This is a TedTalks presentation given by David McCandless on
various data visualizations that I just found very interesting. He showed
visualization on “global media panic” over time and to what level the media was
reporting it. The Killer wasp graphic
was quite funny. He goes on to show one particular media panic, violent video
games, has a cyclic pattern occurring over time in which every November and
April, there is a peak. He claims that the November peak may be due to there
being a surge in video games coming out for Christmas, while April is an
anniversary for the columbine high school tragedy.
At 9:20
in the video, he shows a visualization representing an analogy for “bandwidth
of the senses” which from my understanding basically says “if your senses were
computers, this would be their bit rates.” The visualization clearly shows that
eyesight has the highest “bandwidth.” He goes on to make more analogies about
the senses by saying that the throughput (bit rate) for the eyes is analogous
to the throughput of a computer network whereas the throughput of taste is only
at par with that of a basic pocket calculator.
Another
Data set that he brings into an interesting visualization is a comparison of
GDP to military budget. Given I always thought the US to be a military
powerhouse, if you compare its GDP to military spending; it isn’t actually at
the top. It has the 8th highest Military budget to GDP ratio.
He
wraps up the presentation by saying there are many information problems as in
having just far too much data, and visualizations provide a quick solution
where large amounts of data can be understood very quickly to solve such a
problem.
This video was extremely interesting. I thought the part about needing associated data to actually put raw data in perspective was especially interesting. Its something that I had thought about before, but I think it might have to do with studying statistics and is probably not a very common question that the general public might ask themselves and his visualizations made the importance that much more apparent.
ReplyDeleteHis application of visualization into medical data on supplements was also particularly interesting. The field of diet and nutrition are extremely complicated mainly because of the ridiculously large number of studies and being able to quickly visualize what those studies indicate about various topics is extremely interesting.
On his website there are a multitude of other extremely interesting visualizations, and would probably be worth checking out.
His visualization in relation to the patterns amongst human fears evidenced by the media is extremely intriguing. Like you mentioned about the pattern with the fear about violent video games in November and April and how it may be connected with the Christmas and the Columbine tragedy, the absence of other fears in the media in the time period starting in about September 2001 echoes with the realization that our country didn't stop fearing, it just had focused on the very real fear of terrorism in particular. It was also very humorous to look at the history of fears the public had that are not relevant today, such as the Swine flu epidemic and the millennium Y2K crash.
ReplyDeleteThe presenter's military spending visualization reminds me of my visualization about world tomato production statistics. The US has the highest yield of tomatoes per thousand pounds, but we also allocate more land than most countries to tomato production. In this regard, our tomato production "effectiveness" is not as great as most countries, such as Norway and Sweden. Therefore, I would not regard the US as the world leader in tomato production despite common perceptions, much like the presenter would not view the US as the world leader in military funding when compared against total GDP.