Six subreddits you need to follow for data visualization

6. /r/wordcloud
This is a smaller sub, currently less than 500 followers. However, word clouds like those from wordle.net are often shared based on current events, and make great visuals for talks.

5. /r/Infographics
Just what the name implies. It has famously been said that "infographics are the reality TV of data visualization", but they still are very popular. You see infographics on TV, news websites, and most major media outlets. This subreddit has the most popular ones, often days before your friends send them to you on facebook over and over and over...

4. /r/geography
For all things geographical. Not strictly about dataviz, but this smaller subreddit often contains high quality user-submitted original content. If you're tired of the same maps from big media sources and want to see some unique geospatial analysis, check this one out.

3. /r/visualization
This is probably the most under-subscribed subreddit for visualization. Not just high quality images and videos, but lots of tutorials, tools, tips, and loads of original content. Everyone who loves dataviz should subscribe. right. now!

2. /r/MapPorn 
This is part of the SFW (safe for work) "porn" series of subreddits, where porn just really means "awesome images about this subject". Don't fret, there is nothing explicit here! What this subreddit does have is some of the most amazing maps anywhere on the internet. The sub is very strictly moderated, and encourages original content (both great things.) However, they only allow raw images, no blog posts, tutorials, etc... Still, this is one of my favorites, and I check it every day.

1. /r/DataIsBeautiful
This is the best sub on all of reddit in my opinion! Since it became a default sub it has grown from about 100k to almost 2 million subscribers, and it shows no signs of stopping. The moderators are all academics or dataviz professionals who work tirelessly to both create content and manage the flood of amazing user submissions. This is the most friendly place to share and find original content, just look for posts tagged with [OC]. You will also find viz from major outlets like 538, NYT, and others. Best of all, the comments are full of advice and experts, and fewer trolls than you'd expect. Maps, videos, animations, images... this sub has it all. Now go read, learn, and have your sense of data-driven wonder expanded!

How to make your PowerPoint Suck Less

A lot of data visualization is presented using PowerPoint. It's a common experience, you spend weeks working on a report, generate a bunch of graphs, and want (or need) to show them all off to your boss/team.

That's all fine and well, such as it is.  However, people commonly fall in to several deadly traps with PowerPoint.

1. Use Less Text

It might seem obvious to some, but the easiest mistake is to put too many words on the slide! REMOVE THEM! If your slide is loaded with words, people won't be listening to you talk while they read. 50 words per slide is too many. People can only remember a maximum of 1 idea per slide.

2. Save your graphs in high resolution

Your graph may be 3inches on your screen, but it will be 3 (or 30) feet on the wall. Make sure it is high quality!

3. Use good colors!

These colors are forbidden on a white background: lime, cyan, yellow, light orange, most greens. People cannot see them, and you will look like an idiot saying "oh gosh... you can't see this, but if you could...". Instead, use dark colors on a light background. Red, Blue, Dark Green are your best friends

4. Make your figures big

Words come from your mouth (see point #1 above), visuals come from the slides. Let the slides do their job and present good looking big graphics! Don't hide them, show them off!

5. Constrast is King

Along with using good colors, use big and thick symbols in each graph. Make sure words have lots of contrast. Remember, the projector will wash your figures out, make them bold!

The best free programming languages for data visualization

It used to be enough to just know a few tools like Excel and PowerPoint to put together reports and graphs. Now days it's not enough! You need to be able to make power and beautiful visualizations for big datasets!

Thankfully there are a bunch of amazing and free programming languages available. These languages are easy to learn, cost nothing, and can run on any computer (windows, mac, linux, whatever!)

Here are our top picks for 2014:

4. R

Most often associated with statistics, R is the best language for quickly doing simple regression, function fitting, statistical analysis or quick visualization. R is simple to download and install, and even comes with a built-in IDE  aka an interactive development environment, or in this case it's an interactive data environment!

3. ggplot

Imagine if all the default settings for making graphics and visualizations were actually good! That's what ggplot is. This is an add-on to R, but really is it's own beast!  Make plots that don't suck, use ggplot2!

2. Javascript

Javascript is rapidly becoming the best language for the internet. With amazing visualization packages like d3 that render graphics in your browser, it's easy to see why this is the fastest growing data viz language of 2014. The learning curve can be high, but if you master javascript then you can master it's cousin typescript that Microsoft is excited about! Many jobs are looking for javascript experience these days, so new data designers should invest some time getting familiar with this new standard.

1. Python

Python is probably the best all-around programming language to learn for lots of things. Data visualization is no exception. Python can make animated gifs, export movies, render high resolution graphics, all with a few simple commands to packages like matplotlib. Many famous data designers, scientists, and engineers use Python for their entire workflow. Imagine: data munging, cleaning, ingesting, analyzing, fitting, machine learning, and visualizing, all from within a single  and powerful dynamic programming language!

The best places to share data visualizations online

Many people who make data visualizations want to share them online. Sometimes they can even go viral!

If you're trying to build content, followers, revenue... or just trying to share neat graphs, you should be sharing your data visualizations online!

Here are our favorite places to find fresh and new data visualizations, graphs, charts, maps, and infographics:

7. Facebook

Social networks should be your first go-to place to promote your data visualization work! Facebook may not be the coolest social network these days, but it's the largest! Start a facebook page specifically for your data viz work, or post directly on your own wall.

