Summary
Highlights
McCandless created the 'Billion Dollar-A-Gram' to provide context to large monetary figures reported in the press, which are often meaningless without visualization. By scaling boxes according to reported amounts and color-coding them by motivation (e.g., fighting, giving, profiteering), he reveals connections and patterns. Examples include OPEC's revenue versus its climate change fund, American charity donations versus foreign aid, and the escalating costs of the Iraq War and the financial crisis. This visualization transforms data into an understandable landscape, an 'information map'.
This visualization maps media-reported fears over time, with height representing intensity. Examples include swine flu, bird flu, the millennium bug, asteroid collisions, and killer wasps. A surprising pattern emerges in 'violent video games' with bi-annual peaks: one in November (Christmas releases) and another in April. The April peak is linked to the Columbine shooting anniversary, with media retrospectives and copycat events reigniting the fear. Another pattern shows a gap in media panics starting September 2001, indicating that real fear (9/11) overshadowed perceived fears.
McCandless proposes 'data is the new soil' metaphor, describing data as a fertile, creative medium from which visualizations bloom. He demonstrates this by showing a cryptic data set that rises twice a year (Easter and before Christmas), peaks every Monday, and flattens in summer. This pattern, revealed through visualization, represents Facebook breakups. This highlight the idea that asking the right questions and working with data in the right way can unveil interesting insights.
McCandless shares his personal journey into design, realizing he had a dormant design literacy from years of exposure to media. He argues that we are all becoming visualizers, demanding visual aspects to information. Visual information is effortless and provides relief in an 'information jungle.' Citing physicist Tor Nørretranders, he explains that our sense of sight has the highest bandwidth, rapidly processing information unconsciously. Combining the 'language of the eye' (patterns, colors) with the 'language of the mind' (words, numbers) enhances understanding.
visualizations can alter our perspective. When examining military budgets, the US appears to have the largest. However, by comparing budgets as a proportion of GDP, the picture changes dramatically, with the US dropping to eighth place. Similarly, China has the most soldiers in absolute numbers but drops to 124th when considering the proportion of its vast population. This emphasizes that absolute figures can be misleading; relative figures connected to other data provide a fuller, more accurate picture and can change our mindset, as Hans Rosling suggests.
McCandless presents a 'balloon race' visualization for nutritional supplements, showing efficacy (height) versus popularity (bubble size) and indicating a 'worth it' line. This visualization compressed information from 1,000 biomedical studies, demonstrating data visualization as a powerful form of 'knowledge compression.' This static image was then converted into an interactive app, allowing users to filter by conditions (e.g., heart health) or types (e.g., plants). The data is stored in a Google Doc, making it a 'living image' that can update instantly when new evidence emerges.
Information visualization can also be applied to abstract ideas and concepts, such as the political spectrum. This visualization helps understand different worldviews. McCandless found that designing this image forced him to acknowledge perspectives he initially disagreed with, leading to a more balanced and less biased representation. He found that seeing conflicting viewpoints visually is less threatening and more engaging than being told or forced to listen to them, fostering a 'joyous' engagement with diverse ideas.
Design solves problems, and information design addresses societal information problems like overload, distrust, and lack of transparency. Visualizing information offers quick solutions, and even when the information is 'terrible,' the visual can be beautiful, providing clarity. As an example, he compares the CO2 emissions of the Icelandic volcano to grounded planes, quickly showing that grounded planes would have emitted more, leading to a 'carbon neutral volcano'.
We are constantly bombarded with information, leading to data glut. The solution lies in visualizing information to reveal patterns, connections, and to focus only on important data, or simply because it looks cool.