Scientific data visualizer, anyone???!?!
Does anyone know of a decent piece of software for visualizing data?
Specifically, I am generating somewhere between 2 and 10 data records per second where each record contains samples in several different units; quantities (some in the millions, some in the 10s), absolute counts, percentage, deltas from previous sample, etc…
I just want draw very nice graphs of the data. 2D or 3D doesn’t matter. Effective and flexible presentation does. Ideally, I would like to be able to merge two sets of data into a single graph to see how the two compare.
Any suggestions?
Update: Thank you to everyone who responded!
I had a poke at jfreechart. Looks fairly promising, but requires a bunch of Java coding. R and gnuplot both looked fairly promising, but I didn’t dive terribly deep.
This morning, a friend mentioned this post and Wolfram’s Mathematica came up. Can’t believe I didn’t remember Mathematica! I used it off and on from 1989 through about 1994 or 1995. Love it.
I gained access to Mathematica for a half a day and was able to solve my visualization problem! Though, I have to ask: What the hell happened in the 10 years since I last used Mathematica?!?!?!??!! It is vastly more powerful than it was, but — damn — the fonts and display are all jagged and nasty. I remember Mathematica notebooks being beautiful. Of course, that was Display PostScript on a NeXT box.
I also ran into Hobo Data Loggers at MacWorld and their software looked promising. I gave it a try as it could import data from external sources. Worked relatively well, but didn’t offer enough control over the presentation. However, if I needed to instrument something in the real world, I would definitely consider using their stuff.
January 11th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
This probably isn’t exactly what you think of when saying “very nice graphs”, but if you have to do any statistical computation take a look at .
I’ve been looking for something like that bundled up in a nice Cocoa app for a long time, but it seems there is none. Sounds like a project for the copious free time…;)
January 11th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Great. Totally messed up the link, what a day…
Here it is in plain text: http://www.r-project.org
January 11th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
R can take care of that for you with a pretty shallow learning curve and if you want to get more sophisticated I’m sure you can find something appropriate among the 700 or so packages available on CRAN.
January 11th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Personally, I’ve only really used gnuplot and its python bindings – always been very happy.
Other answers might be found on http://www.macresearch.org/category/reviews
including this nice-looking OS X tool: http://www.visualdatatools.com/DataPlot/index.html
Also see comments on ‘ask ET’, Edward Tufte’s site: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1
January 11th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Hello bbum,
I know it is not specifically what you are looking for (i.e. software) but I thought it was on-topic and pretty cool:
http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html
January 11th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/
January 11th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
I will second the suggestion of R plus gnuplot
January 11th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
I second the recommendation for R, it is very good, and there are python bindings for it as well, albeit a but clumsy:
http://rpy.sourceforge.net/
Second, I have not tried them, but there is both a stand alone app and api that are cocoa friendly
http://www.vvi.com/products/index.html
Third – get Apple to open up the api to Grapher.app – a Grapher view in IB would be nice…
January 11th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
I’ve looked at Aabel (http://www.gigawiz.com/) in the past and found it to be quite nice. The bigger problem is typically how many records you are trying to visualize at the same time.
January 11th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
I use DataTank heavily for 2D and 3D visualization of large datasets, and it has an open-source library you can use to write plugins for custom data formats. For 1D plots I’ve been using DataPlot, also by . The developer is very responsive to feature requests (and considers poor performance a bug), and I’ve been very happy with his software. Igor Pro is also very good.
January 12th, 2007 at 1:27 am
If you’ve got a budget, look at MATLAB. For free, consider Matplotlib, a python library that tries to mimic MATLAB syntax. The Matplotlib screenshots should help you quickly decide whether to invest your time.
January 12th, 2007 at 4:16 am
As a free software alternative to MATLAB, you might want to look at .
January 12th, 2007 at 4:17 am
Aargh.. As a free software alternative to MATLAB, you might want to look at http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/ .
January 12th, 2007 at 4:27 am
Depending on what you’re doing with your data – you might want to look at RRDTool (http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/) or the Java version – JRobin (http://www.jrobin.org/index.php/Main_Page)
January 12th, 2007 at 5:13 am
Need realtime? If not, gnuplot + Aquaterm are available from your favourite ports/packaging system.
January 12th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Ah, to have MacSpin back. But the last version I could find was still 68K and not even 32-bit clean.
January 12th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Depending on the size of your dataset Chartsmith might work. There is an Applescript interface that folks use to do automated charting.
http://www.blacksmith.com
January 13th, 2007 at 7:31 am
My problem with Mathematica is their licensing. I had a valid copy for many years and it is not cheap by any means. I never could really use it because of the license and DRM. See, every time I needed it I needed it “right then” and that was usually on a weekend or at night. Every single time the DRM keep me from using it. Eventually we dropped upgrading and went elsewhere. Last year my boss had exactly the same problem with a copy he bought for his son who was in college.
What a sad example of DRM and how it can make a product worthless.