Recent controversy about the budget of the BBC here in the UK made me curious about its spending. Here’s the BBC-o-Gram, a visualization I created for the Guardian Datablog, exploring the costs of running one of the biggest broadcasters in the world.

See the visual. Explore the data.

Do they provide good value?

A generative data-visualisation of all the scientific evidence for popular health supplements by David McCandless and Andy Perkins.

I’m a bit of a health nut. Keeping fit. Streamlining my diet. I plan to live to the age of 150 in fact. But I get frustrated by constant, conflicting reports and studies about health supplements.

Is Vitamin C worth taking or not? Does Echinacea kill colds? Am I missing out not drinking litres of Goji juice, wheatgrass extract and flaxseed oil every day?

In an effort to give myself a quick reference guide, I dove into the scientific evidence and created a visualization for my book. And then worked with the awesome Andy Perkins on a further interactive, generative “living image”.

Play with interactive version | See the still image

This visualisation generates itself from this Google Doc. So when new research comes out, we can quickly update the data and regenerate the image. (How cool is that??) Hopefully then this should be a useful web resources for years to come.

About the image

This image is a “balloon race”. The higher a bubble, the greater the evidence for its effectiveness. But the supplements are only effective for the conditions listed inside the bubble.

You might also see multiple bubbles for certain supps. These is because some supps affect a range of conditions, but the evidence quality varies from condition to condition. For example, there’s strong evidence that Green Tea is good for cholesterol levels. But evidence for its anti-cancer effects is conflicting. In these cases, we give a supp another bubble.

The evidence

We only considered large, human, randomized placebo-controlled trials in our data scrape – wherever possible. No animal trials. No cell studies. Many of the health claims made by the $23 billion supplements industry are based on non-human trials. We wanted to cut through that.

This piece was doggedly researched by myself, and researchers Pearl Doughty-White and Alexia Wdowski. We looked at the abstracts of over 1500 studies on PubMed (run by US National Library Of Medicine) and Cochrane.org (which hosts meta-studies of scientific research). It took us several months to seek out the evidence – or lack of.

You can see our key results in this spreadsheet. (It’s the same spreadsheet that generates the interactive image).

Generation Game

This is our first interactive piece here on Information Is Beautiful. We’ll be doing more generative pieces over the next few months so stay tuned!

Updates

UPDATE 1: 6th Mar 2010 - We’ve updated the spreadsheet (changes in bold) and the viz after great feedback and new evidence and corrections from our amazing visitors. Thank you all so much.

Quick summary: We’ve added CoQ10, cocoa, capsaicin, L-Lysine and hyaluronic acid to the chart. And adjusted entries for Magnesium, Tumeric and Omega 3 (part of a massive downgrade of Omega 3 in fact). Read the change-log for full details

UPDATE 1: 10th Mar 2010 - Omega 3 has been downgraded in almost every category. See the spreadsheet (changes in bold) for more details.

See the visualisation | Check out the spreadsheet

Feed Us Back

As ever, we welcome your thoughts, crits, comments, corrections, compliments, tweaks, new evidence, missing supps, and general feedback. Thank you!

It’s difficult to keep track of all this shifting information on sea level rises.

It doesn’t help that in climate change reporting, a consistent but bewildering assumption is repeatedly made: that we understand what a 1 metre sea level rise actually means.

A “1 metre sea level rise” is in the same domain as “1 ton of carbon” or “£1 billion”. That is, it’s meaningless without context or some link to our everyday lives.

So, in this latest diagram for The Guardian Datablog, I’ve tried to sum up all the current research on sea level rises. What will happen, when it will happen, and where all that sea water will come from. And to suggest what cities will flood When Sea Levels Attack!

The Billion Euro-O-Gram
Euros are the latest currency to get the Billion Dollar O Gram treemap treatment in our collaboration with German newspaper Die Zeit. In a burst of impressive technik, they’ve rolled the image out as an interactive PDF. Click on the boxes to see the sources. Nice!

Infographics for Haiti
Good Magazine just ran an competition for budding visualizers to help us better grok the situation in earthquake struck Haiti. Some really great contributions for talented web folk. This from Emily Schwartzman was my favourite:

Oscar Piracy
Waxy does a great line in piracy data analysis. His yearly round-up of pirated Oscar screeners shows an interesting patterns. Are Hollywood’s copyright measures finally bearing fruit?

