Discover the future of data exploration with CODAP V3 Beta

Our Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP)—used by over 3.5 million users worldwide—is one of the most popular tools for data exploration. And now it’s better than ever! The beta release of CODAP V3 is officially live and ready for you to try.

At the Concord Consortium, we like to dream big. One of our most ambitious goals is to bring data fluency to everyone. Thanks to support from the National Science Foundation, the Valhalla Foundation, the Cisco Foundation, and generous individuals, we’re re-engineering our free CODAP data analysis and visualization software from the ground up to ensure its future sustainability as an adaptable, open-source product.

Try the Four Seals CODAP document, created in partnership with EDC Oceans of Data Institute.

What’s new

CODAP V3 is not only more attractive, it’s a true powerhouse under the hood, handling much larger datasets, drawing graphs and maps faster, animating more smoothly, and responding instantly. CODAP also includes several exciting new features:

New color data type — Create and edit color attributes with support and functions that allow formulaic creation and editing.
Map pins — Drop pins on maps to highlight specific areas or data points.
Enhanced case cards — View dataset hierarchies clearly and intuitively.
Animated time series — Explore data dynamically over time using a slider with date-time values.

(And we’re planning to roll out even more new features in the months to come!)

Under the hood

While the current version of CODAP (V2) was built to be flexible, the platform and tools on which its foundation rests have grown outdated, making it difficult to maintain and extend. We’re building CODAP V3 with modern web tools, including Typescript, React, and D3 in order to provide a fully open, flexible, and customizable platform that supports data science education for years to come and ensures that CODAP is maintainable and extendable by a vibrant open-source ecosystem.

The CODAP team

The vision for CODAP has always belonged to Bill Finzer, who is leading this extensive software re-engineering effort. Simply put, CODAP would not exist without Bill, who has been working on CODAP for over 15 years—and on its predecessors, Fathom and TinkerPlots, for at least a decade before that. (Watch Bill introduce the CODAP V3 Beta here.)

We are indebted to our amazing software engineers—Kirk Swenson, Doug Martin, Ethan McElroy, Teale Fristoe, Evangeline Ireland, and Scott Cytacki—who wrote over 100,000 lines of code shared on GitHub to develop the underlying architecture, plus new features and bug fixes over the past two years.

Special thanks to our incredibly talented UX/UI Designer Michael Tirenin for CODAP V3’s beautiful new design, complete with lighter colors, sharper icons, and smoother navigation.

Thanks also to Leslie Bondaryk, Kiley Brown, Chad Dorsey, Kate Miller, Dan Damelin, Zac Opps, and Natalya St. Clair for their contributions to project and technical management, QA/QC, and overall stewardship of the sustained, collaborative effort to bring the updated version of CODAP V3 to the world.

We thank our collaborator Tim Erickson for his many CODAP plugin contributions, as well as his design feedback, bug reports, and tireless CODAP evangelism.

Finally, we extend our deep gratitude to 30 dedicated testers, who spent the last few months trying both common and bespoke features in CODAP V3, identifying bugs, and sharing invaluable feedback. Their enthusiasm and insights inspired us every step of the way. Thank you from the bottom of our data-loving hearts.

What’s on the horizon?

With funding from Cisco Foundation, we’re taking early steps towards accessibility. Thanks to our partner Sina Bahram and the Prime Access Consulting team we have performed a full accessibility audit, and have focused CODAP’s newly designed UI to improve our accessibility rating. We continue to work toward our goal of making CODAP fully WCAG compliant and accessible.

And, in addition to providing funding for CODAP’s design and implementation, the National Science Foundation, the Cisco Foundation, and the Valhalla Foundation are all contributing to our efforts to expand our outreach to our broader CODAP user community.

Join the CODAP community

Join the millions of users exploring data with CODAP. With the release of CODAP V3 Beta, you can explore, experiment, and help us shape the future of open source, low-threshold, high-ceiling data exploration software for learners everywhere. Try it out and tell us what you discover. Your feedback will help students and educators bring data to life.

We welcome:

Outside contributors to CODAP’s open-source code base
Collaborators who integrate CODAP in curriculum development and educational research
K-14 students and teachers
Community-based citizen science projects
Higher education faculty and researchers
Corporate, foundation, and individual partnerships and support