gps10's blog

Graphs and Wikis, Oh My

The theme of this week for me seems to be graphs. In EECS 325, I have to plot the results of a mass trace route to over a thousand hosts. Today, I received an e-mail announcing the tuition increases for next year. I remembered looking at the history of tuition at Case and thought to myself, gee, it sure would be nice if that was in graphical form. My second reaction was that is out of date. Wouldn't it be nice if that information were somewhere where it could be publically available and updateable, like the Case Wiki? Combine this with Jeremy's most recent I need to page idea -- making a flowchart-like structure on the Wiki, I started thinking about graphs and the Case Wiki.

For flowcharts, there is a solution for MediaWiki already in the wild. Wouldn't it be cool if we could whip something up using this for computer help? The Help Desk maintains scripts that are basically flowcharts. These could easily be converted to graphical form for the world to see. And, of course, it is editable by the community, so anyone can chip in and contribute to better custom support. We could also use these charts to depict graphical visualizations of hierarchy. For example, the administrative structure of the university or of individual departments.

For normal graphs, there isn't a MediaWiki solution in place yet, however, that is no barrier. I think it would be worthwhile to have the ability to create simple bar/plot/line graphs of simple data, like the tuition history or value of the university's endowment. We could even record numbers of enrolled students, etc. A picture is worth a thousand words.

If anybody out there has any thoughts on the matter, please leave a comment below.

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