Google Fusions – American History Figures

~ Annie Swafford

Here is the link to my spread sheet:

http://goo.gl/WW9kjt

Here is a screen shot of the row in fusion:

row

http://goo.gl/bgR11h

 

Here is a screen shot of the cards

cards

http://goo.gl/o1NJal

 

Here is a screen shot of map

map

http://goo.gl/QzwLXd

 

Here is a screen shot of the bar graph

bar graph

http://goo.gl/SXOYB7

 

Here is a screen shot of the pie graph

bar graph

http://goo.gl/DmlLyD

 

Here is a screen shot of the network chart

bar graph

http://goo.gl/iXsk7G

 

Here is what I have to say about it all:

 

The first feature google fusion tables gives you is a row with all your data. This is nice, especially since it gives you the actual picture and not just a link. The next are cards, which is essentially the same thing as the rows, except it individualizes each set of information. For my purposes, I don’t find much value in the cards over the rows. The third is a map with the coordinates I entered displayed. You can click on each coordinate, and it will show you information that goes along with that coordinate. This is actually a really nice visual. It certainly does more for you than an ordinary google maps search would do for you.

Those were the three features that fusions showed automatically. You also have the choice to personalize your table by adding bar graphs, pie graphs, network graphs, and others. For my purposes, since I used the bar graph to visualize birth year and death year, the bar graph really wasn’t that helpful, but I’m sure it has the potential to be. It would be nice if the bar graph was able to take the difference of the two years so as to show how old the person was when he died, but I know that can also just be easily done through the spreadsheet. As for the pie graph and networking chart, for me, they were completely redundant. This is because I used them both to show the same thing though.

In short, google fusions was a very user friendly tool with some pretty nifty features. Once you have the spreadsheet together with all your data, it’s very easy to import everything into fusions and make all these charts and tables.