Adventures in the world of visualization

In the past few days I've been able to squeeze a few hours out of my schedule to play with various visualization tools. I've tried Plot.ly, and I loved it. I hope that the developers behind this tool will keep improving it in the future. Those of us who would want to code just to create silly video games will be very thankful. Next on my list: Lyra and Graf.ly.

I've also come back to R and ggplot2 after an hiatus devoted to D3.js, with the help of Scott Murray's Interactive Data Visualization for the Web and Nick Qi Zhu's Data Visualization With D3.js Cookbook. I'm reading Winston Chang's R Graphics Cookbook and wondering why anyone would choose any other language to analyze data and design graphics (forgive me, Mike Bostock.) R, when paired with ggplot2, is just so powerful and intuitive! Moreover, a library called rCharts seems to let you translate your R graphics to Javascript. I should give that a try, too.

UPDATE: Plot.ly's Matt Sundquist has just told me that they are developing a ggplot2 wrapper. Here's a walk through.

(In case you're curious about the screenshots below, they are related to a little project that involves exploring the quality and attainment levels of public schools in Miami-Dade county. Let's see what I can come up with.)