Published on Dec 20, 2013
This presentation provides some great examples of how to present complicated data in ways that maximize the amount of information transferred. Use it for inspiration when generating engineering plots for decision-makers. [-ejr]
— From www.ted.com —
David McCandless makes infographics — simple, elegant ways to see information that might be too complex or too big, small, abstract or scattered to otherwise be grasped. In his new book, Information Is Beautiful (in the US, it’s being called The Visual Miscellaneum), McCandless and his cadre of info designers take a spin through the world of visualized data, from hard stats on politics and climate to daffy but no less important trends in pop music.
McCandless’ genius is not so much in finding jazzy new ways to show data — the actual graphics aren’t the real innovation here — as in finding fresh ways to combine datasets to let them ping and prod each other. Reporting the number of drug deaths in the UK every year is interesting; but mapping that data onto the number of drug deaths reported by the UK press, broken down by drug, is utterly fascinating (more deaths by marijuana were reported than in fact occurred, by a factor of 484%). McCandless contributes a monthly big-think graphic to the Guardian’s Data Blog, and makes viral graphics for his blog Information Is Beautiful.
“It’s not just the sheer variety of topics covered — though knowing the relative effect of rising sea levels or the prime vintage years for red and white wines by country will come in handy someday soon, I’m certain — but the way in which, for many of these charts, there’s considerably more than meets the eye.”
Chris Bilton, Eye Weekly review of The Visual Miscellaneum