This is a 1% public use microdata sample from the 2002 Census. Additional data set information is available from the following URL:
http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2000/doc/pums.pdf

Download the contest data set here.

The U.S. Census is a broad demographic survey of the people of the United States, conducted once every ten years. It is meant to be an accurate picture of the state of the country and is used for a variety of political, economic, and social decisions. Because surveyors attempt to ask questions for every household, the resulting data set is huge and fraught with privacy concerns; therefore we are using a 1% sample, known as the PUMS.

Although we encourage the contestants to attempt to enter using the complete U.S. Census PUMS data set, we also support the contestants to select a subset (sample) of one or more geographic regions of the complete data set. For example, California, city of Los Angeles, single Metropolitan Area, etc. would all be valid subsets of the data set, with which you could answer the questions of the contest. The technical documentation for the Census 2000 Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) files is located at here.

Download the contest tasks here.

Contest-related discussion takes place here.

First place entries will receive a prize and will present their work during the contest session at the conference. The length of the oral presentation is still to be determined but is likely to be similar to a short paper (10 min).
Second place entries will be presented as posters at the conference.
The contest requires that at least one author of every accepted submission attends the conference.
The best entries will be published in the IEEE InfoVis 2006 Proceedings and in the IEEE Digital Library. All accepted entries will be posted after the conference in the Information Visualization Benchmark Repository.
We will award prizes for best entries in several categories.

The following are required components of each submission:

• A filled-out contest entry form that contains the information on the submission, the authors and their contact information in addition to the entry category. Please, note that only one category can be selected for every submission.
• A 2-page summary/paper in PDF or Word format, providing an overview of the submission and the analysis process, summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of the approach, and providing at least one example screen shot. The document has to follow the standard InfoVis paper format (two-column IEEE VGTC paper format) as described in the IEEE Infovis 2006 paper formatting guidelines.

• Video demonstration focusing on the process of data analysis and the interactive features of the approach are strongly recommended. The video should not exceed 10 minutes in length with 5 minutes as recommended length, and have to be in either Quicktime (Sorenson or MPEG4 compression), AVI (Indeo 5.10 or DivX 5.x.x compression) format, at least 320x240 resolution. If you are not familiar with recorded video demonstrations, please take a look at Camtasia which works well form most systems, unless you have a fast animation (and then you need to record with an external video recorder). Even a short video without sound is more effective than no video at all! Please, visit the IEEE InfoVis 2006 Call for Participation for additional video formatting information.
• Web page with additional information, preferably following a format similar to this web page. We have added this optional item per request of the past entrants.

How and when to submit? .: UPDATED :.

Deadline for submissions is September 20, 2006 (midnight, Eastern Standard Time).

To deliver your submissions:

1. Save all your submission materials in one directory.
2. Name the directory to match the title of your submission: [FirstAuthor-NameOfTool].zip (e.g. Cvek-InfoExplorer]
3. Zip the entry materials into one or more files, limiting the size of each file to no more than 1 Gb. If you have more than one file, add "-part1of2" etc. to the filename so we can be sure we have all the files (e.g. Cvek-InfoExplorer-part1of2.zip and Cvek-InfoExplorer-part2of2.zip).
4. Use your web browser (Internet Explorer) to go to http://sun.cs.lsus.edu/infoviz/, create a login for yourself (at the first visit) and upload the files using the login.
5. You will receive an email confirmation from the site that your files have been uploaded.
6. If you want to update your submission at a later time (but before the deadline), use the same login and file names as on the original submission. You will again receive a confirmation from the site that your files have been uploaded.
7. Send an email to ucvek[AT]lsus.edu to let us know that you have uploaded your files.
8. Thank you for submitting!

In the possible event of server overload or other access problems to the submission site, an alternate submission procedure is to upload the complete submission following the same naming, organization and size limitations (as above) to your server, and [emailing] the contest chairs the URL/download information of the submission. The files have to be available on the server before and at least 7 more days after the deadline. You will be notified by one of the chairs that your files have been successfully downloaded, so that you can then remove them.

Submissions will be reviewed by judges with content and information visualization expertise. We will be looking, above all, for a combination of creativity and utility--winning entries must have ideas that are new, interesting, and helpful. (In other words, if you submit a program that is nothing but an interactive zooming choropleth map linked to sliders, scatterplots and parallel coordinates displays, you will definitely not win.) Beyond interesting new ideas, we will look for excellence in implantation and usability.

If the entry focuses on more than one of focus areas, each of the parts will be scored. However, a very creative and interesting entry in one focus area might win a higher score than another entry with less helpful or interesting solutions for two focus areas.

InfoVis Contest 2003, 2004, 2005

Information Visualization Benchmark Repository

• Urška Cvek, Louisiana State University, Shreveport
• Marjan Trutschl, Louisiana State University, Shreveport
• Martin Wattenberg, IBM Research

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