This is my first "sphere reflecting [crimes] over a checkered [with a 
grid of city streets] plane" posting.

PinMaps are a relatively common technique where investigators and 
criminologists place pins in maps to help visualize where crimes occur.
Here, each pin represents a crime event, where the height of the pin
represents the time-of-day that the crime occurred.  I oriented all
the pins to face the camera, and angled them slightly so multiple events 
at the exact same location can be seen.

      Ron

Any feedback / suggestions appreciated.  I'm clearly not shooting for 
photorealism here - but any ideas about making the data easier to 
visualize would be much appreciated.

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Download 'good6b_pinmap_with_icons.png.jpg' (87 KB)

Preview of image 'good6b_pinmap_with_icons.png.jpg'

Another crime visualization.

In this case using blobs to make the highest concentration areas of 
crime easily visible by making it look like blood - or strawberry
jelly :) - spilled on the map.


Again, advice on how to better convey information or visualize the data 
would be appreciated.

In particular, I want to make the volume of a blob roughly proportional 
to the number or severity of events that occurred inside it; but with 
the blob parameters I can't seem to find an easy way to make 100 events 
have a 10x bigger blob than 10 events without 1x blobs vanishing.  Maybe 
I need a low threshold or something?  I'm not sure.


[PS: the crime data is fake, so just because you see stuff on your house
doesn't mean you should feel in danger]

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Yet another technique.

In this case each block represents a crime event and the way they stack 
up makes it very easy to see which areas have the most crimes.

The second example uses no lights but "glowing" (ambient) blocks so the 
lighter colored areas of the map are the more dangerous.

Comments about which of the techniques (pins, blobs, or blocks) make the 
data easiest to visualize are appreciated - as would be any ideas 
regarding other things I might try.

   Thanks in advance.

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Attachments:
Download 'good8_hotblocks_trends.png.jpg' (76 KB) Download 'lighting_exp_blocks.png.jpg' (54 KB)

Preview of image 'good8_hotblocks_trends.png.jpg'

Preview of image 'lighting_exp_blocks.png.jpg'

I definitly love the bloody one !
One thing, though : couldn't you fing a map with a better resolution (or 
maybe it is just the jpg compression) ? I think it spoils a bit the 
whole image. But the idea is great great great ! 


-- 
"Je ne deteste que les bourreaux" -- Albert Camus

Pour m'ecrire un mail, veuillez retirer PASDEPUB de mon adresse ;)

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Cool!
The "chupa chups" one is my preferred.
How about using little or big gangsters?
;-)
Paolo

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Ron Mayer <rm_### [at] cheapcomplexdevicescom> wrote:

> Comments about which of the techniques (pins, blobs, or blocks) make the
> data easiest to visualize are appreciated - as would be any ideas
> regarding other things I might try.
>
>    Thanks in advance.

I personally think that the lighted boxes gives me the best picture of the
data. The main problem with it is that the map is now very difficult to
see. You might want to consider mapping (heh) the colors to a
higher-contrast scheme in your map image. Here is a (pretty poor, but
useful) example I whipped up in Photoshop, using a Yahoo map.

 - dan B hentschel

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Attachments:
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Preview of image 'contrast-mapping.png'

One more question - in my radiosity one (the second image with blocks) I 
get all these random circles about an inch in diameter up on the top of 
the map where I thought it would be dark.

Are those bad radiosity settings?  Anyone able to guess in whicch way 
they were wrong?


Ron Mayer wrote:
> Yet another technique.
> 
> In this case each block represents a crime event and the way they stack 
> up makes it very easy to see which areas have the most crimes.
> 
> The second example uses no lights but "glowing" (ambient) blocks so the 
> lighter colored areas of the map are the more dangerous.
> 
> Comments about which of the techniques (pins, blobs, or blocks) make the 
> data easiest to visualize are appreciated - as would be any ideas 
> regarding other things I might try.
> 
>   Thanks in advance.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

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Noe Falzon wrote:
> I definitly love the bloody one !
> One thing, though : couldn't you fing a map with a better resolution (or 
> maybe it is just the jpg compression) ? I think it spoils a bit the 
> whole image. But the idea is great great great ! 

I see what you're saying, and I think it's a combination of both effects 
that are affecting the image.

Regarding the resolution of the map, this flyover animation has a much 
higher-res map:
   http://maps.forensiclogic.com/sac_flyover.wmv
but the .wmv compression artifacts were even worse than the .jpg 
artifacts in the still pictures I posted.    In larger .png images the 
cubes look much sharper and easy to recognise as well - but at least for 
a first pass I wanted to spare people the bandwidth.  Hopefully I'll 
incorporate people's suggestions and post a less compressed version of 
whatever the best approach might be.

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