Monday, March 11, 2013

Powerful Visual Analytics Tool, Jigsaw, Now Available Free For Download!

John Stasko, and the programming geniuses at Georgia Tech, have finally released their powerful and recently updated visual analysis software, Jigsaw, into the wild.

For those of you who just want the software now, click here to go to John's newly updated website.
It has been a while since I have looked at Jigsaw.  I examined it first back in 2007 (here and here) and we last used it in a project in 2009 (here).  Back then, it was an extremely good product for a fairly narrowly focused type of analytic work.

Today, though, it appears to be a much easier to use and more general purpose type of analytic software.  I was especially blown away by the use cases demonstrated in the video below.  The video is a little long but worth it if you don't know a lot about the state of the art in visual analytics.

I am also particularly impressed with the growing list of publications assessing the software's validity and the video tutorials to help new users get started.

If you are interested in new ideas and new tools for visualizing the results of your analysis -- particularly free ones -- I strongly recommend you check Jigsaw out!


2 comments:

Jay Ross said...

Professor,

I'm having trouble installing and running this program on my Windows computer. Are there any troubleshooting tips or is there any advice you can offer?

Jay Ross

Kristan J. Wheaton said...

Jay,

I would send a note to John Stasko. Just click on the link in the article. He has been very helpful in the past.

Kris