How Deep Is Your Data? 🎶

    This week's assignment was to "deepen our skill set" and further our exploration of datasets and work on sites that manipulate data.

    I began with DataWrapper and started small by using one of their datasets, The Seven Top-Selling Electric Cars by name, price and range of miles...

    Since it was a simple set, I didn't make any alterations and I moved from there to seeing what the data looked like using different types of charts and settled on this one...

    Then I moved onto the map-creating function and played around a bit, attempting to create one with The States I Have Visited in the United States...

...but realized I'd been to almost all of them and it was going to get quite crowded.  So I switched to Countries I Have Visited...

    The map-making function is quite interesting and there are many ways to design and then annotate your map before publishing.

    I then went to RAWGraphics 2.0 and chose to work with their set, Orchestras By Musical Instrument.  This was an absolute blast...once I figured out some things.  Like, what does it mean to be CORS-enabled?  Apparently, Safari is NOT so I switched to Chrome and the site came to life.

    The dataset was not very large but it was grouped by Orchestra Type, Group (meaning "section"), Instrument and Number which gave me options.

    I wanted to narrow it down to only Classical Orchestras but couldn't figure out how to do that so I used all of the types.  Since most orchestras have a similar balance between sections, I knew that it wouldn't skew my chart too much to include all of them.

    I reviewed multiple types of charts, mapping them with different variables...

 until I hit on exactly what I wanted...

GORGEOUS!

    This chart immediately identifies for the viewer the 'weight' of different sections in an orchestra and then further divides it into instruments, with a revealing cursor that can identify the specific number of players.

    I was then able to construct a lesson plan based on this data which I'll describe in my next post.

~ J