"Every field has some central tension it is trying to resolve. Visualization deals with the inhuman scale of the information and the need to present it at the very human scale of what the eye can see," says Mr. Wattenberg. This is a direct quote from The Economist's special report on the Data Deluge.
There's a whole class of water related metaphors for an overabundance of data (ocean, river, fire hose, tsunami, etc.). The art of rendering the important facts from this stream (there it is again) of information should not be mistaken as a problem for a graphic designer. All leaders review data and use data to reason, make decisions, inform, persuade, and negotiate in all their fields of responsibility. Managers may know their data, but can they represent what they know well enough to show others?
That's where the visual display of information becomes so important. It's all about Wattenberg's quote (he is now at IBM working with data-visualization specialists) which, correctly in my view, suggests that to bring the important facts into view requires a higher level of skill than being able to produce a pie chart in PowerPoint.
One interesting place that combines the wonderful symbolism of the Periodic Chart of Elements with Data Visualization can be found at Visual-Literacy.Org, an e-learning site. Instead of showing how metals, non-metals, or inert gases relate, the developers of this site use the same idea to show how data, information, concept, strategy, metaphor, and compound visualizations can be organized. Each block of this chart reveals a method of representing data. As you scroll a pointer across the field, a sample will pop up, as shown in the video below.
Periodic Chart of Visual Literacy from Ron Crossland & Associates on Vimeo.
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