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The Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide To The World's Most Consequential Trivia (2009)

by David McCandless(Favorite Author)

3.86 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0061748366 (ISBN13: 9780061748363)

languge

English

genre

Graphic Novels & Comics

publisher

Harper Design

review 1: First, I question most of the data sources. Some were stated clearly enough that I understood what biases might be inherent in them, but others I would have to look up online, and I'm too lazy when I have the book right here.Second, it's nice to see information visualization from a different viewpoint than I normally approach it. My job is to display unknown data as accurately as possible, without guessing the user's purpose or pushing an agenda. This book approaches visualization as an art. The data are known, there is often an agenda/story in mind, and aesthetics are more important than efficient discovery of the information or story therein. Thus color is a bit overused, and some inefficient layouts and labeling mechanisms are used to emphasize the story or change ... morethe overall look. Sometimes this works out fine, and other times it really doesn't work for me. There were several graphics where I simply gave up trying to read the data, let alone figure out a pattern of interest. Most of them are good enough, though, and nearly all of them are quite pleasant for a casual glance. Some even provoked a chuckle.Good coffee table book. Could spark some interesting discussions.
review 2: I usually don't use the star system unless I can give four or five stars, but in this case I am making an exception in order to counter-balance the trend I see in the data about this book. Scroll through the reviews and you will see that people who know how information visualization is supposed to be done are giving this book bad reviews and only one or two stars. The enthusiastic five-star reviews are coming from folks who simply enjoyed looking at the pictures in the book. Their enjoyment of what experts identify as shoddy work illustrates (pun intended) its danger. Why do I say the work is shoddy? Not for aesthetic reasons. Although I personally found the relentless use of flat graphics in saturated colors to be visually exhausting, that's a matter of taste. But the use of graphics to visualize data is not just a matter of taste; it's also a matter of integrity. Integrity in infographics begins with the selection of the data to be visualized. As the old programming phrase goes, "garbage in, garbage out." If the data are questionable, then nothing truly useful can come of putting them into visually interesting configurations. If the data are false, then those visual depictions might even be dangerously misleading.McCandless wants us to believe, for example, that "freak lawnmower accidents" are responsible for more deaths than second-hand smoke. Is that really true? Look closer, and you see that the freak lawnmower accidents are allegedly more common than deaths due to assault. Really? Maybe. Let's check the sources. The Guardian, Time Magazine, and... Google. Yes, the author of a book published by a reputable publisher makes an error no high school teacher would allow a student to make, citing a search engine rather than a reliable source of information. Of course, using Google, we can find all sorts of "facts"--including tobacco industry propaganda aimed at low-balling the rate of death due to second-hand smoke. Who knows upon which of those cyber-"facts" upon which McCandless relied while constructing this diagram? Not us, because he doesn't tell us. And so, there's no way to know whether the facts upon which the whole ballgame depends are accurate or not.It's not just that one chart. Over and over again, McCandless attributes the data in his infographics to Google, Wikipedia, or other unreliable and/or unintelligible sources. Readers who have studied statistics, information design, or related subjects know to look for the sources, see that they are shoddy, and consequently understand that the graphic cannot be taken seriously. But naive readers see pretty, pseudo-scientific charts and assume that they are being accurately informed as well as entertained.It gets worse. The graphics themselves are sometimes constructed in misleading or nonsensical ways, thereby further diminishing their integrity and utility. Why does this matter? We're swimming in data that might be useful in solving the many complex problems that confront our families, communities, and countries. Information visualization can be useful in two ways: (1) to accessibly illustrate and disseminate what we already know, and (2) to figure out new things by looking for patterns and relationships among data. Neither of these purposes is served by accustoming readers to infographics that lack the most basic integrity. less

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