I ran across some nifty visualization software – and it’s free. Tableau Public allows you to filter, tweak, populate, export and embed public data and even your own data for your audience to see. For simple research, and for open, sharable information, there’s not much of a downside. For this test example (yeah, it’s super complex) I have average level of income (FY 2007) mapped on top of the 48 contiguous U.S. states.