
How David McCandless makes beautiful visualizations that go viral - gk1
http://www.vox.com/2014/12/26/7446733/data-visualization
======
gojomo
The _information is Beautiful_ visualizations usually frustrate me.

They often hide the data's insights inside a fireworks-show of other design
choices. So, they wind up being abstract art that may, upon close study,
reveal some fragments of information. (The Tuftean "data-ink ratio" runs very
low.)

Though they're obviously quite popular, I prefer more-usable comprehension-
aids, that draw attention to underlying trends and relationships.

~~~
bane
I agree, I think one of the take-aways from Tufte is that _everything_ you do
to a visualization should have meaning.

Don't just change the colors of different objects to make them pretty, use
colors to reveal another dimension of data.

I think more dangerously, and something that Tufte also warns about, is using
visualizations to skew the data towards a biased point, and all the clutter in
infographics seems to be more towards this end than actually discovering and
showing patterns in data, and then using your visualization to inform the
viewer of those patterns.

Infographics are _so_ edited and so commercialized, you'll notice many of them
aren't even available in readable resolutions, but are helpfully for sale as
$29.99 posters on the author's webpage.

You know what sells? Shocking or contrary items. So why wouldn't an
infographic author skew what they're showing? Infographics almost seem like an
advertisement selling themselves and not sources of information.

I'm almost at the point of thinking that infographics are what _not_ to do in
infoviz.

 _edit_ on the other hand, here's an infographic series he likes

[http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0002w4)

------
empressplay
I loved the rhetological fallacies one... (direct link)

[https://cdn2.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/_vHiY0Rp2T_SPwJMvJdK94awg0s...](https://cdn2.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/_vHiY0Rp2T_SPwJMvJdK94awg0s=/800x0/filters:no_upscale\(\)/cdn0.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2880108/IIB_rhetological-short-
version.0.png)

------
cconcepts
There is something powerful about David's work. I remember stumbling onto it
some time ago and thinking "there is a way of using this kind of communication
to make information so much more accessible". Projects like the Google Public
Data explorer [1] are a step in this direction but by no means are the final
solution.

I find that when I am researching something I have to spend so much time
wading through people's attempted (and sometimes good) prose in order to find
the conclusion I need.

In an era of overwhelming data I feel like we should have a way to make common
data much more accessible and David's work (despite it's potential flaws in
regards to empiricism) seems to be a step in the right direction.

[1]
[http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory](http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory)

------
fizwhiz
Just noticed one of the infographics mention a pacemaker has on average 0.5-1
million LOC. Does this look right?

~~~
eterm
I think you're reading the chart wrong, it's listed as just short of 100k. (As
read from the top scale. - It's not a very clear infographic at all, xkcd ones
using area squares tend to be a lot more clear!)

