We use visualisation as a way to present large pr complex data sets in a way that enables our audience to grasp the complexities with the least amount of work possible. In this week lecture pod, week looked at historical uses of data visualisations and more specifically at Napoleons Invasion on Russia, Florence Nightingale Crimean War data and Otto Neurath’s introduction of ISOTYPE.
We first viewed Napoleons invasion of Russia in 1812 and the graph below shows the strength of troops at the start of the invasion and the decrease of strength towards the end. It does this by the line thickness becoming thinner to represent a decrease in strength. This visualisation enables viewers to grasp a difficult concept and allow them understand the concept faster. By constructing a graph, it makes interpreting the data easier than viewing the raw data collected. Graphs allow the audience to view information much faster and get the full picture without the complications of sorting through data.
During the Crimean War in 1858, Florence Nightingale realised that soldiers were dying from causes that were not related to battle wounds. Nightingale strived to improve the living conditions of injured troops and kept a record of the death tolls as evidence to put forward an argument to the British Military. She turned her records into graphs that show the causes of mortality in the easts army soldiers. The graph uses area to show mortality rates for each month of the year. Interestingly, she discovered that troops were dying of diseases 32x the rate of those with battle wounds.
Otto Neurath was a pioneer in socialist politics and economics in Vienna. His mission was to make social and economic relationships understandable though visualisation. The point being made is that rather than overwhelming the audience with information, Neurath has simplified the data into a visualisation using graphics that are simple and easy to understand.
Why Visualise?
Visualising helps us to gain an insight and understanding into complex issues.
Extracting meaning from a table is difficult as our brains have not developed to deal with the large amount of data in this form. By using graphs with information as a visual tools, helps us to understand the data and save time/energy that would have been used to try and understand the information.
The key point from this lecture is that methods of data visualisations have evolved over time to make reading data easier and that simplifying data is effective in communicating a story effectively and quickly. The idea is that if you don’t present your data to readers so they can see, read, explore and analyse it, then they may not even take your word for it. You need to try and convince the audience or give them the information to convince themselves.
DATA VISUALISATION 