Popular Vector is a 3D data visualization project based on transaction records from Seattle Public Library (SPL). This is a study that experiments how social media tools interpret book titles from author, such as Noam Chomsky. This idea can be further implemented to interpret daily news headlines that can provide audience with different digest of information.

There are 21 books from Chomsky used in the data visualization. Each book title is used as filter when parsing data from the SPL’s database, and further used to query recent news title from Google News API.

The dimension in this 3D data visualization is explained as the following:
z-axis : time, 2006 – 2010
y-axis : book titles in chronicle order, 1957 – 2010
x-axis : the transaction count at SPL is represented in red, the checkout duration is represented in blue

The most interesting finding, as shown in the following figures, is how Google News API interprets these book titles, namely, the query results from Google News API reveals relevant/irrelevant meaning to these book titles, for example, Figure 2. and Figure 4.

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

Reference

- M259 Visualizing Information
- Seattle Public Library
- Processing
- Noam Chomsky