the stories behind the numbers
We’ve just been watching David McCandless’ TED Talk on the beauty of data visualization. It contains some nice examples of how the way in which you present data can reveal (or hide) what’s going on. And presenting data is such a stimulating mix of art and science.
It reminds us of the wonderful books by Edward Tufte. One of our favourite graphics is in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.
source | wikimedia commons (click on image to open original)
It is by Charles Joseph Minard, a French engineer, and shows the terrible fate of Napoleon’s army in Russia. Beginning on the left on the Polish-Russian border, the thick band shows the size of the army as it invaded Russia. The width of the band indicates the size of the army at each place on the map. The path of the retreat from Moscow is depicted by the darker, lower band, which is linked to a temperature scale anddates at the bottom of the chart.


















