{"id":14597,"date":"2016-12-29T17:46:10","date_gmt":"2016-12-30T01:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nnlm.gov\/pnr\/dragonfly\/?p=14597"},"modified":"2026-02-03T17:16:54","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T17:16:54","slug":"nnlm-national-evaluation-centers-favorite-things","status":"archive","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/nnlm-national-evaluation-centers-favorite-things\/","title":{"rendered":"NN\/LM National Evaluation Center’s Favorite Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is reposted from the National Evaluation Center (NEO)’s blog, NEO Shop Talk: https:\/\/nnlm.gov\/evaluation\/blog\/2016\/12\/21\/my-favorite-things-2016-spoiler-alert-includes-cats\/<\/em><\/p>\n

My Favorite Things 2016 (Spoiler Alert: Includes Cats) by Cindy Olney<\/h2>\n
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 <\/p>\n

During gift-giving season every year, Oprah publishes a list of her favorite things. Well, move over, Oprah, because I also have a list. This is my bag of holiday gifts for our NEO Shop Talk readers.<\/p>\n

Art Exhibits<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are two websites with galleries of data visualizations that are really fun to visit. The first,\u00a0\u00a0Information is Beautiful <\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0has wonderful examples of data visualizations, many of which are interactive. My favorites from this site are Who Old Are You?<\/em> <\/a>\u00a0 (put in your birth date to start it) and Common MythConceptions<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0The other is Tableau Public<\/em><\/a>, Tableau Software Company\u2019s \u201cpublic commons\u201d for their users to share their work. \u00a0My picks are the Endangered Species Safar<\/em>i <\/a>\u00a0and the data visualization of the Simpsons\u00a0Vizapedia<\/a>. \u00a0And, in case \u00a0you\u2019re wondering what happened to your favorite Crayola crayon colors, you can find out here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Movies<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nancy Duarte\u2019s The Secret Structure of Great Talks<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>is my favorite TEDtalk. Duarte describes the simple messaging structure underlying inspirational speeches. Once you grasp this structure, you will know how to present evaluations findings to advocate for stakeholder support. I love the information in this talk, but that\u2019s not why I listen to it over and over again.\u00a0 It\u2019s because Duarte says \u201cyou have the power to change the world\u201d and, by the end of the talk, I believe her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I also am a fan of two videos from the Denver Museum of Natural History, which demonstrate how museum user metrics can be surprisingly entertaining. What Do Jelly Beans Have To Do With The Museum?<\/em><\/a>\u00a0shows demographics with colorful candy and\u00a0Audience Insights On Parking at the Museum<\/em> <\/a>\u00a0talks amusingly about a common challenge of urban life.<\/p>\n

Crafts<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you want to try your hand at creating snappier charts and graphs, you need to spend some time at Stephanie Evergreen\u2019s blog<\/a>. For example, she gives you step-by-step instructions on making lollipop charts<\/a>, dot plots <\/a>, and overlapping bar charts<\/a>.\u00a0Stephanie works exclusively in Excel, so there\u2019s no need to purchase or learn new software. You also might want to learn a few new Excel graphing tricks at Ann Emery\u2019s blog.\u00a0 For instance, she describes how to label the lines in your graphs<\/a>\u00a0or adjust bar chart spacing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Site Seeing<\/strong><\/p>\n

How about a virtual tour to the UK? I still marvel at the innovative\u00a0Visualizing Mill Road<\/a> \u00a0project. Researchers collected community data, then shared their findings in street art. This is the only project I know of featuring charts in sidewalk chalk. The web site talks about community members\u2019 reactions to the project, which is also pretty fascinating.<\/p>\n

Humor<\/strong><\/p>\n

I left the best for last. This is a gift for our most sophisticated readers, recommended by none other than Paul Gargani, president of the American Evaluation Association. It is a web site for the true connoisseurs of online evaluation resources. \u00a0I present to you the Twitter feed for \u00a0Eval Cat<\/a>. \u00a0Even the \u00a0NEO Shop Talk cats begrudgingly admire it, although no one has invited them to post.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s wishing you an enjoyable holiday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is reposted from the National Evaluation Center (NEO)’s blog, NEO Shop Talk: https:\/\/nnlm.gov\/evaluation\/blog\/2016\/12\/21\/my-favorite-things-2016-spoiler-alert-includes-cats\/ My Favorite Things 2016 (Spoiler Alert: Includes Cats) by Cindy Olney   During gift-giving season every year, Oprah publishes a list of her favorite things. Well, move over, Oprah, because I also have a list. This is my bag of holiday… Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14597","post","type-post","status-archive","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","category-training-education"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14597"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17526,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14597\/revisions\/17526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}