no doubt you’ve seen pictures of the presidential candidates’ speeches lately, laid out attractively in word clumps. these text ‘clouds’ aren’t new, but this particular visualization technique has really caught on lately, especially with the free tool, wordle. here’s an example of barack obama’s acceptance speech, wordle-style:
what’s nice about the tool is that when you see data like this presented visually, you think about it differently than if you were just reading a transcript of the speech. the creator of wordle, many eyes, has other visualization tools for you to play around with at their site. you may use existing data or upload your own (if you upload your own data, please read the terms of service carefully).
here’s a nice visualization of u.s. active physicians, by state.
