Unfortunately I wasn’t able to show you the Parallel Coordinates example in class. Parallel Coordinates are a great technique to explore relationship between (seemingly) unrelated dimensions of multivariate data set.
Take a look at http://exposedata.com/parallel, which was made by Kai Chang, who’s local to the SF Bay Area. Take a second to familiarize yourself with the user interface. You’re able to re-group the parallel axes to better explore different relationship of adjacent dimensions. You can also filter out parts of each axis, which reduces the number of lines drawn.
If you would like more information, here is a good blog post on parallel coordinates. On a related note, Robert Kosara’s blog eagereyes.org is one of the best blogs that takes information visualization seriously without appearing too academic.