OUseful.Info, the blog…

Somehow earlier today I managed to pop open a tab in browser pointing to the HEFCE funding allocation spreadsheets for 2009/2010 (maybe from twitter? It’s been one of those days where losing track has been the norm!): HEFCE Core funding/operation (Allocation of funds, Recurrent grants for 2009-10).

So I thought, like you do, how much nivcer it would have been if they’d published the data in visualisation environment… So here’s the HEI data, republished in some Many Eyes Wikified pages:

• Table 1
• Table 2
• Table 3

And here are some sample interactive visualisations you can use to explore the data (click through to get to the actual interactive demo):

There’s a full list of demo thumbnails available on this Wikified page: HEFCE Viz Test.

Feel free to create your own pages/discussion around the charts (it is a wiki, after all).

In order to pull the data in to your own wiki page, use the following “data include” commands in your wiki page (one for each visualisation; the visualisation page name musn’t contain any spaces (I think??)):

• Table 1: {{ousefulTestboard/HEFCE_Funding1test:MyVizPage1}} – creates a placeholder for a new visualisation page titled “MyVizPage1″, using data from Table 1, which lives at http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/wikified/ousefulTestboard/HEFCE_Funding1test;
• {{ousefulTestboard/HEFCEData2:MyVizPage2}}
• {{ousefulTestboard/HEFCEDATA3:MyVizPage3}}

You’ll notice I was a little careless in naming the three data pages, which consequently have inconsistent URIs.

Enjoy! … and don’t forget, you can create your own wiki pages using the data, and add text/discussion into them too.