6. Twitter

Twitter is still the hottest social network for sharing data visualizations. Be sure to use eye-catching hashtags for your projects, such as #dataviz

5. blogs!

Blogs are so 2007. However, many people still read them, and they can generate both revenue and street cred in the data viz world.
Tip: If you post graphs to your blog regularly you will get higher conversion rates from your readers!

4. plot.ly

This is a relatively new website that allows you to collaboratively make plots and graphs. Check out their gallery for some amazing examples of great data visualizations!

3. Many Eyes

This is the brain-child of IBM, and has been around for many years. Rumor is IBM is putting effort back in to Many Eyes again! Anyone can post graphs or data explorations on this site.

2. visual.ly

Visual.ly is the web's #1 place for infographics. Click through their massive library of amazing infographics, and say goodbye to hours of your free time! However, don't just limit yourself to sharing traditional infographics. Many people also post very complex graphs here as well.

1. reddit dataisbeautiful

The sub-reddit /r/dataisbeautiful is the best place to immediately get your data visualizations out to the public! The feedback you get here will make you a better data viz designer.
Tip: Many national papers and magazines watch this subreddit to look for hot new content to put on their websites! Posting to /r/dataisbeautiful can get you noticed by national news media!

Tip: Make multiple Twitter accounts using one gmail address

You should be sharing your data viz online! Twitter is the perfect place to share your data visualizations.

What if you need to make multiple accounts on Twitter,  but don't want to create a new email address for every account?

Thankfully Gmail has secret features that most people don't know about, which are perfect for just this scenario!

Using the + sign you can make as many dummy email accounts in Gmail as you wish using one actual email address!

For example, say your email is: johndoe@gmail.com
Any email addressed to johndoe+WHATEVER@gmail.com will come to your inbox!


Say you wanted to set a different email up for various Twitter accounts, you could set many unique email addresses:
johndoe+privatetwitter@gmail.com
johndoe+dataviztwitter@gmail.com

and so on!

Top Cities for Data Science in the US

You can be a data scientist or do data visualization in any city in America. However, some are better than others!

Here are DVA's top cities to be a data scientist in for 2014:

5. New York City, NY

Of course NYC has to be on our list. This is the cultural and financial hub of the world, and there are many opportunities for young researchers here. Brooklyn and Harlem are currently the hottest spots for startup companies. There's great food, people from all over the world, and lots of money flowing about. Go here to start a company in 2014!

4. Boston, MA

With Harvard and MIT next door there is talent and ideas bouncing all over this city. Boston also has a great sports scene, and tons of big industry. All this spells a need for data science and business analytics professionals!

3. Austin, TX

The home of SWSX, live music, and great BBQ! Austin is the coolest place in Texas, and often called "The Pale Blue Dot". Hipsters and academics call Austin home. Despite lots of heavy industry and oil in the area, this isn't your grandpa's Texas...

2. San Francisco, CA

Silicon Valley is the technology center of the universe. With companies like Google and Apple, and universities like Berkley and Stanford calling the Bay Area home, you have every reason to do data science in California! The weather is perfect, and so are the job opportunities. In 2014 there will be a need for tens of thousands of business intelligence and data science hires.

1. Seattle, WA

"The Emerald City" is home to Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, and Boeing. With a huge explosion of startup and data companies like Tableau, Seattle is truly making data science the Sexiest Job of 2014! Seattle is also one of the most beautiful cities in America.

The Top 3 Data Science Training Programs for PhD's

Scientists are abandoning academia in droves. Industry is going to reap the rewards of a publicly educated army of geniuses. Scientists are leaving academia to do data science

Lots of PhD scientists, post docs, fellows, and graduate students are realizing that academia is a sinking ship. There is no funding for science, a scientist often must submit 10 grants just to get funding for 1 or 2 years of work. Forget buying a home, paying off your debts, or having a stable job as an academic.

Academia is failing you, not the other way around.

The best place in industry for a scientist, a real PhD trained scientist, is the new field of Data Science. This can mean doing data visualization, research, data cleaning, scraping, business intelligence, database work, and machine learning... some of this you know from grad school, and some is probably new to you!

Don't Fret!! There are free programs that will train you to be a data scientist and get you a kickass real job. Oh, and you'll make a ton of money too!

Don't get scammed in to paying $16,000 for some junk program. A good program shouldn't cost money because companies pay these programs to find qualified researchers for them! They want to hire people like you, so big companies like Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Google, and Yammer are paying these scouting programs to do their recruiting for them. You are the product, but also reap the rewards! Here are our 3 favorite programs right now...

3.  Science 2 Data Science

http://www.s2ds.org
Based in London (UK), this is the perfect training program for scientists in England!

2. The Data Incubator

http://www.thedataincubator.com
A new program in New York (NYC), the Data Incubator is basically a copy of our #1 pick below. This 6 week bootcamp promises to put you in front of top technology companies in New York City, and land you a kickass job!

1. Insight Data Science Fellowship

http://insightdatascience.com
Insight has been around a few years now, and has succesfully trained dozens of PhDs. All of their fellows have gone on to make over $90,000 per year, working mostly in Silicon Valley. This is the best program in the USA for training PhDs in Data Science, and now has a location in New York. Hopefully Insight will bring the Data Science Fellowship to Boston and Seattle soon!