This month, the Federal Government finally released their much anticipated data.gov website. The purpose of data.gov is to increase public access to machine readable data sets that are generated by the Federal Government.

Now that site has gone live, it is time for all of us to start digging into the data. Provided below is a collection of references and resources to serve as a short visualization primer for those interested in exploring the data sets that have been made available.

Resources:

• Chart Suggestions - A Thought Start - A basic flow chart like introduction on how to represent data visually.
• Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design - a very small booklet that teaches the principles and techniques of information design
• Periodic Table of Visualization Methods - A collection of visualization methods
• Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography, Statistical Graphics, and Data Visualization - A history of visualization
• Online Library of Information Visualization Environments - library of visualization environments
• Tufte Design Principles

Websites and Blogs:

• Flowing Data
• Information Aesthetics
• EagerEyes
• Visual Complexity
• Data Visualization
• Information Design

Tools:

• Many Eyes - the YouTube of visualizations
• Juice Analytics - Chart Chooser
• DabbleDB - power data manipulation tool
• R - open source free statistical computing software environment
• Tableau - commercial visualization software
• Wordle - creates word clouds

Books:

• Tufte, E., (1990). Envisioning Information. Cheshire: Graphics Press.
• Tufte, E., (2006). Beautiful Evidence. Cheshire: Graphics Press.
• Tufte, E., (1997). Visual Explanations. Cheshire: Graphics Press.
• Tufte, E., (2001). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire: Graphics Press.
• Visocky, J., & O'grady, K. (2008). The Information Design Handbook. City: How.
• Jacobson, R., (1999). Information Design. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Few, S., (2004). Show Me the Numbers. City: Analytics Press.
• Ware, C., (2000). Information Visualization. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman.
• Card, S., Shneiderman, B., & Mackinlay, J. (1999). Readings in Information Visualization. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.