Dataviz logo
Communities and Local Government logo Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion logo

Google Data Explorer

Current rating 5/5 Impact: 5Accuracy: 52 votes
Rate this Impact low high Accuracy low high Your level of expertise
What are ratings?

Ratings let you assess a visualisation according to:
 

Impact:
How much a visualisation makes you take notice of it
 

Accuracy:
How well it portrays the true data behind it
 

Rate visualisations according to your own impressions and expertise. We also ask you to let us know how you rate your own level of expertise in terms of data and visualisation, so that we can filter ratings further in future.
 

For more information on ratings and levels of expertise, see our help page.

Google Data Explorer
This interactive tool developed by Google offers a large amount of data, ranging from databases on public debt in Europe (in the screenshot) to education statistics in California. It is fully flexible so the user can select can choose between line, char graphs and maps, as well as the contextual information to be displayed.
Visual types
Level of expertise
Source:
Google Labs: Google (Commercial software provider)
http://www.google.com/publicdata/overview?ds=ds22a34krhq5p_&ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&hl=en&dl=en
Interactive features
Users can control high and low level parameters of the visualization through interactive menus.
Benefits & pitfalls to avoid
  • Line-charts imply that data is continuously changing. If your data is discrete you might consider a bar-chart instead.
  • Using area or volume to represent data can distort data values, and exaggerate differences between values. For example, if the radius of the circle is used to represent data values, the area of the circle will quadruple if the data values double. There is also an issue of 'perceptual scaling' - the tendency of people to underestimate areas.
Create your own
  • Base maps can be created in a range of desktop GIS applications such as MapInfo and ArcGIS.
  • Bubble charts can be created in a range of standard data applications such as Excel.