Maps For Timetravellers
A little journey through the 38 draft process than led to our Timelines time travel image. Part of a new ‘How To’ section on Infobeautiful.

As ever, if you’ve seen some work you think should be morsel-ified, please send it through.

My lovely book, Information Is Beautiful, is out in the UK (Amazon).

To celebrate, I’ve teamed up with HarperCollins to give away five signed copies.

All you have to do to enter the prize draw is become a fan on our much-neglected-but-soon-not-to-be-so-neglected Facebook fan page.

We’ll choose five members of the group at random on Monday 15th February and contact them via email. It’ll be my pleasure to write a personal message in each copy.

Here’s the link to the Facebook group. See you on there.

The Book

Information Is Beautiful is a collection of infographics, data visualisations and information designs, covering everything from pop to philosophy – all with the minimum of words. Inspired by the experience of clicking through the web, it has no chapters, no overt structure – it’s just beautifully random.

The UK version essentially the same book as the US copy, The Visual Miscellaneum. Except it’s a true hardback book and it’s printed on uncoated (matt) paper, rather than coated (shiny) paper of the American version. Personally I think it makes for a more ‘arty’ book. Plus it has *that smell*. One I’m, in fact, huffing right now.

Please note: Since the US and UK versions were printed at the same time (last year), so the first edition of the UK version has the same minor printing errors. They affect 12 of the 256 pages. Really sorry about that. I’ve uploaded an errata. It’s passworded. The password is the last word in the bottom right hand corner of page 159 of the book CASE SENSITIVE. Thank you.

Some more screenies to savour.

Link to the Facebook fan page. Order the book on Amazon.co.uk. American version here. Advert over.

The global response to the Haiti earthquake has been extraordinary and generous. But in the midst of all the reporting, it’s difficult to keep track of the numbers.

In particular, who has given what, who has dug deepest, and how the Haiti relief fund currently compares to those of other tragedies.

This is an image I created for The Guardian Datablog to visualise the international contributions to the Haiti Earthquake recovery effort as of 24th January 2010.

And the data is here for you to explore. (Thanks to Phil Wand and Jeffrey Grabell for the idea).

Here in the UK, there’s been a recent spate of harassment and even arrests of innocent photographers by police invoking anti-terrorism laws.

So we’ve compiled an easy-to-read wallet-sized infosheet of photographer legal rights here in the UK (PDF). It’s designed by David McCandless and Joe Swainson. The information is sourced directly from the UK Metropolitan Police and distilled from other bust cards out there.

Download and print the PDF, cut it out and stick it in your wallet or purse. If you’re stopped by police for taking photos, whip out the sheet and instantly check your rights.

Of course, it’s never a good plan to antagonise the politzei. We hear they’re particularly unimpressed by having ‘infosheets’ waved in their faces. If you are stopped for suspicious photography, a good response is usually something like:

“I’m an amateur photographer taking pictures for fun. Would you like to see them officer?”

NOTE: Note Saturday 23rd Jan 2010, there’s a Mass Photo Gathering in Trafalgar Square in London 12 Noon to protest photographers rights. It’s organized by PhotographerNotATerrorist.org

If you can help us with photographers rights cards for other countries, such as the US, please get in touch. Thanks!

Dating site OKCupid uses data from their members to overturn myths about what makes a successful online dating profile photo. A fascinating & funny read.

Summary:

men – mysteriously looking away from camera, unsmiling, holding an animal
women – flirting into camera, outdoors, with a hint of cleavage

They also did another great data-piece about what to say in an opening message.

[via Waxy.org]

New York-based designer Mike Deal has a great project going visualizing The Beatles.

I especially like this one. It tracks the keys of Beatles’ album tracks. You can see at a glance their poppier, more harmonic albums.

The project is an offshoot of an ongoing kaleidoscopic project at chartingthebeatles.com and on Flickr.

If it grabs you, head on over and take part. See you there!

The Great Firewall Of China.

Oops. I guess we can add a certain beautiful infographics website to that ban list.

Data here.

Update 1: There’s a more detailed, annotated version on The Guardian Datablog.