04/10/23 © The University of Sheffield

In’t Maps Brilliant: Understanding Data

Through Visualisation

Dr Daniel VickersLecturer in Social and Spatial InequalitiesDepartment of GeographyUniversity of Sheffield

OACUG Seminar, Royal Statistical Society, London, 15th September 2009

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Contents

• Thinking of Numbers in a Different Way

• Bringing Numbers to Life

• Adding Place to Data

• Taking the Place out Again

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Thinking of Numbers in a Different Way• Numbers without context ≈0

• Relative positions can be more important than values

• Relative positions without values ≈0

• Identifying the BIG numbers

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OAC Recap• Puts all 223,060 UK Census OAs into groups based on social

characteristics

• Hierarchy of 7, 21 and 52 groups

• 1: Blue Collar Communities,

• 2: City Living,

• 3: Countryside,

• 4: Prospering Suburbs,

• 5: Constrained by Circumstances,

• 6: Typical Traits,

• 7: Multicultural.

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Using statistics to understand a complex world

• Understanding = Knowledge

Another 223,030 rows here

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Bringing Numbers to Life

I Live in a Prospering Suburb

I have not got a clue what that means

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1: Blue Collar Communities

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2: City Living

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3: Countryside

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4: Prospering Suburbs

Oh, I see

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5: Constrained by Circumstances

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6: Typical Traits

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7: Multicultural

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Alternative variable profiles by super-group: Flats (All)

0

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7

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That looks like our street!

Yes, but these don’t

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Yes, and using, different things to visualise them helps us understand

So we can use numbers to understand our neighbourhoods

And maps can add to

our understandi

ng even more!

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Adding Place to Data

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Adding Place to Data

The Dog was right!

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12% of the people

What a lot of Green

90% of the area

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Taking the Place out Again….but

increasing our understanding12% of the people = 12% of the area

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Making Maps Brilliant

• data + context + visualisation = Brilliant!

• areaclassification.org.uk

• D.vickers@sheffield.ac.uk

• shef.ac.uk/sasiAhh! A talking Dog