A proof-of-concept attempt to visualize multivariate data

For example, what would we see if we could turn complex social statistics into something that could be "touched and felt"?

First, we created a prototype that represents multiple numerical data in the form of a single sphere.

This is an attempt to explore another way of looking at social change by "touching and feeling" it.

We have created a mockup of the concept of "The Social Morphology Ball," a tactile social data display.

The output results are attached as a figure using publicly available data on actual vital statistics.

The concept itself was inspired and influenced by the works of The Tangible Media Group, led by Professor Ishii Yutaka of the MIT Media Lab, and we are attempting to develop a single theme as a collaboration between art and science.

The operating principle is to perform scaling and compression using robust normalization and nonlinear transformation, then calculate the deformation amount of the structure and calculate the average rate of change and cumulative sum to interpret data such as turning points. However, we plan to explore appropriate calculations and implementation in the future.

We would like to position this attempt as a proof of concept for the embodiment of social data, or data physicalization.

I created this mockup based on the concept of whether it would be possible to roll quantities such as social statistics, which have multiple units and different digits, into a single structure (starting with a sphere).

The output file is expressed in STL format, gif, png, etc., which can be output by a 3D printer.

For example, if you divide data for a certain period into years and turn each into a sphere, each year will have a unique shape. Perhaps you will be able to feel the fluctuations in the data by touching it.

In the future, if everyone could sense multivariate numerical data in ways other than just "seeing it with their eyes," perhaps we would be able to "see" something new. I think it would be wonderful if such innovations were born from this concept.

How should we best implement it in society? What form should we present it in to make it feel right to those who use it? What usefulness will it have in the first place? There are a mountain of issues that need to be considered.

Please note that the calculation formulas and programs in this preprint are incomplete. The core of the Python script was created in ChatGPT5 for this Proof-of-Concept mockup.

Title: The Social Morphology Ball Model: A Proof-of-Concept for Spherical Representation of Multivariate Social Data

The DOIs of the preprints related to this research are listed below.

[DOI: SocArXiv]

https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/fvsby_v1