zk/diary/2010-12-07-19:24:40.md

%title 2010-12-07 19:24:40
%date Two New Visualizations
:blog:fossil:diary:

It's been a busy few days at home and work.  Work itself was really slow, so I started working on one large visualization project and wound up completing another smaller one in the meantime.  I may need to take a break from protovis for a little while, as I've been working for several days straight on these projects.

The smaller of the two projects was a very fast (about two hours) visualization of data regarding a disturbing punishment discrepancy between heterosexual/non-heterosexual teens by both the justice system and schools.  You can <a href="http://vis.mjs-svc.com/lgbsanction/">see in the vis</a> that, in some cases, non-heterosexual teens can be two to three times as likely to be punished by schools or police.  Some reasons for this are debated in the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/06/AR2010120600035.html">original article</a> that was pointed out to me.  The comments section on the article is rather distressing, I should warn.

The second, larger project has taken up most of my energy over the past few days.  A friend pointed me toward the results of the <a href="http://www.klisoura.com/furrypoll.php">Furry Survey</a>, which I hadn't seen before.  The furry community differs from society at large in several very important demographic areas, from gender to sexual orientation (or at least openness regarding the same), to mean age.  With these important differences, I felt that a series of visualizations was almost necessary.  I've pulled those together into a <a href="http://vis.mjs-svc.com/sf/">dashboard</a> that displays each visualization in miniature (not just thumbnails - the visualizations are reconstructed in miniature within the dashboard).  Check it out and find out some neat things about the furry fandom.  If you don't know what furries are... well, Google carefully.