Visualization data gathering for learning

Question

Hi,

I'm just starting to take an interest in visualization and I'd like to know where I can get my hands on some data, preferably real world, to see what queries and graphics I can draw from it. Its more of a personal exercise to create some pretty looking representations of that data.

After seeing this I wondered where the data came from and what else could be done from Wikipedia. Is there anyway I can obtain data from say, wikipedia?

Also, could anyone recommend any good books? I don't trust the user reviews on the amazon website :-)

Answer 1

You can download the raw Wikipedia data from http://download.wikimedia.org. There are many different views of the data available. The English Wikipedia is by far the largest database, and there isn't a current full dump available, but one is in progress. It will probably take months to finish and be available for download.

The most recent one was 18 GB compressed, which uncompressed to something like 2.5 TB.

A fantastic book is The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte.