Data visualization can be a very powerful tool. I recently watched a TED talk featuring David McCandless showing the "beauty" of data visualization. He pointed out that most of us are numb to hearing extremely large numbers in the news and often lose a grip on just how big one billion is. We hear that the U.S. and the European Union are in trillions of dollars of debt or that we are spending billions of dollars on our military budget. David makes some great visualizations in the video link below alluding to this. Recently there has been a lot of talk about the sequester cuts. $1.5 trillion over ten years for the sequester sounds like a lot of money right? Below is a simple chart to show how much of a dent the sequester is really making in our spending. Very simple but it helps put that amount into perspective. So next time you hear crazy high numbers in the news think about just exactly how much that means.
TED Talk "Beauty of Data Visualization" - David McCandless
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