How to Visualize Data on the iPad

I really want my iPad to be a all around utility tool for entertainment, travel, business and pretty much anything I need some computing power to accomplish. So I set out looking for business apps that could show me the power of this device. I know Pages and Numbers well because I use them on my MacBookPro. But I wanted something more. So I downloaded Roambi. Was I ever surprised at the power of this app to visualize and display your data in a compelling and illustrative manner. It's awesome eye candy for the iPad. I say eye candy because most of the work is done in the cloud and the iPad is merely displaying the results. To get you started, here is how you take a screen shot on the iPad. Below are some of the results that Roambi can generate for you. Nice for a business presentation. The data in the screen shots are what I would have used in the State of the Computer Book Market.

This first image show the screen you get when you first fire up Roambi. This is where you see which data sets you have already loaded, visualized and downloaded to your iPad.



This next image shows trending maps for each of the Imprints in the Computer Book market and their two year trend by year/month and Imprint. Each of the items represented has a click through/drill in that will bring back all the data. There are all sorts of sub graphs that you can run with these charts, and this is just a basic graph. In this Drill in, you can see how the app takes you deeper into the data you are viewing. You can slide the bar along the axis and see which month was the lowest or highest for the imprint and what the total units were. This is slick stuff.



In this view you get a interactive pie chart where you can spin the wheel and get any of the data points you have plotted. This is very intuitive and illuminates data well. For instance, I am comparing C++ and Java in this view and if you see the data on the right, you can scroll to any two quarters and compare how the languages performed. It also has a nice summary of market size just below the name of the language. In this case, in the third quarter of 2005, C++ had a 3.84% market share and Java a 4.55% share when compared by dollars sold in the Computer book market. See this for more of an explanation about what is measured.



There are a lot of settings and sub settings to tweak when using Roambi. All and all though, this is a awesome tool to visualize data and display the results on your iPad or iPhone [iPod touch too]. The web based tool that allows you to upload and visualize your data is intuitive and easy to use. Give this a shot, I think you won't be disappointed.