Michael Bostock is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

and

data visualization Data and information visualization (data viz/vis or info viz/vis) is the practice of designing and creating Graphics, graphic or visual Representation (arts), representations of a large amount of complex quantitative and qualitative data and i ...

specialist. He is one of the co-creators of Observable and a key developer of

D3.js D3.js (also known as D3, short for Data-Driven Documents) is a JavaScript library for producing dynamic, interactive data visualizations in web browsers. It makes use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), HTML5, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) stan ...

, a

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

library used to produce dynamic, interactive data visualizations for web browsers. He also contributed to the preceding Protovis framework.

Biography

Bostock pursued a PhD in computer science at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

In 2009, Bostock was advised by

Jeffrey Heer Jeffrey Michael Heer (born June 15, 1979) is an American computer scientist best known for his work on information visualization and interactive data analysis. He is a professor of computer science & engineering at the University of Washington, ...

at Stanford. As a part of Stanford's Visualization Group (VisGroup), they created Protovis, a

Javascript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

-based visualization toolkit. The toolkit relied on native browser technologies and included an abstract representation layer that made it difficult to debug. In 2011, Bostock, Heer, and Vadim Ogievetsky announced

, a successor to Protovis. D3 stood for data-driven documents and allowed data objects to be bound directly to the browser's

Document Object Model The Document Object Model (DOM) is a cros s-platform and language-independent API that treats an HTML or XML document as a tree structure wherein each node is an object representing a part of the document. The DOM represents a document with ...

instead of requiring interaction with an intermediate layer. This change allowed for easier debugging. In 2017, the IEEE Computer Society acknowledged D3 as the "de facto standard for web-based interactive visualization". Bostock later developed

TopoJSON GeoJSON is an open standard format designed for representing simple geographical features, along with their non-spatial attributes. It is based on the JSON format. The features include points (therefore addresses and locations), line strings ...

, a program that removes redundant coordinates used in drawing shapes on maps using the SVG format. The system used 80% less memory than

GeoJSON GeoJSON is an open standard format designed for representing simple geographical features, along with their non-spatial attributes. It is based on the JSON format. The features include points (therefore addresses and locations), line strings ...

. Bostock continued developing the D3 library and provided hundreds of examples online. He became a graphics editor at ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' and wrote data-rich stories for the paper using D3. For his work at ''New York Times'', he shared the 2013, 2014, and 2015

Gerald Loeb Award The Gerald Loeb Awards, also referred to as the Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, is a recognition of excellence in journalism, especially in the fields of business, finance and the economy. The award was e ...

s for Images/Visuals. He left his position at the paper in 2015 to focus on other projects. Bostock co-founded Observable, a web platform for making and sharing data analyses and visualizations, with Google vice president Melody Meckfessel. The company launched in 2020 with a $10.5 million Series A funding round led by the

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firms Sequoia Capital and Acrew Capital. After its founding, Bostock served as Observable's chief technology officer. In 2013, statistician

Edward Tufte Edward Rolf Tufte (; born March 14, 1942), sometimes known as "ET",. is an American statistician and professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale University. He is noted for his writings on information design ...

predicted that Bostock would become one of the most important people for the future of data visualization. In 2015, the ''New York Times'' "Innovation Report" called him a "digital superstar". Bostock was also interviewed by the Data Stories podcast and presented at Eyeo 2014. He advised the data platform provider Trifacta, which was later acquired by the technology company Alteryx.

Published works

* Bostock, Michael; Heer, Jeffrey (2009). "Protovis: A Graphical Toolkit for Visualization" * Bostock, Michael; Ogievetsky, Vadim; Heer, Jeffrey (2011). "D3: Data-Driven Documents"

References

External links

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Mike Bostock
a
Bl.ocks

New York Times: Mike Bostock
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bostock, Mike Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Stanford University alumni Information graphic designers Gerald Loeb Award winners for Images, Graphics, Interactives, and Visuals The New York Times visual journalists D3.js people