Data in a human context
Mar 06, 2012 12:55 am • Permalink Jer Thorp, a data artist in residence at The New York Times, shows off some of his work (like this and this) and speaks about the connection between the real world and the mechanical bits we know as data. Worth your 17 minutes.
People often miss this point about data — that it's a representation of the physical world — and because of that, things like uncertainty and complexity come attached to the numbers. There are also actual human beings associated with a lot of data. So while optimization, maximization, and efficiency are well and good, stories, ethics, and lessons are pretty good takeaways, too.
Update: Don't miss the unexpected discussion around data and capitalism.
[Jer Thorp]
Growing urban populations
Mar 05, 2012 08:09 am • Permalink 
In this simple interactive animation by Periscopic, in partnership with UNICEF, we see the changes in urban population from 1950 up to present, through projections for 2050. Circle size represents urban population and color is an indicator for the percentage of people living in cities or towns.
The color choice for the continuous scale is not ideal, but I think they were working within the bounds of the existing print report.
For the map project, we were working with pre-existing content. They had produced the map for their print report, so we had to make it look as similar as possible to that. I know they didn't use a Dorling cartogram, but I think their intention was to be similar to one. Certain sacrifices were made in order for it to fit the 2-page spread in the report. Unfortunately, the online version had to keep the same locations.
[UNICEF | Thanks, Dino]
No comments:
Post a Comment