What Categories of Visualizations and Tools Are on Engaging Data?

Updated

Engaging Data is a personal gallery of JavaScript tools, data visualizations, and maps, organized into browsable category tabs. The site groups its projects under Maps, Environment, Energy, Financial, Politics/Society, Health, Fun, Math/Science, and Other Dataviz, plus a "Popular / Featured" set. If you want to know what kind of tool you can actually use there, the categories below are the answer.

Maps and geographic data visualizations

This is the largest cluster on the site. It covers both physical geography and human geography:

  • Global Birth Map — births plotted geographically
  • Splitting the US by Population — redrawing the map around population rather than borders
  • 3D Elevation of National Parks — terrain rendered in three dimensions
  • Country-Centered Maps — world maps re-centered on a chosen country
  • Antipodes map — find the point on the opposite side of the globe
  • Mercator country size distortion — how the projection inflates landmasses
  • States re-sized to match population
  • Interactive US Zip Code Map
  • Population by Latitude and Longitude
  • Which State Borders The Most Other States
  • Mapping Countries onto Planets

Environment and energy

These focus on resources, climate, and power generation:

  • California Reservoir Dashboard and California Reservoirs and Snowpack
  • How much water is in California reservoirs?
  • Where is all the water on Earth?
  • California Electricity Generation
  • Solar Intensity By Location and Time
  • Global Birth Map also appears in the environment-adjacent set
  • Airplane Flight Emissions

Financial calculators and visualizations

The financial section mixes retirement planning tools with wealth and tax visuals:

  • Early retirement calculator – When can I retire?
  • Rich, Broke or Dead – Early retirement and longevity
  • Income Tax Bracket Visualizer
  • US Household Spending By Income Group
  • How Rich is Elon Musk? shown in pixels
  • US Unemployment Equal to These States

Politics and society

Data on elections, demographics, and public health statistics:

  • County Electoral Map – Land Area vs Population
  • US Coronavirus statistics by state and Animating US COVID cases/deaths
  • Number of US COVID cases
  • Univ. of California Admissions Rates by Campus and Major
  • Baby name popularity visualizer

Health

Health content is mostly population-level data rather than personal medical tools:

  • Global Birth Map
  • US Coronavirus statistics by state
  • Rich, Broke or Dead (longevity framing)
  • Baby name popularity visualizer

Math and science

Interactive tools for numerical and physical concepts:

  • Iceberg Simulator
  • Orbital Pattern of the International Space Station
  • Hours of Daylight by Latitude/Season
  • How long does it take to count to one million?
  • Digits Math Game
  • Rubik's cube world records over time

Fun and interactive games

Word and puzzle games sit alongside the data projects:

  • ScrabWordle
  • Tridle – Triple Wordle
  • WordGuessr
  • Wordle clone
  • Snake on a Globe
  • Stylish Text Font Generator

Other Dataviz

Projects that don't fit the categories above, such as the Iceberg Simulator and miscellaneous visual experiments, are collected here.

How to decide what to open first

If your goal is practical, start with the Financial calculators (retirement, tax brackets) or the Environment dashboards (California reservoirs, electricity generation). If you want something quick and playful, the Fun section's word games load fast and need no setup. For teaching or demonstration, the Maps and Math/Science visualizations are the most self-contained — the site's author explicitly invites educators to share how they use the tools in a curriculum.

One caveat: the site is a personal workshop, so the mix of topics reflects the author's interests rather than a fixed product roadmap. Categories are a browsing aid, not a guarantee that every project is maintained or updated.