The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
All
Hacker News 9
This Year
Hacker News 2
This Month
Hacker News 1
Favorite Folktales from Around the World, by Jane Yolen [0]: Excellent short folk stories from many different regions. Great for short bursts of story, sometimes with interesting wisdom. As a game developer, some of them have been inspiring for hooks to maybe use in future projects
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by Tufte [1]: Very fun to peruse the graphs and charts. The visualization of Napolean's army marching into Russian winter and back is a classic. I bought this because I was figuring out a novel UI for a video game about birds
Graphic Design: A New History, by Eskilson [2]: Goes over the history of graphic design and printing technology from pre-Gutenberg to the present day. I bought this because it was written by my college Art History professor. His class was my favorite in all of undergrad, and I wanted to experience more history delivered in his style.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394751884/
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0961392142/
[2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300233280/
https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Informati...
I'd recommend the OP (and anyone else who has an interest in communication) to read:
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Visual-Display-Quantitative-Info...
Information Dashboard Design http://www.amazon.co.uk/Information-Dashboard-Design-Effecti...
Now You See http://www.amazon.co.uk/Now-You-See-Stephen-Few/dp/097060198...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Informat...
I'd say, yes numerical is often just as good, but not always. Also, in my opinion, whether information is displayed numerically or visually, the key is to be as minimalistic as possible.
http://www.amazon.com/Envisioning-Information-Edward-R-Tufte...
http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Informatio...
https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Informati...
you see that world class infographics require a "data artist", that is a lot of curation. You have to set the parameters of the chart quite carefully to produce a graphic which appears insightful. It is very easy to change those parameters a little and wind up in a bad place, where you might overload the tools with too much data, etc.
Data viz tools that are easy for a non "data artist" to use are an active area for CS research, new software products, etc.
Another problem is that data is less interesting than it seems to be at first. What action are you going to take on it? Data analysis delivers value when it informs actions.
The history of international development efforts is that aid agencies often have little understanding about conditions on the ground. For instance, they would send big tractors to Chile and truck them at great trouble and expense to get them into farming villages that could not use them, fuel them, fix them, etc.
Thus reducing a country down to a few numbers could cause the illusion that you know something when you really don't.
The numbers themselves are suspect. In a place like Rwanda, few people file tax returns, much of the economy is farmers selling corn to their neighbors, so national income numbers are often a wild-assed guess.
Also the life expectancy numbers are not based on a rigorous probability analysis, but rather a simple model that takes the death rates of 15 year old people in 2015 and 45 year old people in 2015 and treats that like a Markov chain where you are pretending that the 15 year old in 2015 is going to die at age 45 in 2045 at the same rate that that 45 year old people die in 2015, which is just not true -- particularly if you consider exceptional events such as war, famines, etc.
Thus those graphics are great for a talk, but they don't have the real depth of knowledge you'd need if you want to sell something to those people, plan a business, run an effective aid program, etc.