Unit 6 Painting with Numbers

Jer Thorp We first started hearing about data visualization in the late 1800s, early 1900s,
with graphics like this. This is Florence Nightingale’s graphic showing the
casualty count of soldiers, and her point was that soldiers were dying more of
disease than they were dying on the battlefield. At the same time, John Snow
produced this famous graphic which plotted the incidence of cholera in a
certain area of London. And from this graphic, he was able to discover what
the source of that cholera epidemic was—in this case, it was a single well.

[…] So, I’d suggest there are two reasons why we visualize data. To reduce
things, to make them simpler, and to reveal things, to show us things that we
have never seen before.

Narrator In 2009, Thorp created this infographic which he calls “Just Landed.” First, he
gathered data on Twitter. He looked for tweets like “I've just landed in
Hawaii” or “I've just landed in New York.” Then, he looked for information on
users’ profiles to find out where they were from. The final result was a visual
representation of world travel—just by listening to people on Twitter.

Infographics help us see the world in a different way. They can also help us
understand complex information. This is a scientific report published by the
Kepler project team in 2011, describing the search for exoplanets—planets
outside of our solar system. The paper contains a lot of detailed information
and charts, but Thorp wondered, “Is there a more interesting way to present
this information?”

Jer Thorp So, I thought, “How could I understand this system a little bit better?” So, I sat
down for about a day, and I created a visualization of that data.

Narrator Thorp placed all of the exoplanets that had been discovered by Kepler as if
they were circling a single star. He also represented each exoplanet using color
and size. In this way, he was able to better understand the exoplanets—such as
their distance from their star, their size, and how hot they are.

By reorganizing the data, Thorp shows how visualization can help us see and
think about things from different angles. He feels the Kepler project is one of
the best examples of his strategy for designing graphics.

Jer Thorp And this strategy—it’s a two-word strategy—it’s called “Ooh/Aah.” And that
means, the first thing that I want people to do is I want them to say “Ooh”
when they see the visualization, but that “ooh” is useless unless there’s an
“aah.” I want that learned moment that comes from really being able to
discover something that you didn't understand before.
Narrator According to Thorp, if there's too much “ooh,” then the infographic may look
impressive, but may not actually have enough information. On the other hand,
an infographic with too much “aah” may be overly detailed and not very
engaging. So the next time you look at an infographic, consider this: is there a
good balance of “ooh” and “aah”?