsevier's Scopus database. Dense nodes of science emerge in the Americas, Europe and
Japan.
Image: Olivier H. Beauchesne/Science-Metrix [high-resolution version]
>
View all
See Also:
Gallery: 10 Stunning Science Visualizations
Best Science Visualization Videos of 2009
Maps: How Mankind Remade Nature
Google Teams With NOAA to Make Better Ocean Visualizations
Map of Science Looks Like Milky Way
NASA Satellite Maps 99% of Earth’s Topography
Dave is an infinitely curious Wired Science contributor who's obsessed with
space, physics, biology and technology. He lives in New York City.
Follow @davemosher and @wiredscience on Twitter.
Tags: Data, maps, photo gallery, science visualization
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Showing 7 comments
JonFraudCarry
For an article that focuses on reading graphic data, would it have been possible to present the graphs
so that they could actually be read?
Basic fail.
6 hours ago 2 Likes Like Reply
mygocarp
"Some maps are too small to properly appreciate here, but we include links to high-resolution
versions for each of them."
Troll fail.
4 hours ago in reply to JonFraudCarry 1 Like Like Reply
Dave Mosher, Contributor to Wired.com / Wired Science. Curious, nerdy, nosy, optimistic, skeptical, spacey.
We have a "wide" format we're able to use, but even that is too small to show off these bad
boys. Hence, we stuck with our standard format and wrote this:
"Some maps are too small to properly appreciate here, but we include links to high-resolution
versions for each of them."
4 hours ago in reply to JonFraudCarry 1 Like Like Reply
Phomedog
Did you try clicking the links?!?
5 hours ago in reply to JonFraudCarry 1 Like Like Reply
Jack Inthebox
Yeah, then drill down some more on the next web site. I have all day to do that, so no
problem.
I agree - basic fail. I guess the extra bandwidth is still too expensive for Wired.
20 minutes ago in reply to Phomedog Like Reply
Tim McCormack
win!
4 hours ago in reply to Phomedog Like Reply
bobnjersey
[From artistic pop-culture plots to illustrations of the state of scientific collaboration (above), the
founders hope winning entries inspire researchers to present their troves of data in clever and
digestible ways.]
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very nice ... edward tufte would be proud of you all.
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tuf...
29 minutes ago Like Reply
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