[wdmmg-dev] Antw.: Compare-o-Tron B

[Friedrich Lindenberg]

Hi Gregor,

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 12:47 PM, Gregor Aisch <mail at driven-by-data.net> wrote:
> Re-using the bubbles would be the easiest part, think. Petri-dish is easy if
> the numbers of bubbles stays in a reasonable range.

Thats an interesting statement, I do think we also need to plan for
the "unreasonable range" use case somehow. The "US defence vs. foreign
aid" thing, basically. One interesting pro feature for v2 btw would be
to group items in the browser, e.g. to be able to drag an drop one
bubble into another one ("I want all social welfare but thats 5 items,
so I'll manually stack them"). This also raises the need for
parent-child relationship detection once more, but for the initial
version I'd put that in the GIGO/User Error column.

> But I definitely also want other visualizations built in the first version
> of the compare-o-tron. Bubbles have some aesthetic value, especially when
> combined with good colors and icons, but they make it very hard to compare
> actual amounts. Therefore I strongly suggest adding some alternative views
> like a bar chart and a treemap and giving the user the possibility to change
> view at any time.

Yeah, bar charts would be good, while Treemaps IMO introduce the idea
of "a whole" that we need to get right then (i.e. have 60% of the
treemap gray, and then a 39% box for defence and a 1% box for aid). If
we do 1 vs. 1 bar charts (i.e. one bar with different color sections
and a line in the middle), we get the "planned vs actual spending" vis
half done at the same time. This is one is second on my very personal
todo list :-)

- Friedrich

> ----- Reply message -----
> Von: "Friedrich Lindenberg" <friedrich.lindenberg at okfn.org>
> An: <wdmmg-dev at lists.okfn.org>
> Betreff: [wdmmg-dev] Compare-o-Tron B
> Datum: Fr., Jul. 8, 2011 12:28
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I've had an idea of how to build the back-end components of #32, the
> Compare-o-Tron. It would essentially introduce another optional
> section in the mapping file but could be entirely handled in a plugin.
> Is anyone opposed to having such an extension on grounds other than
> "we have to talk more"?
>
> Gregor: how general are the bubbles? Given a list of the same form as
> normal drilldowns with an additional "drilldown_title" key for search,
> how hard would it be to randomly render a few and put them in a nice
> grouping (like cells on a petri dish?)
>
> - Friedrich
>
> Details:
>
> 1. Introduce another section in the mapping with the following format:
>
> "named_items": {
>    "cube_query": { ... }
>    "name_key": "some_dimension.label",
>    "color_key": "some_dimension.label",
>    "weight_factor": 0.5, # will be used to scale volume.
>    "default_color": "..."
> }
>
> (rinse, repeat for icons if needed)
>
> 2. Add an extension point to generate_views in the loader
>
> 3. Hook into this and generate a db.dataset_name.named_items
> collection with the named attributes and amount from the drilldown.
>
> 4. Query this collection via a custom controller.
>
> 5. Visualize as bubbles.
>
> --
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