Find Great Data Visualizations at Visualizing.org

Find Great Data Visualizations at Visualizing.org: "

Visualizing.org is a community site for sharing data visualizations (aka infographics). Anyone can upload their data visualizations to the public gallery. The public gallery is divided into four categories; economy, environment, health, and energy. Visualizations in the gallery can be downloaded, printed, and or embedded into your blog or website. Some of the visualizations in the gallery, such as this one embedded below, are interactive.



National obesity comparison tool <br /><a href="#"><img alt="National obesity comparison tool " src="http://public.tableausoftware.com/static/images/co/contributorstoobesity/Eatyourvegtables/1_rss.png" height="100%" /></a>

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Applications for Education

Visualizing.org could be a good place to find infographics to use at the start of a research activity. For example, take the infographic embedded above and ask students to research the causes of and impact of high obesity rates on communities.

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Let's Debate the Issue of Aesthetics in Data Visualization... on Television

Let's Debate the Issue of Aesthetics in Data Visualization... on Television: "

BBC television seems to have embraced informing people of the power (and dangers) of infographics. Several months before Hans Rosling's television documentary 'The Joy of Stats', they even took up data visualization and infographics as a subject of intense debate. More specifically, on a episode of News Night, Information is Beautiful author David McCandless dueled with 'Anti Design' initiator Neville Brody, a 'legendary designer who is the original art director of The Face'.

Interestingly, the actual discussion topic quickly focused on the potential misuse of beauty in data visualization, which ultimately might make them 'too mesmerizing, too beguiling, too pretty' (I confess, I had to look the 2nd verb up). Without much consideration, the moderator put up several infographics of one of the two guests and invited the other one to vent some critiques. What started off with a friendly 'Congratulations David! I would like that on my wall!' quickly shifted into an intellectual argument that nailed the work as the epitome of what should not come out after '25 years of Thatcher locking up culture'. While no-one took the trouble of asking what actually should come out instead, the moderator was quick to remark: 'Are you more coffee table graphics?'

So, in short, if you want to see the utter surprise when a talented and acclaimed information designer is so openly criticized on national television, then watch the movie below.

What should David McCandless have answered instead?

Here is David's own take, as he recently mentioned in an interesting interview at Visualising Data: 'I forgot how TV journalism reduces debate down to two opposing polarities: for and against. Which I think for a topic like information design is a lame approach. How can you be against information design? It's just a technique! So I was caught on the hop a bit and felt quite bemused by what was going on. I thought we might have a debate about its potential and its limitations. But no.'.

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Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - ...