Found: Entertaining Information Visualization Speech From TED

I finally got around to viewing the Hans Rosling, GapMinder speech from the TED conference.  Worth checking out if you like data visualization (or human development trends).   If you’re like me and enjoy “wallowing” in data, it can be played with here and here.

Comments

[Paddy Mullen]

It was interesting, and I did play with it. I thought some slides bordered on chartjunk http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/

The area charts in the 2nd and 3rd sections were confusing. I had a hard time quickly telling the height of any shaded area that wasn't on the bottom. Separate line plots for the income distribution by continent would have helped me more accurately compare regions. Some Lorenz Curves http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_curve would have also been nice.

Specifically the bubble chart on the 4th piece. It's an XY Scatter plot, why use two factors to convey one variable (width of circle and the position along the x-axis). Another nitpick on this chart, it would have been helpful if they had labeled the y-axis as logarithmic.

I think that the pretty, animated visuals worked well for capturing attention, and even conveying changes. Looked at statically however, I could easily see how the charts would be misleading.