Ask HN: List of tools to create beautiful data visualizations

23 pointsX412 years ago10 comments

Hi,

I'm sure there are some amongst you who write beautiful blog posts like this http://kukuruku.co/hub/cpp/lock-free-stack-for-windows or create scientific papers containing wonderful visualizations of data. Would you please share with us the tools you use and possibly also the work you create with it?

e15ctr0n 12y

These are the top blogs I follow in the data visualization space:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

http://visual.ly/

http://www.thefunctionalart.com/

http://hbr.org/special-collections/insight/visualizing-data

http://chartporn.org/

http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/posts/

http://flowingdata.com/

http://datavisualization.ch/

http://visualization.geblogs.com/

No matter how the tools change with time, I am able to keep up to date with the field.

X4OP12y

Cool, I only knew two from that list. These sources are surely really useful to follow to keep up with the field. Thank you!

frewsxcv 12y

I'm working a JS 3D graph visualization library. Think Sigma.js, but 3D. You can see a fairly lame demo here:

http://froosky.rwell.org/graphosaurus/examples/eve/

and the source:

https://github.com/frewsxcv/graphosaurus/

Check the source on the examples page if you want to see the API thus far. While progress is being made, having other contributors (especially ones with WebGL, Three.js, or graphics backgrounds) definitely helps. Please please please let me know if you have any comments about anything related to the project. If you have any ideas for demo/example graphs, please share them! I'm getting tired of staring at the EVE Online universe :P

X4OP12y

This looks awesome! Great work and thanks for sharing!

minimaxir 12y

R + ggplot2 allows you to make aesthetically pleasing charts with minimal time and code. (and more importantly, it promotes good design without detracting from the purpose of the chart)

A couple visualizations I've done using 100% R + ggplot2:

http://i.imgur.com/WUcaoDm.png

http://i.imgur.com/rIfOCN1.png

X4OP12y

wow, these charts really look stylish! Good work :)

hashtree 12y

Incanter, similar to R but based upon Clojure: http://data-sorcery.org/contents/

Another good mention, in addition to D3, for client-side graphing is highcharts: http://www.highcharts.com/

ohashi 12y

http://selection.datavisualization.ch/

sb2nov 12y

I have seen D3js used for a lot of visualizations. http://d3js.org/