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Interesting Visual Statistics

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Making Data Make Sense

Sometimes complex ideas make so much more sense when you have a visual representation. Sometimes creative charts just look cool. And it is scientifically proven that people learn and retain more information when it is presented in more than one mode.

Be sure to check out the humorous Daily Show Stats

* check out this related post from Seth Godin's Blog How to make graphs that work *

Contents at a Glance

Beautiful Data
Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline
Time lapse map of Obesity in USA
Distribution of Wealth in the U.S.
How Many Gallons of Fuel Does it Take to...
Sugar Stacks

The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions

Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions

by: Toby Segaran, Jeff Hammerbacher

Amazon Price: $24.55 (as of 02/15/2012)

In this insightful book, you'll learn from the best data practitioners in the field just how wide-ranging -- and beautiful -- working with data can be. Join 39 contributors as they explain how they developed simple and elegant solutions on projects ranging from the Mars lander to a Radiohead video.

With Beautiful Data, you will:
* Explore the opportunities and challenges involved in working with the vast number of datasets made available by the Web
* Learn how to visualize trends in urban crime, using maps and data mashups
* Discover the challenges of designing a data processing system that works within the constraints of space travel
* Learn how crowdsourcing and transparency have combined to advance the state of drug research
* Understand how new data can automatically trigger alerts when it matches or overlaps pre-existing data
* Learn about the massive infrastructure required to create, capture, and process DNA data

That's only small sample of what you'll find in Beautiful Data. For anyone who handles data, this is a truly fascinating book.

Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline

click the images to go to the source with more info

A report commissioned by pipeline sponsor TransCanada now shows that connecting tar sands producers with Gulf Coast refiners actually pushes gas prices up for everybody.

Keystone XL Won't Decrease "Unfriendly" Oil Imports Either » Rainforest Action Network Blog

Distribution of Wealth in the U.S.

click the images to go to the source with more info

Eat the Rich | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

How Many Gallons of Fuel Does it Take to Travel 350 Miles?

click the smaller image to go to the full sized source with more info

Sugar Stacks

click the images to go to the source with more info

Sweet, but not that sugary.

That's more sugar than a whole pint of ice cream!
(medium chocolate shake)

Miniature Earth

If the world's popuation were reduced to 100, it would look something like this...

The Miniature Earth Project

Similar: 100 People Foundation

The Miniature Earth: by MakiProductions | video info

2,379 ratings | 2,315,923 views

curated content from YouTube

The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.
-John W. Tukey. Exploratory Data Analysis. 1977

Watching the Growth of Walmart Across America

click the smaller image to go to the full sized source with more info

Mapped spread of Walmart using Modest Maps. It starts slow and then spreads like wildfire in the southeast and makes its way towards the west coast.

Squidoo Charts

click the smaller image to go to the full sized source with more info

thefluffanutta says: "I have analysed almost 70 thousand lenses at Squidoo by 2,250 Lensmasters, and I've identified a number of issues that common to a staggering 80% of these lenses. Some of these issues are preventing the lenses from ranking well in the Search Engines, and many Lensmasters have posted to the forums complaining about a lack of traffic.

Here is an overview of the issues I have found, and how Lensmasters can fix them."

4 Out Of 5 Lenses Have Poor Health!

Death and Taxes: 2009

click the smaller image to go to the full sized source with more info

"Death and Taxes:2009" is a representational poster of the federal discretionary budget; the amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected representatives in Congress. Basically, your federal income taxes. The data is from the President's budget request for 2009. It will be debated, amended, and approved by Congress by October 1st to begin the fiscal year.

The poster provides a uniquely revealing look at our national priorities, that fluctuate yearly, according to the wishes of the President, the power of Congress, and the will of the people. If you pay taxes, then you have paid for a small part of everything in the poster.

Statistics TED Talk

Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world

Researcher Hans Rosling uses his cool data tools to show how countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He demos Dollar Street, comparing households of varying income levels worldwide. Then he does something really amazing.
TED talk

Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world: by TEDtalksDirector | video info

885 ratings | 184,419 views

curated content from YouTube

Environmental Charts

click the smaller image to go to the full sized source with more info

To replay, SHIFT + reload

Left: All the water in the world (1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it)
including sea water, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds, etc.
Right: All the air in the atmosphere (5140 trillion tonnes of it)
gathered into a ball at sea-level density.
Shown on the same scale as the Earth.

Vegetarian Statistics

click the smaller image to go to the full sized source with more info

Can People Have Meat and a Planet, Too?

