[HN Gopher] Data Visualization and the Modern Imagination ___________________________________________________________________ Data Visualization and the Modern Imagination Author : rasmi Score : 158 points Date : 2021-01-26 15:16 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (exhibits.stanford.edu) (TXT) w3m dump (exhibits.stanford.edu) | beckingz wrote: | The Data Visualization Society is a great community for | discussing historical visualization. | TurkishPoptart wrote: | How does that work? | alexkearns wrote: | I have long been fascinated by timeline designs. So this is right | up my street. So impressive what these artists of old managed to | create without access to computers and design software. | | For more modern timeline visualisations, you might be interested | in this list of timeline designs I compiled: | | https://www.tiki-toki.com/blog/entry/ten-amazing-online-time... | petepete wrote: | I've flicked through this and it's honestly wonderful and | beautifully presented, but why go to all that effort and then | just render the headings in images without even providing any alt | text? | | I hope this is an ongoing project and that will be addressed. | sterkekoffie wrote: | There are real-text headings above the button bank at the top | and the images have the role="presentation" attribute, meaning | they're meant to be ignored by assistive tech. What is there to | address... | ppod wrote: | There don't seem to be many (any?) network diagrams (or what | mathematicians strictly refer to by "graphs"). Are they a very | recent invention? | hansvm wrote: | Not that recent at non-mathematician timescales, a few hundred | years at least. | ppod wrote: | As diagrams? I couldn't find anything, who used them then? | hansvm wrote: | Yes. If Knuth wasn't making stuff up then you can find some | historic accounts (1300s-1500s) in "Two Thousand Years of | Combinatorics." | | More recently, Euler's paper in 1736 didn't have what you'd | recognize as a modern graph diagram, Konig's textbook in | 1936 did, and the papers developing the subject between | those dates eventually used the modern notion of lines | connecting dots as a way to represent edges and nodes. | leto_ii wrote: | I would like to add one of my finds (if it's already mentioned in | the original post, sorry for the double) - the National Atlas of | Japan (1977) [1]. | | Take a look at the railway traffic statistics [2]. The | visualization there must have been painstaking to make. | | [1] https://www.gsi.go.jp/atlas/atlas-e-etsuran.html | | [2] https://www.gsi.go.jp/atlas/archive/j-atlas-d_e_49.pdf | | edit: | | The earthquake epicenter visualization is also worth mentioning: | | [3] https://www.gsi.go.jp/atlas/archive/j-atlas-d_e_11.pdf | parsecs wrote: | Those are some beautiful visualizations. How did they do it in | 1977, considering modern software like Tableau don't exist? The | amount of expertise that goes into this must've been | substantial. | paganel wrote: | On the subject of great-looking maps I highly recommend the | second Austro-Hungarian Military Survey [1] from the | 1860s-1870s, some of the details in those maps are truly | exceptional (one of my personal projects consists in mapping | the forested area of Romania's territory from nowadays using | those maps). | | A little less accurate but more beautiful is the first Hapsburg | Military Survey, from the late 1700s [2], when and if I'll ever | get a bigger house I'll definitely hang some prints of those | maps on the walls. | | [1] https://mapire.eu/en/map/europe-19century- | secondsurvey/?laye... | | [2] https://mapire.eu/en/map/europe-18century- | firstsurvey/?layer... | motohagiography wrote: | What I have learned about data viz over the years is that it is a | very powerful solution to problems, just as Nightingale's | diagrams demonstrated the effect of hygiene, which changed how | societies and governments respond to epidemics. What I have also | learned is that a solution obviates a dynamic someone thinks it | is their job to manage, and a visualization that solves a problem | is its own problem. | | The "best," diagrams show change over time, and provide the | presenter with a way to demonstrate how they are the important | pivot point that optimizes and drives that change. The "worst," | diagrams are the ones that illuminate the problem in such a way | that it is no longer difficult, which humiliates the people it | was presented to and designed to help. | | I recommend using data viz privately, to reason through and solve | problems quickly, and then use the time you save for self | investment. The real value I think is to use data viz not as a | product for productivity, but as an arbitrage tool for leverage. | lazyasciiart wrote: | Do you have any examples of these "worst" diagrams? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-26 23:00 UTC)