Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Virtual/Visual Show and Tell session

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

One of the highlights of SciFoo for me was a talk by George Djorgovski from Caltech about understanding huge amounts of complex data. It was clear that several others in his audience had also devoted a lot of work to such questions, in diverse fields, so I volunteered to be the stone in stone soup, rounding up people and getting a space for a Show and Tell on great hacks for displaying complex data. Thanks to all who took part — I have been getting lots of feedback from people who really benefited from your talks. In far-too-short summary, in order of presentation:

Betsy Devine Subjective time as a factor in understanding complex data; using games and Second Life to get people to spend time engaging with your data.

John Cacioppo Displaying complex findings from social neuroscience about changes in social networks over time.

George Djorgovski Using the interactive 3D capabilities of Second Life to examine and share complex data from astrophysics.

Gary Flake Working with Pivot, an ambitious data-display tool from Microsoft Live Labs.

Richard Breiman Interacting with 3D information from CAT scans to (for example) detect polyps or simulate a complex operation before performing it.

Michael Weiss-Malik Using Google Earth tools to explore the Moon’s surface and interact with historic maps of different parts of it.

Rick Cavallaro Ways that Sportvision is adding computer-generated data such as the virtual first-down line to TV shows of sports events.

Ian Wright Teaching students about science by having them do experiments in Second Life to figure out that world’s laws of physics (somewhat different from ours!)

Arfon Smith New projects from the Galaxy Zoo websites creating new levels of feedback to users who are exploring the Moon and other astronomical objects.