I See What You Mean

As part of his larger mission of promoting "fact-based" public health policy, Swedish physician Hans Rosling founded Gapminder.org , which aims to make world health data available and understandable to everyone. Back in 2006, Rosling gave a well-received TED presentation on the principles of Gapminder, showing, among other things, relative historical changes in life expectancy and GDP. ( He spoke again in 2007. ) Rosling acknowledges that there are some small flaws and inconsistencies with data derived from all these different sources, but believes that the comparative results are far more significant. Check out the vast difference between Mauritius and Congo in income per person and life expectancy (shown on the Gapminder site and in the '06 presentation); consequently, says Rosling, using the term "sub-Saharan Africa" to describe both of these countries is vague to the point of uselessness. His point: The more easily data and details can be visualized and co...

Overnewsed but uninformed-- Stefan Bräutigam The explanation, auto-translated from the German by Google (!) and tidied up slightly by me (!!), reads thus: With access to news possible at any time via a variety of communication channels, a broad media landscape with a myriad of information producers and suppliers has developed. For the viewer it becomes more difficult to determine the authenticity of messages. You are looking for sources that can be trusted. Overnewsed but Uninformed helps in the search. Sequences are described, ownership and dependencies disclosed, and user behavior illustrated. Background information, monitoring and analysis show how the real message — of a bridge fall in Minneapolis [in this case] — can be assessed and categorized. Unfortunately, if you want to see the whole thing up close, you'll have to download the 22MB PDF file here . [Via Visual Complexity ]

Mined Originally uploaded by Champagnerocker Two fab — and overlapping — flickr sets: Song Chart meme and Song Chart . Hours of silly fun (even if, like me, you're too old/stodgy to know many of the songs). Right now my favorite is this one . But with everything that's on offer, I may find something even better ... Stay tuned, as it were.

How much do I appreciate an infographic that organizes and explains infographics? Well, OK, that was a rhetorical question, but the answer is: A WHOLE LOT. Check out this Periodic Table of Visualization Methods (part of an online course called Visual Literacy that was created by a consortium of European universities). Hover your cursor over any cell in the table and you see a handy example of that particular format. Oh my, the coolness.

The Sunlight Foundation resources page lists two dozen "insanely useful" sites that aim to "provide a broad range of information available to track government and legislative information, campaign contributions and the role of money in politics." It's a handy list that's worth bookmarking .

As someone who deeply appreciates raw data and admires those who wrangle it, I have to give a shoutout to my fellow travelers out there: Big bunches of ripe bananas to the primates over at Infochimps , "a community to assemble and interconnect a giant free almanac, with tables on everything you can put in a table—things like a century of hourly weather, every major league baseball game, decades of stock prices, or every US patent filing." Check out the (still small but interesting) visualization gallery . Numbrary , whose name is self-explanatory, is "a free online service dedicated to finding, using and sharing numbers on the web." At present its focus seems to be financial and demographic, with info from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics , Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System , U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis , U.S. Census Bureau , the SEC EDGAR Database and CIA - The World Factbook . Swivel , which aims to "make it easy for eve...

Well, first of all, he's my hero, and has been since I first attended one of his seminars back in 1987. More to the point, I'm far from alone in my appreciation of him , and here's why: I described Edward Tufte as a graphic designer, but that’s not exactly right. His field is almost sui generis, containing bits and pieces of art direction, data-crunching, economics, historical research, and plain old expository writing. It’s often labeled “information architecture,” or “analytic design.” Tufte himself describes it many ways, but one is drawn from a classic piece of science writing: “escaping Flatland,” or using paper’s two dimensions to convey several more. Another, more acidic description: “getting design out of fashion and out of the hands of Microsoft.” His four books have collectively been called a Strunk and White for design. Tufte works by showing both outstanding and horrid graphics he’s found, improving upon the latter, and his principles take on the meditative qual...