In this TED Talk, David McCandless talks about the beauty of visualisation as he discusses various attributes to how and why it is so glorious. Data visualisation is so important in the way it stores information which can be understood within a short time if the design is curated in a practical and appealing structure. But of course, in order to design – data and statistical information plays a key role in this in the process.
Data visualisation allows us to intake information without feeling so bombarded with numbers and information. The way in which the numbers and categories of the graph resonates is relieving and settling.

This image arose out of frustration as they state the purpose and relationship between the numbers, for example purple is for fighting and red is for giving money away. It shows the priorities and how money is being used in each categories.

Reflection:
The beauty of data visualisation is purposeful in the way of our life to understand information given to us, so we can process the data. The numbers and visual factors are important in helping us combat the issues that arise to show the differences in our future and to also compare.

Part 1: What is Data Journalism?
It’s about using the power of data. They key information and data is important of the process of it. You are enables to do an interactive map, rather than being confined and restricted to just text or image based articles. Data Journalism gives you the power to interpret information visually, giving the designer a controlled environment of what they want the reader to focus more on.

“Journalism is the recognition of the power of measurement.”

– Professor Christoforos Anagnostopoulos

In this video provided by The Guardian, journalists defined what data journalism means and highlighted the importance of it in journalism. It plays a key role in giving an insight to relevant and important articles that text based articles cannot do. It basically is a ‘modern way’ of journalism, not just putting out opinions but it is of actual factual information within that data visualisation.

Part 2: History of Data Journalism at The Guardian
Journalist have been trying to battle with data journalism since the beginning of time and have attempting to present data in an interesting way to the reader in order to attract them.
An example of the attempt was in the 1821 of The Manchester Guardian, seen using the new brigade structure of the South African Tactics. This graph was implemented in between the cluster of texts. There were some elements of design and type, every easy and simple attempt at data visualising.

Part 3: Data journalism in action: the London Olympics
People were obsessed about the Olympics and liked to keep track of which countries had obtained more medals in medal tables. This is when data journalism took in place of tracking these numbers of medals according to each country, allowing people to compare the information being given through a graph.
The Guardian had attempted to showcase this data but there were some inconsistent information, so that’s when real statistical information comes into contact to enable an efficient graph.

Graphs are used to represent data information visually. This is supported in its various ways of presentation styles rather than for aesthetic purposes, which designers often mistake the use of graphs for. The main idea is that the reader is able to understand what this graph is presenting and what information is serves to document.
We use graphs to make comparisons easier.

This graph is another example of a graph style. It determines the Maket Capitalisation of the World’s Biggest Banks in January 2007 and January 2009. The circles are used to represent the billions of dollars for each category, which are separated using colours and scaling of these circles as they are stacked over one another.

It is important to consider the human perception of graph presentation styles when creating a chart. For instance in the chart above, our eyes are able to quickly determine the less and greater number of which bank made more of less throughout 2007 and 2009. This is all thanks to the practicality of the graph.

Reflection:
I’ve learned that in order to make an effective and efficient graph, you have to consider the reader’s point of view and the practicality of the the graph when implementing the data information. Though it may seem tempting to go through with an aesthetic approach, enabling a graph with legible design is more effective for comparisons.

Historical and contemporary visualisations methods that are being discussed throughout this lecture demonstrate the roots of this method and how it was implemented through time. The examples given were events that took place in war such as The Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia in 1812.

Above is a graph used to document the Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, which reads from right to left. This chart was created by Charles Joseph soon after the war occurred 50 years after, so in order to document this event there was this chart to document the temperature and distance of which has been curated through a systematic approach in terms of data and design.

In data visualisation, there are various types of data that can apply the same information but look different.

The types include:
– Nominal: pertaining to names
– Ordinal: order
– Interval: numeric, can do mathematical operations on it but does not have a meaningful zero point. Examples include calendars, temperatures
– Ratio: zero means you dont have anything of that type, some variable examples include height, weight, age, money

Above is a graph on data types to break them down and differentiate them more easier like how ratio and interval are numerical based while ordinal and nominal are categorical based.

Reflection:
Data types play an important role in data visualisation and acknowledging these different data types have helped further improve my understanding about how data can vary. Categorising these data types enable a better understanding when there is label.