I took a visual look at the casualty figures coming out of the Afghanistan war for The Guardian. It’s part of my effort to understand what’s going on there. It’s not easy reading. But I think it helps to give some context. See what you think.
You can explore the data and sources in this spreadsheet.
NEW: Limited edition signed prints of this image now available in our poster shop.
A concept-map exploring the Left vs Right political spectrum. A collaboration between David McCandless and information artist Stefanie Posavec, taken from my book The Visual Miscellaneum (out Nov 10th).
Of course, the political spectrum is not quite so polarised. Actually, it’s more of a diamond shape, apparently. But this is how it’s mostly presented via the media – left wing vs. right wing, liberal vs. conservative, Labour vs Tory. And perhaps in our minds too…
Well, certainly in my mind. Researching this showed me that, despite my inevitable journalistic lean to the ‘left’, I am actually a bit more ‘right’ than I suspected.
This kind of visual approach to mapping concepts really excites me. I like the way it coaxes me to entertain two apparently contradictory value systems at the same time. Or, in other words, I like the way it f**ks with my head.
I’ve got a few more of these coming from my book. They do a similar act of mind-flossing. Stay tuned.
Oh and if there’s enough demand, we’re going to do a signed, limited edition poster run of this image before Christmas. Email informationisbeautiful [at] gmail [dot] com if you’re interested
The original design concept was “something like a rosette”. But Stefanie did an amazing job taking it way further.
(I’ll be doing a ‘Great Visualizers’ piece on her in the future. But you can see some of her work here: itsbeenreal.co.uk. My particular favourite are her literary organisms. Truly beautiful and very informational. Yum.)
There are two versions with different colours: a US and a World version. This is because the US and Switzerland are the only countries in the world where red = right wing and blue = left wing. Grrr!
Thanks to data gathering by Brian Solis. My data here.
In passing, it’s interesting how Google Ad Planner gives detailed data on every big website online. But not on any of Google’s own sites.
There’s a lot of talk of a new world climate agreement in Copenhagen in December to succeed Kyoto. I wondered how the signatories of the first one were doing. Make up your own mind.
As ever, this was difficult to research. A lot of the important data was locked in a huge European Environment Agency report. And then summarised by a byzantine graph. In the end I had to trawl through individual country reports to get the figures I needed.
It was also tricky to visualise. I chose quite a designery approach which demands that you dig into the image a bit to get the understanding flowing. I hope the result isn’t too byzantine either.
The design took several versions to get right. If you’re interested, you can see some drafts here (or as a PDF).
A few people asked for this. And I was curious about it too. So here it is. Case fatality rates for well-known diseases.
This was very hard to research. The AIDS/HIV figures are especially difficult to find. Many of the numbers are locked into the tables of 1,000,000 page PDF reports. Grrrr!
(I tell you – when I sleep these days, my dreams unfold in rows and columns…)
Anyway, if anyone can find tighter, better figures, or can think of any key diseases I’ve missed (preferably with data!), please get in touch.
UPDATE 1: I’ve added this. Thanks to Gorka Cortazar for the suggestion.
UPDATE 2: I’ve edited the Seasonal Flu fatality figure, previously 9% to 0.1%. The original figure was based on the number of patients *severely* ill with ‘flu who died, not the overall number of infected people. Sorry for the error. (Thanks to Lucie Melahn for the correction). I’ve also reclassified MRSA to “serious” or invasive MRSA.
The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions
I notice these days that I can spend hours at my computer, in a cloud. A swampy blur of digital activity, smeared across various activities and media and software.
Emailing, writing, tweeting, designing, browsing, taking calls, Skyping, Facebooking, RSS Feeding – all blurred into a single technological trance.
I seem to switch randomly from one to the other. But actually is there a subtle hierarchy in this cloud? Do I prefer some distractions over others? I think so.
In this diagram, each level in this hierarchy trumps the next.
So, if you get a new msg on Facebook, but your landline rings, you’ll take the landline call. You might have a spasmodic moment of ‘uh? wadd I do’. But, usually, you’ll take the call.
Similarly, if you get a new SMS whilst opening a new online dating message, you’ll be hard pressed not to read that SMS. It’ll take a great force of will. You may attempt to do both simultaneously. But if you really observe yourself closely, one will take priority – even if it’s only by milliseconds. The SMS will win your attention.
And so on up the chart…
(I understand this post reveals much about my pitiful life. There’s no need to say that in the comments, thanks.)
But if I’ve missed any distractions, feel free to suggest them. I realise AIM and MS Messenger introduce a whole universe of distraction. I don’t go there. I have enough distractions.
Billions spent on this. Billions spent on that. What does it all look like? Hopefully The Billion Dollar Gram will help.
This image arose out of a frustration with the reporting of billion dollar amounts in the media. That is, they’re reported as self-evident facts, when, in fact, they’re mind-boggling and near incomprehensible without context. But they can start to be understood visually and relatively, IMHO.
(This is one of the first images I created for my book. So a lot of the figures are from 2006/07. I’ve also visually cheated slightly here and there to make everything fit)
I hoping this will be a “living image” that I’ll keep updating all the time. So if you find any interesting, juicy or eye-popping billions, please comment below (with a source). Let’s see how high we can make this image!
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Is the H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Safe?
Some frequent questions about the H1N1 Swine Flu vaccine answered as clearly and as visually as I could manage. A few people asked for this so I thought I would oblige.
It was hell on earth to research. There’s a jungle of science around H1N1. Very hard to hack through. You can check all my sources here.
You can check all my sources here.
UPDATE 1: Interesting story here on how the H1N1 vaccine is made
UPDATE 2: Jan 2010: There’s now a Greek version of the H1N1 Swine Flu image. (Thanks to George Papadakis) and a Hebrew version (thanks Matty)
Explore the sources In this Google doc
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