Data Points: First look by Nathan Yau.
From the post:
For the past year, I’ve been working on Data Points: Visualization that Means Something, and you can pre-order it now.
Visualization has grown a lot in the 5-something years I’ve written for FlowingData. It’s not just a tool for analysis anymore. Visualization is a way to express data, and it comes in the form of information graphics, entertainment, everyday interfaces, data art, and yeah, tools, too. Your approach to data and visualization changes based on application.
But even with all these (awesome) new applications, there’s a constant across all of them: the data.
Data Points starts here, and takes you through the process of understanding data, representing it, exploring it, and designing for different applications. Whereas Visualize This was about getting your feet wet with lots of code examples, Data Points is code-independent and is a perfect complement that helps you understand and allow others to understand data better, which is sorta the whole point.
Nathan’s posts on visualizations, by himself and others, have been a source of high quality content that I cite often.
Take the time to pre-order a copy of Data Points.
Time will go slowly between now and the ship date for Data Points but that’s will be true if you wait for the release or pre-order.