Living in the information age has lots of exciting benefits and challenges. I like to think that working with bits, which are the basic building blocks of digital information, is a lot more fun than building with atoms, relics of the past industrial age. One of the challenges with so many bits is how to see them all? An exciting branch of computer science is starting to gain much attention in the business word. It’s called Data Visualization and its primary goal is to communicate information clearly and effectively through graphical means.

Last week I was pleased to have one of my former students, Sam Batterman, speak to my computer science students about this topic. Sam is a data visualization evangelist @ Microsoft. He is has been working with health care companies to help them make huge decisions about the future our our health care system through the use of data visualization techniques (another great example of the use of computation thinking skills in the 21st century). An interesting side note is that Sam’s new sci-fi novel (WayBack) is the result of his realization that no matter how much data you have to visualize, your presuppositions have a huge impact on your interpretation.

We’ll I just ran across a very fun application of data visualization that I think everyone can understand. It deals with word frequency analysis – a fancy term for “how many times does each word occur within a body of text?” I actually give my freshmen bit-builders an assignment in which they have to build a program which reads in a large text file of words and then tell how many times each word occurs. Well after finding this DV applicaiton, I think I’ll be modifying the assignment!

Here are couple examples of this technique taken from the word frequency dv website.

These were generated from various sources of text – one of my computer science classes, my personal blogspace and my company’s blogspace .

In the past, the key to making good decisions is to have good information. But if you have so much information that you can’t absorb it then you will likely not be able to make good decisions. You need a company like Worthwhile help you make sense out of the bits. That’s why we love working in the bit business.

For more of my blogs on the world of bits, just put in “bits” in my blog’s search engine.

One of the blessings I experience as a professor of computer science and owner of a bit building business, is the opportunity to allow my students to experience a taste of the business world through The Worthwhile Company. I like to call this the “comingling of academic and business bits”.  I first saw the term “comingling of bits” in Negroponte’s Being Digital where he does an outstanding job of helping everyone understand the differences between the bit-based world and the atom-based world.

Last week I had my senior computer science and information technology students go on a tour of Worthwhile. I purposefully avoid being there so that they can see the company from a different perspective. They hear it from me for four years so its nice for them to hear a different perspective. I find its sort of like parenting – as parents we have seen the benefits derived when our children hear the stuff we’ve been trying to instill in their hearts from someone else.

Here are some excerpts from the feedback I received from my students concerning the Worthwhile Tour. I share them because I believe Worthwhile is an excellent instantiation of the class  BitBuildingCompany! (sorry, can’t resist a little C++ lingo)

• Despite the late hour of Monday’s tour (in terms of typical business hours), the first thing I noticed upon my arrival at Worthwhile was the presentation provided by Beth Honshell.  As a developer, it is not my nature to think about the way a business presents itself, but when clients come, first impressions really do make a difference.  Specifically, my “first impression” of Worthwhile headquarters was not the refreshments – it was the professionalism of the environment.  The building was extremely well-kept, and the big screen on the wall was immediately noticed.
• From the moment we entered the door, the first impression we had of Worthwhile was excellent. The staff was cheerful and friendly, the lobby was clean and orderly, and the snacks were good. It was a good reminder on the importance of first impressions, and it was clear that Mrs. Honshell was an expert in that field.
• My first impression of Worthwhile was given to me by none other than the Director of First Impressions herself. I am familiar with the concept of placing someone in charge of ensuring  that guest have a friendly and impressive first impression, but I’d never quite seen how useful it would be in a software development firm. Imagining myself as a non-tech oriented client, it was clear how comforting a warm friendly welcome would be.
• If I were a client choosing between two software development firms, that good reception would be a definite factor in how I viewed each firm and ultimately my decision of which firm to hire.
• My most prominent takeaways were two: the importance of first impressions and atmosphere, and the skill with which The Worthwhile Company presented both of these.
• The next insight I gained was that the clients are not the only non-tech oriented people a developer will have to interact with.
• Developers should be prepared to communicate with, at the very least, user interface designers that are not well versed in technical computer jargon.
• The burden is on the developer to become familiar with the jargon of non-programmers in order to be effective in an organization.
• I was pleased to see biometric security in use in the fingerprint reader.  Biometric security is not just a research topic but is actually being used to protect multi-million dollar data centers.
• My favorite part was hearing from David Ruse with how he is involved in every step of the production, from the beginning when they are interviewing the client to when the final testing is done before deployment.

This tour helps me accomplish one of my teaching goals of helping my students bridge the gap between the academic world of bits and the business world of bits. It is most encouraging when the start to “get it”.