Data viz in government & business

2025-01-21

Rick Gilmore

Prelude

Teutem & Acisu (2024)

Video as data viz

Denton, Asphaug, Emsenhuber, & Melikyan (2025)

Overview

Announcements

• Free access to newspapers

https://studentaffairs.psu.edu/involvement-student-life/student-services/student-news-readership-program

https://opair.psu.edu/data-summit/

Last time…

Semiotics of data visualization

Symbol or thing symbolized?

What did we uncover?

• Summary report

Today

Visualization in government & business

Goals

• Explore the landscape
• What types of visualizations?
• What types of data?
• Why visualize?

Data visualization in government

What data do governments visualize

• What data are collected?
• Primary sources
  • Bureau of the Census
  • Data.gov
  • Open Data PA: https://data.pa.gov
• Secondary sources
  • https://datausa.io/profile/geo/state-college-pa?redirect=true

Why do governments visualize data?

Data visualization in business

What data do not-for-profit businesses visualize?

• PSU Office of Planning, Assessment, and Institutional Research
• Our World in Data
• Gapminder
  • Dollar Street

Why do businesses visualize data?

Let’s explore

Exercise 02

• Exercise 02
• Google Sheet

Main points

• Governments collect & report on lots of data
• Non-profits collect varied types of data, and many visualize it
• For-profit business entities collect a ton of data, but most visualizations remain private

Next time

Visualization in art, sports, and journalism

Resources

References

Denton, C. A., Asphaug, E., Emsenhuber, A., & Melikyan, R. (2025). Capture of an ancient charon around pluto. Nature Geoscience, 18, 37–43. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01612-0

Teutem, S. van, & Acisu, T. (2024). Most international migrants don’t move very far from their home countries. Our World in Data. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/international-migrants-dont-move-far