iSENSE Tutorials 

We have added three video tutorials to help you learn how to use iSENSE. Please click the links below to view these tutorials:

http://isenseproject.org/tutorials/11

http://isenseproject.org/tutorials/12

http://isenseproject.org/tutorials/13

Setting Defaults for Visualizations

You can now set default visualization settings to best suit displaying data for a project you own. For example, if data for a project is best displayed on a bar visualization with a number field like temperature on the y axis, you can make this configuration your default for this project's bar visualizations. Every time you visualize data on a bar visualization for this project, temperature will be on the y axis. You can default any visualization setting, such as group by, analysis types, bin size, and so on, on the map, timeline, scatter, bar, histogram, pie, and table visualizations.

Important Note: Group selection (the checkboxes below 'Group By') will not be defaulted.

The control to set defaults for a visualization is in the visualization toolbar as shown below.

Searching for Projects by Project Number

In addition to searching for projects by keyword(s), you can now search for a specific project by its project number. A project’s number can be found on the project’s page under the title and owner as shown below.

If you would like to search for a specific project, go the projects' search bar and type in that project’s number. Search will return one and only one result, and that result will be the project with that project number.

Adding YouTube Videos to Project Descriptions

This release also offers bug fixes for the table visualizations and a few UI changes for projects and visualizations.

The iSENSE team has released v5.8 and is excited to introduce the following new features:

Pie Charts

Pie charts offer another “delicious” way to visualize and analyze your data.

Configurable Floating Point Precision for Visualizations

With configurable floating point precision, you can control the precision of your data to make bar and summary visualizations more readable. For example, 2.349874 will appear as 2.35 if you set your project's floating point precision to be 2.

Four is the default number of decimal points, but you can configure precision in a project’s settings. To access a project’s settings, go to the project page, and click the Edit button as shown below.

On the project's settings page, enter a number into the precision input box to set the project's floating point precision.

Better Bin Sizing Controls on Histogram Visualization

Bin sizing controls have been improved to make visualizing data on histograms a more seamless experience. To increase the bin size on a histogram visualization, move the slider to the right. To decrease the bin size, move the slider to the left. You can also manually set the bin size by entering a number into the manual input box.

... and more!

In addition to these wonderful new features, this release offers new bugs fixes for regression tools, bar chart sorting, and field matching as well as UI tweaks on the embedded visualization pages.

The iSENSE team was down at the 2014 USA Science and Engineering Festival in washington DC. We met a lot of interesting people and got to collect some cool data. We estimated pi. We determined the probabilities behind a plinko board. We even figured out where different eye colors come from .

We hope that you all enjoyed our booth and that you are looking forward to working with iSENSE. If you have any questions please contact us at isenseproject@gmail.com

(we dont have the photo from this year yet, so this is last time) Left to right back to front: Melinda Willis, Hassan Mckusick, Chris Adoretti, James Dalphond, Mike McGuinness, Alan Rosenthal, Ivan Rudnicki, Evana Gizzi, Chris Granz, Michelle Scribner-MacLean, Fred Martin

The iSENSE web development team is committed to delivering new features, fixing bugs, and tweaking the user interface to ensure you get the most out of iSENSE. This release touches on all those points.

Sorting data sets by contributor keys

Now, you can sort data sets by contributor keys. A key will appear next to all data sets contributed with a contributor key as shown below.

The letter on the key icon corresponds to a specific key, which you can view in the drop down menu. In the example below, all data sets contributed with the C Block Biology key are labeled A, and all data sets contributed with the D Block Biology key are labeled B.

Using the drop down menu, you select and visualize data sets contributed with specific contributor keys.

This feature is perfect if you want to analyze specific groups of data sets. For example, a teacher conducting an experiment with his or her C Block Biology and D Block Biology classes may want the option to analyze each class's data separately. If the teacher distributes two different contributor keys, one key for the B Block class and another key for C Block class, he or she will be able to visualize all data contributed by each class separately.

Visualizations are now configured with better defaults centering around the data point number field

The data point number field allows for more ways to visualize data sets that do not already contain number fields. The default y axis for timeline, bar, and histogram visualizations is now only the data point number when the project contains no other number fields. In addition, bar and histogram visualizations are enabled as long as there is a least 1 data point, and row count is now the only valid analysis type on a bar visualization when data point is the only number field.

Exporting data sets

You are can now export data sets as individual files or a single concatenated file. When you click the export button, you will be asked to select one of these two options.

Introducing the color picker for visualizations

The color picker for visualizations now allows for the default color pallet to be overridden. You can select a customized color to represent that data by clicking the color wheel icon next to a data set on all visualizations.

And be sure to learn more about the iSENSE team on the Contact page.

Earlier this week, Ivan and Fred met with a researcher at Tufts, Michelle Wilkerson-Jerde, who's studying how middle-schoolers create representations of data. 

We mentioned a high school teacher who's using iSENSE for her kids to do statistics by "flipping" thumbtacks and counting whether they land point-up or point-down. Sort of like flipping coins, only it's not a 50/50 outcome.

Prof. Wilkerson-Jerde said it reminded her of a way of estimating pi by tossing toothpicks onto a grid of horizontal lines -- spaced one toothpick's width's apart.

Ivan's made a project based on this concept, originally proposed by 18th century by French philosopher Georges-Louis Leclerc.

Check it out:

http://isenseproject.org/projects/435

-- Fred Martin