Shades of my Feb. 22, 2011 posting, No! A picture is not worth 1,000 words! There’s a July 26, 2012 news item on ScienceDaily titled, Picture worth more than a thousand numbers:: New Data Visualization Tool Helps Find the ‘Unknown Unknowns’,

A research team at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) has developed a software tool that enables users to perform in-depth analysis of modeling and simulation data, then visualize the results on-screen. The new data analysis and visualization tool offers improved ease of use compared to similar tools, the researchers say, and could be readily adapted for use with existing data sets in a variety of disciplines.

…

“Data visualization supports data analysis by letting users pose data-related questions onscreen with ease and then view the answers in ways that go far beyond ordinary table formats,” said Edward Clarkson, a GTRI research scientist who is leading the data visualization work. “A picture can be worth a thousand numbers, because visualizing data in a graph allows us to see patterns that might not be apparent from purely numerical results.”

Here’s an example of what the tool can help researchers find,

Clarkson recently demonstrated the capabilities of the data analysis and visualization tool using an existing database: baseball statistics. This particular demonstration involved the use of 40 different data filters available onscreen; the TMT [Test Matrix Tool] system allows for 300 or more such filters.

In a random query of the 46,000 National League players from the past, an onscreen graph unexpectedly revealed an interesting anomaly during the demonstration. The data indicate that players’ height and weight increased in every past decade except the 1920s and 1930s, when it stayed inexplicably flat.

“That’s the beauty of this kind of tool — it can find the unknown unknowns,” Clarkson observed. “Details show up in graphs that aren’t obvious when you’re looking at just the numbers.”

I’m not sure I find that statistic to be a compelling example of an ‘unknown unknown’  that said I do find this trend toward visualizing data is getting more pronounced. I have another recent item on data visualization in my July 12, 2012 posting of the DAVinCI system at Rice University.

As for my 2011 posting on words and images, that too was about data visualization. I was pointing out the glibness of the saying, ‘A picture is worth a 1000 words.’  Sometimes, it isn’t. The trick lies in making the most effective choice for the situation.

You can find the July 26 (?), 2012 case study (which originated the news item) on the Georgia Tech Research Institute website.