Treehugger: On Moving Toward Vegetarianism

The Societal Schism Between Poverty and Vegetarianism : TreeHugger

Related Lens

The Most Enjoyably
Pointless Pie Charts

Interesting Visual Statistics Posts

Feb 13, 2012 @ 3:56 amAbstract maps of the United States from FlowingData: Esquire invited a handful of map-makers to represent the United States outside its borders. Red state, blue state, big state, small state, north and south and east and west: How we define our similari...
Feb 11, 2012 @ 8:23 pmJeremy Lin is no fluke from FlowingData: Nate Silver looks at past players who have scored 20 or more points, had 6 or more assists, and shot better than 50 percent in four or more games in a row. It's an illustrious list of all-stars, inclu...
Feb 10, 2012 @ 3:27 amFamous dances in television and cinema illustrated from FlowingData: In a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Dancing Plague of 1518, Niege Borges illustrates dances from a number of shows and movies in his project of the same name. All of them available in print, including...
Feb 9, 2012 @ 3:24 amWhy I want to quit cable from FlowingData: Growing up, most of my friends had cable television, but whenever I brought it up, my parents would always say that I watched enough TV already (which was true). So it was always a treat when we went...
Feb 8, 2012 @ 12:45 pmTaxi migration in Manhattan from FlowingData: While we're on the topic of things moving on a map of changing camera angles, class project Taxi, by Tom McKeogh, Eliza Montgomery and Juan Saldarriaga, shows the movements of said vehicles in Manhat...
Feb 8, 2012 @ 3:24 amAnimation shows national migration patterns from FlowingData: Even Westvang uses tax return data to visualize migration patterns of 300,000 Norwegians. When running at full speed the visualization is clearly lacking in terms of salient features, yet I find it i...
Feb 7, 2012 @ 5:39 amWeave for visualization development from FlowingData: Web-based Analysis and Visualization Environment, or Weave for short, is open source software intended for flexible visualization. Weave (BETA 1.0) is a new web-based visualization platform designed t...
Feb 7, 2012 @ 4:32 amMembers Only: How to Make a Contour Map from FlowingData: Filled contour plots are useful for looking at density across two dimensions and are often used to visualize geographic data. It's straightforward to make them in R — once you get your data in t...
Feb 6, 2012 @ 3:29 amTracking the grizzly bear in emotional interactive... from FlowingData: In a blend of data and storytelling, Jeremy Mendes and Leanne Allison dig into surveillance logs generated by a monitored grizzly bear between 2001 and 2009. The final work is a moving interactive doc...

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jimmyworldstar Feb 6, 2012 @ 7:06 am | delete

The obesity rate in this country is awful, thank you for the interesting statistics more people need to be made aware of these.

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curious0927 Jan 29, 2012 @ 11:35 am | delete

Great lens. I really enjoy the topics you chose to measure! Blessed! Bookmarked for return! Thanks, keep making lenses!

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GrammaLinda Jan 27, 2012 @ 11:15 am | delete

Visual representation of data is essential for teaching complex subjects. Great lens! Blessings!

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sandyspider Jan 4, 2012 @ 9:52 pm | delete

I am very much a visual person. Great job on the charts and photos. Blessed! Please add this to the plexo on my New Year 2012 Blessings and Zazzle lens.

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LittleLindaPinda Jan 4, 2012 @ 9:12 pm | delete

Fantastic. I am definitely a chart person. Thanks for all your hard work to present this to us.

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Loveyourshoes Jan 4, 2012 @ 9:16 am | delete

Really good lens, visually brilliant and a lot to take in initially. Ever heard the famous quote from Winston Churchill that there are ," Lies, damn lies and statistics " It is true that statistics can be presented in various ways though. Sousebaby is right though when she says a picture is worth a thousand words sometimes.eg a map !

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sousababy Dec 15, 2011 @ 2:46 am | delete

Came back to google +1 this gem (nice to see it has a purple star too).

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sousababy Dec 15, 2011 @ 2:45 am | delete

I really must revisit this . . since explaining some things with words doesn't effectively convey the massive scale that I am trying to emphasize (for some projects I work on). A picture (or visual graphic) really is worth a thousand words. Thanks for such great ideas. Sincerely, Rose

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Trender_ Dec 2, 2011 @ 6:19 am | delete

Really cool lens. So much interesting data I will have to remember to come back.

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sukkran Nov 22, 2011 @ 2:02 am | delete

you have such an exemplary and kind heart, and i can not thank you enough for all you did (and continue to do) to help me by your encouraging comments and blessings. thanks again for everything. my best wishes. sukkran

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BeautifulAlise Nov 13, 2011 @ 6:46 pm | delete

Wow! This is great! I love interesting facts

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spartakct Nov 11, 2011 @ 7:28 pm | delete

Wonderfully interesting! thanks for sharing!

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COUNTRYLUTHIER Nov 4, 2011 @ 5:52 pm | delete

What a stark set of visual statistics. Thanks for the eye opener!

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MelissaInTheSky Oct 28, 2011 @ 3:44 pm | delete

What a fascinating lens! Wow! This is so cool. I will be sharing it with others. Thanks for putting it together. Thank you, also, for liking and commenting on my OWS lens!

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Pinkchic18 Oct 25, 2011 @ 8:03 am | delete

Blessed by a squid angel! This lens was simply great! I am one of those people who have to see things to understand them and this was really interesting to see. Thank you for putting this together, very, very neat!!

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sukkran Oct 24, 2011 @ 11:40 pm | delete

very interesting and well presented lens.

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wilfredpadilla Sep 28, 2011 @ 6:32 am | delete

Very interesting! You can say that again!

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Mermaiden Sep 26, 2011 @ 5:56 pm | delete

i'm totally a visual learner. visual representations are not only a great way to learn but sometimes help people understand a complex idea in a more simplified manner. i learned so many amazing stats by browsing your page. the scariest was the obesity video. Scary!