A RAFT of contests and open calls to experiment with data visualisations have begun. The idea is that people outside of the organizations that hold the data may have more creative ideas about how the information can best be presented. So the groups are tapping the ingenuity of the web's masses, and in some cases offering a reward at the end.

On August 21st, Tableau, the maker of data-visualisation software, began a contest for the best infographics to depict America's election campaign, or anything political. The winner gets a trip to San Diego to present the infographic at a Tableau conference, and a chance to compete against winners of other contests for $2,000 and a new iPad. (An image of a neat political inforgraphic by Tableau is below; click on it to go the interactive chart.)

Meanwhile, the Harvard Business Review and Kaggle, a site for data-analytics competitions, has just begun a week-long contest "to generate analysis and visualisations from the metadata and abstracts of every article they have published over the last 90 years," according to the call for entries. "Use of outside data is not only allowed, but strongly encouraged," it adds. The best submissions will be published in the magazine's 90th anniversary issue and a bit of cash will go to the winners.

Even this newspaper is getting in on the action. The Economist and Nielsen, a media audience-measurement firm, have launched a contest for people to crunch data and produce new insights and visualisations on consumer behavior from Nielsen's consumer confidence survey and its global advertising report. The contest, run by InnoCentive, a site for crowdsourced innovation, has already attracted nearly 700 contestants since it was posted last week. The deadline for the $10,000 prize is October 15th.

However, Graphic detail's favorite initiative is by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. It has made an open call for "space aficionados and graphic wizards to take on a visual challenge by grabbing NASA data and transforming them into a scientific work of art." People can then upload their creations to NASA's website to share with others. In return NASA offers fame, not fortune. It's fittingly in the spirit of exploration.