Google Motion Charts

Most of us would consider ourselves to be fairly advanced users of PowerPoint and of making a point in a visually compelling way. But Hans Rosling takes data visualization to a whole new level. And now you can get access to the tools he developed though a Google app, called the Google Motion Chart

But first a bit of background: Hans Rosling is a Swede, originally set on a medical career, who then realized that his real passion lies in public health issues. He teaches at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and has started the “Gapminder Foundation.” He realized early on that reams and reams of data are available on a variety of topics in public health, but it was difficult to get audiences engaged in a compelling story. Take the question, for example, of whether life expectancy is linked to income levels (i.e. GDP per capita). It’s a challenge to cram data from 150 countries, over 200 years, into a single compelling chart. Yet this is exactly what Rosling did

If you run the “Play” button in the chart above, the circles representing each country move across the chart, and you can observe an evolution from the starting point (year 1800, at left) to the end point (year 2009, at right). Watch it on Rosling’s web site – it’s amazing when you see this the first time.

Rosling is actually quite famous, and has lectured at Davos and at TED, has advised Al Gore, and has also met with the Google founders. They were so impressed that they ended up buying the software and made it available on their site as a Google app. You can use it with your own data, but will need some knowledge of Java programming.

A simpler alternative is to use it in Excel with a macro. The following link to a blog by S Anand provides an example (or you can also e-mail me at rene.limacher@a-connect.com).

Talk about stepping up your presentation skills!

So, what are Motion Charts?

Motion Charts provide a multi-dimensional, over-time analysis of the data in your report. So, if you click Visualize from the Keywords report, each dot will represent one of your keywords. If you click Visualize from the Referrals report, each dot will represent a referral. By selecting metrics to be represented on the X and Y axis and by the size and color of the dots, you plot each dot in four dimensions. Press Play or drag the slider at the bottom of the chart, and you'll see the data change over time, thereby adding Time as the fifth dimension.