GEPhi Graph Visualization for Exploratory Data Analysis

This method was brought to my attention my a colleague.  We had looked at it some time ago and it has come back as a possible exploratory solution.

The Open Graph Viz Platform
" ... Gephi is an interactive visualization and exploration platform for all kinds of networks and complex systems, dynamic and hierarchical graphs .... 

Runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Gephi is open-source and free.

Gephi is a tool for people that have to explore and understand graphs. Like Photoshop but for data, the user interacts with the representation, manipulate the structures, shapes and colors to reveal hidden properties. The goal is to help data analysts to make hypothesis, intuitively discover patterns, isolate structure singularities or faults during data sourcing. It is a complementary tool to traditional statistics, as visual thinking with interactive interfaces is now recognized to facilitate reasoning. This is a software for Exploratory Data Analysis, a paradigm appeared in the Visual Analytics field of research.... " 

Visualization of Research Activities at EMC

In Innovation Excellence:  Using visualization to understand and improve categories of research activities.   This might have been very useful in our enterprise.  Points to an approach I had not hear of:

" ... EMC has dozens of university research partnerships worldwide. How do we dynamically visualize the current areas of exploration that are occurring across the globe at any given point in time? How can we determine which strategic research areas have strong coverage and which areas may have no coverage at all? These questions are currently answered through our use of the functionality provided within the Stanford Topic Modeling Toolbox. .... '

Visualization Books: Incomplete

The Economist looks at a number of information and data visualization books.  What they look at is good, but is very incomplete.  Largely based on infographics, and does not include the ability to interact with changing data.   When I see something that is called an 'infographic' or is clearly that, it screams to me that it is both incomplete and static.  Thus fundamentally wrong.   Lots new is out there today.  Worth a scan.