Tech News: Statistics come alive

Development aid is all about politics and politics is all about convincing an audience to support our cause. With the advent of the Internet information is at everybody's fingertips. In fact, information has become so easily obtained that we often forget that in order to convince our audience we first have to make them understand the information and its implications. Steve Krug teaches us in Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability that internet users don't read our web pages, they merely scan them for interesting information. In the fraction of a second we have to both catch their attention and get our message across.

And this is where the visual representation of statistical data comes into play. Accoring to David McCandless 'the approach is simple: apply the rules of visual design to information - make information into images, rather than text.' His Billion Dollar O Gram shows the billions of dollars spend on this and that as an eye-catching and easy-to-understand image. Another beautiful example of visual representation of statistical data is Charles Minard’s classic Map of Napoleon’s Army’s Russian Campaign from 1869. In case you find such things as interesting as I do, you should consider getting Edward R. Tufte's classic books on visual representation

• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information,
• Envisioning Information and
• Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative