I decided to use the GitHub API for this project to collect data on repositories that are related to data visualization and machine learning.

I used the following API https://developer.github.com/v3/ along with geo coordinate data from http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/ API. I first collected the data and saved it in JSON files since there was a rate limit for the API. Code used to collect data

There were no premiminary sketches for this project.

The following data was collected from the GitHub API

• repository name
• repository size
• number of watchers
• owner
• owner's profile picture
• language

Then I collected statistics for the repository using the repository and owner name. The following stats are collected:

• code frequency: Returns a weekly aggregate of the number of additions and deletions pushed to a repository.
• commit activity: Returns the last year of commit activity grouped by week. punch card: Each array contains the day number, hour number, and number of commits

I thought this data could be used for an interesting data visualization. I'm personally interested on who the top contributors are, what languages they use and how much activity is happening in their repositories.

The final visualization has the following features:

• legend with keywords let's users select the topics they are interested in
• repository scatter plot that shows size/watcher count information (can scroll through the entire dataset using arrows), if a repository is clicked, repository details appear which include the user picture, some info about the repository and a time card visualization showing when the user is most active.
• a rotating globe showing user locations, the bars coming out of the globe represent the number of repositories associated with the keyword.
• language window: shows how many repositories use a language for the selected set of topics
• average user activity: shows a stream graph of average commit activities over the last year.

I used Processing.

Control: All user interaction is contained within the UI. The user can enable/disable keywords at the top and click on the repository graph to get more detailed information about individual repositories.

Source Code + Data