A Forty Day Visual Feast

Have you ever seen a visualization of a data set, process, or phenomenon that took your breath away because it effectively explained a difficult to understand concept? The Forty Day Visual Feast Project (FDVFP) will support the creation of forty exciting visualizations that are designed to inspire and educate both scientists and artists. Upon its completion, the FDVFP will showcase forty images, a description of the steps that you can take to construct them for yourself, and a commentary on their strengths and weaknesses. The FDVFP site will include an informative page for each visualization and a beautiful wall sized poster highlighting each of the designs.

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The FDVFP needs your help in order to complete these final deliverables! To this end, we invite you to submit a portfolio containing up to five high quality visualizations that are each accompanied by a description of the steps needed to construct the image and a retrospective on the process of creating the visualization. In consultation with a panel of experts from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, the FDVFP will award cash prizes for the first, second, third, fourth, and honorable mention submissions.

Are you ready to create your own information visualization in an attempt to win one of the prizes? The FDVFP suggests that you use free and open source tools to create diagrams that you will allow us to release under a Creative Commons license. As you construct your figures, you may want to consider using tools such GraphViz, Sage, Gnuplot, the R language, and/or one of a host of other useful systems. Even if you are not interested in producing your own visualization, you can still contact the FDVFP coordinator and request to join the review panel. You are also invited to attend the free public lectures that the FDVFP will host at Allegheny College. Are you interested in learning more? If yes, then please join the Google Group for the Forty Day Visual Feast! We will use this group to send updates about all aspects of the FDVFP.