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June 16, 2008
PubMed Faceoff
Back in the 1970s Herman Chernoff experimented with combining facial features to represent multivariate data; more data, bigger nose, for example.
Now fast-forward to 2008 and meet Euan Adie, web-developer with Nature Publishing Group. He has taken Chernoff's ideas, applied them to PubMed search results and created a mock-up called "PubMed Faceoff."
The age of the face represents the age of the article. The height of the eyebrows is the journal impact factor. A frown means the article wasn't cited as much as expected, while a smile means it was cited more than expected. The results are crude but you get the idea. If you could come up with an advanced search with more variables and could sort your results by facial features this could actually work. It really simplifies your search results based on those criteria. If you see a happy face with high eyebrows grinning at you that would tell you the article was highly cited and published in a high impact journal. If the face was young it would be a recent article. Simple and to the point. I like it but put some hair on the heads of those faces!
Posted by swortman at June 16, 2008 04:47 PM