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Statistics eXplorer for advanced Interactive Statistical Visualization
Import data, explore, collaborate and publish
Recent advances in web-enabled graphics technologies have the potential to make a dramatic impact on developing highly interactive Geovisual Analytics applications for the Internet. An emerging and challenging application domain is geovisualization of regional (sub-national) statistics. Higher integration driven by institutional processes and economic globalisation is eroding national borders and creating competition along regional lines in the world market. Sound information at sub-national level and benchmarking of regions across borders, therefore, has increased in importance in the policy agenda of many countries.
Regional statistics is a potential treasure chest for policy-makers, researchers and citizens to gain a better understanding of a region’s structure and performance and to carry out analysis of territorial trends and disparities based on sound information comparable across countries or counties. Many approaches and tools have been developed in spatial-related knowledge discovery but generally they do not scale well with dynamic visualization of larger spatial data on the Internet.
In this context, NCVA has developed a dynamic web-enabled platform “Statistics eXplorer”, a tool for interactively analyzing, collaborating and publishing gained insights from statistical data and customized for usage by statistics bureaus. The first version of Statistics eXplorer was released in November 2008 on the OECD web-site. Several extended versions has been released that enhances the possibility to explore trends over time, provides novel functions for presenting stories about the statistics and combines metadata and maps status. Further developments during 2009-2010 (and through spin-off company NComVA 2010-2012) resulted in the creation of a generic highly interactive web “eXplorer” platform Customizable Statistics eXplorer and special eXplorer versions World eXplorer, Sverige eXplorer and MDim eXplorer. These applications are available free on our web site for educational or research usage.
The analyst (author) uses eXplorer to: 1) import any national or sub-national statistical data, 2) explore and make discoveries through trends and patterns and derive insight. Gained knowledge is the foundation for 3) creating a story that can be 4) shared with colleagues and reach consensus and trust. The visual discoveries are captured into snapshots together with descriptive metadata and hyperlinks in relation to the analytics reasoning. The author gets feedback from colleagues, adopts the story and 5) finally publishes “tell-a-story” to the community using a “Vislet” that is embedded in blogs or wikis.
Download a comprehensive "Introduction to eXplorer"
Time Animation in Statistics eXplorer
Figure: eXplorer time-linked motion graphs
Statistics eXplorer employs a data model optimized for handling spatial-temporal and multidimensional data in a geovisual analytics context. This conceptual data model can be seen as a data cube with three dimensions: space, time and attributes. The spatial dimension is represented by regions and the indicators are various demographics measurements (GDP growth, elderly dependency rate, etc). Time is the data acquisition period. The scatter plot “bubble plot” is demonstrated to be an effective Flash-based time animation method, but integrated and linked with a choropleth map, histogram and a multivariate visualization method such as parallel coordinates, makes it even more useful. The GAV open architecture, handling of large datasets and integrated snapshot mechanism are other important extensions to this emerging animation technique. The spatial cognition for the time-linked views was evaluated by OECD, Statistics Sweden and SMHI and found to be both intuitive and innovative. The operators discovered important trends in all views.
eXplorer V3.5 now available
eXplorer V3 now operates with full functional and evaluated versions including the following new features:
- Categorical data is supported (for example, urban, rural etc)
- High resolution printing from map view (200, 400 dpi etc.)
- New panel layout
- Map layer architecture facilitating - Google map layer for better identifying geographic location - Map layer with political country borders - Pie chart layer - The user can turn on/off individual map layers and control opacity - Customized map layers can be added with Open eXplorer;
- Table Lens (smart histogram) method for exploring large tabular datasets using a “focus & context” method.
- Enhanced Parallel Axes (Profile Plot) for comparing profiles of regions (labeled regions and switch min/max on axes)
- Time Graph
- Explore external indicators together with preloaded indicators
- Storytelling mechanism (story panel, hyperlinks in metatext)
- Dynamic Colour Legend with embedded filter mechanism (class values based on percentiles calculation)
- Integrated publishing tool for Blogs, Wikis or Web pages
Links to available Statistics eXplorer applications:
Sweden eXplorer
Sweden eXplorer explores statistical data for Swedish municipalities and counties.
This municipality map of Sweden shows average characters vs. high education. (genomsnittliga betyg resp. högutbildade) produced in collaboration with Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting SKL. Maps and indicators for counties (län) and municipalities with or without Google map layer is available.
OECD Regional eXplorer
OECD countries have experienced a growing interest in regional development in recent years. The performance of regional economies and the effectiveness of regional policy help determine a nation’s growth and shape the measure of well-being across countries. For the past years the OECD has been studying regional disparities and development patterns in its member countries in order to evaluate innovative strategies and diffuse successful policies.
The OECD Regional database is a unique source of statistical information at sub-national level for all the OECD Countries. It contains yearly time-series for around 40 indicators on demography, economy and labour market opportunities, environment, social issues and innovation related activities for more than 1,700 regions of the OECD countries. Regions within each OECD country are classified on the basis of two territorial levels: the higher level (TL2) consists of 335 large regions while the lower level (TL3) is composed of 1,679 small regions. This classification, adopted in many countries in the design of regional policy, facilitates greater comparability of regions at the same territorial level. The OECD regional database is available on the Statistical Portal at the OECD website http://stats.oecd.org/OECDregionalstatistics/#story=1
OECD Factbook
OECD Factbook eXplorer with 256 preloaded time-related indicators for exploring OECD countries. The most comprehensive data source for exploring socio-economic statistics for OECD countries.
Below you find two versions: the OECD Factbook's official Web site and the new OECD Factbook V3.5 at our NCVA Web site. They use the same data source.
The image shows fertility rates vs. employment for women 1970-2006.
OECD Factbook eXplorer(world map) http://stats.oecd.org/oecdfactbook/
Göteborg eXplorer
Göteborg City is a close collaboration partner to NCVA with long experience in statistics visualization. For more information contact:
Jonas Andersson | Samhällsanalys & Statistik
Göteborg Stad
Swedish Zip Code Regions
Statistics Sweden has provided geographical borders and indicators for almost 10,000 Swedish zip code regions. The right figure shows indicator "purchase power". Indicators about population ages, education and housing is also available.
Eurostat eXplorer
NCVA is collaborating with Eurostat and the figure shows an indicator for NUTS3 "Authors of EPO patent applications, average 2004-2005. Number of investors per million inhabitants.
Page responsible:
mikael.jern@liu.se
Last updated: 2013-05-15
