DataViz History: Edward Tufte, Charles Minard, Napoleon and The Russian Campaign of 1812 – Part 2
Charles Joseph Minard
Charles Joseph Minard, born on March 27, 1781 in Dijon, France, is most widely known for a single work, his poignant flow-map depiction of the fate of Napoleon’s Grand Army in the disastrous 1812 Russian campaign. This “Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’Armee Francais dans la campagne de Russe 1812-1813″ has been called “the best graphic ever produced” by Edward Tufte, one which seemed to “defy the pen of the historian by its brutal eloquence.” [SOURCE]
More generally, Minard was a true pioneer in thematic cartography and in statistical graphics, and developed many novel graphics forms to depict data, always with the goal to let the data speak to the eyes. The definitive biography of Minard and his contributions to thematic cartography by Robinson begins, “When the complete story of the development of thematic cartography is finally added to the history of cartography, the name of Charles Joseph Minard (1781-1870) will again take on some of the lustre it had during the later part of his lifetime. The fifty-one cartes figuratives that came from his fertile mind and adept hand show a combination of cartographic ingenuity and concern with the graphic portrayal of statistical data that was almost unique during the central portion of the century.”
The present sketch of his career and contributions to statistical graphics also draws on: (a) the necrology by Minard’s son-in-law Chevallier, (b) Palsky’s seminal overview of quantitative graphics and thematic cartography in the 19th century, (c) an analysis of his contributions to statistical graphics from a modern perspective, and (d) a complete online catalog of all of his graphic works.
Charles Joseph Minard was the son of an official of the constabulary and comptroller of the local college in Dijon. At age 15 he was accepted in science and mathematics at the renown Ecole Polytechnique in Paris (1796-1800); among his professors Fourier and Legendre made a strong impression. In 1800, he transferred to the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chausees (ENPC), the premier training school for engineers responsible for building ports, roads, canals, and later railroads in France. He remained with the ENPC for his entire professional career (1803-1851), first as a field engineer, later as an instructor on “interior navigation” and railroad construction. In 1830, Minard was appointed a superintendent, then divisional inspector (1839), and finally Inspector General of the ENPC (1846) at age 65. Even after mandatory retirement on his 70 birthday in 1851, Minard continued his role on the advisory board of the ENPC journal, Annales des ponts et chausees. More importantly, his development of new graphic forms and themes nearly doubled in rate for 10 years, and continued up to his death at age 90.
Minard’s first career was as a practical engineer; but even here he showed a flair for novel visual explanation and portrayal. His report on the collapse of a bridge on the Rhone includes a superposed before-after drawing that shows directly to the eyes that the bridge collapsed because the supports collapsed on the inflow side of the river.
Minard’s second career, as a visual engineer and developer of new forms of statistical graphics and thematic cartography begins in 1844, with his first tableaux graphiques. These attempt to show the differential costs for transport of goods and people, for the entire route of a line vs. the parcours partial of rates for intermediate travel. To show this in a “graphic table”. Minard invented a new form of the divided bar chart, where the widths of bars were scaled to distance along the route, and the heights of sub-divisions of the bars were scaled to proportions of passengers or kinds of goods. Consequently, the area of each rectangle would be strictly proportional to the cost or price of transport, in pounds or people-kilometers. These graphic tables were important early progenitors of modern mosaic displays.
Quite shortly, Minard realized that geographically-based quantitative information could better be shown on a map, as bands of width strictly proportional to those quantities, so that again, area equals length times width would convey total numbers or amounts. From a first crude flow-map of passenger travel from Dijon to Mulhouse, Minard would proceed to develop this graphic representation of flow-over-space into a near art form, always allowing the precise portrayal of statistical data precedence over the confines of the space. His graphic catalog contains numerous instances. Perhaps the most dramatic are a pair of flow-maps showing the trade in cotton in Europe in 1856, and again in 1862, after the outbreak of the American Civil War. Just a glance makes clear that blockade on exports of raw cotton from the US South stimulated this trade with India.
Map showing the need for a new post office
Proportions of meat sold in Paris
Qualities of cotton in imported wools
Throughout his later years, and especially after his retirement, Minard continued to study new topics and to invent new graphic forms. He was the first to use pie charts on a map, where he extended Playfair’s use of them (NOTE: more on Mr. Playfair in another blog) to show both the relative proportions (of meats sold in Paris: beef, veal, or mutton) by angular slices, and the total amount of meats by the area of each pie. In 1865, the city of Paris needed to build a new central post office. Minard’s solution was a map showing the population of each arrondisement by squares with area proportional to population, so that the ideal location was their visual and geometric center of gravity.
Minard’s influence and contribution to visually-based planning was such that, from about 1850-1860, all Ministers of Public Works in France had their portraits painted with one of Minard’s creations in the background. At the 1857 Vienna meeting of the International Statistical Congress, the “methode a la carte graphique du chemin de fer francaise” (an apparent reference to to Minard) was recognized favorably in the debate on standardization and classification of graphical methods. In 1861, some of Minard’s works were presented to Napoleon III (a singular honor for an engineer of middle-class background), who received them with enthusiasm.
Minard’s most famous work, his depiction of Napoleon’s Russian campaign, deserves special mention in this brief biography, in part because it is the only known graphic portrayal of a national defeat, in France, or elsewhere. Chevallier makes the reasons clear: As a young engineer in Anvers in 1813, he witnessed the horrors of war in the siege by the Prussian army. In his final year, he sensed the renewal of the Franco-Prussian war and, though frail and infirm, fled to Bordeaux with his family. Among his last works, he drew a pair of flow-maps together: the famous one of Napoleon’s Russian campaign, and another of Hannibal’s retreat from Spain through the Alps to Italy, again with great loss of life. “The graphical representation is gripping; … it inspires bitter reflections on the human cost of the thirst for military glory.” It may well be, for this reason, that Minard’s most famous graphic defied the pen of the historian.
Next: Napoleon and the events leading up to The Russian Campaign of 1812
DataViz History: Edward Tufte, Charles Minard, Napoleon and The Russian Campaign of 1812 – Part 1
[Note: I am about to start a multi-part series on Minard's map related to Napoleon's Russian Campaign of 1812. I am going to introduce the players related to this map first, then discuss the map in some detail.]
I first learned about Minard’s map of Napoleon’s Russian Campaign of 1812 when I attended a one-day workshop from Edward Tufte in San Diego back in the mid-2000s. Mr. Tufte told the story of the war as it related to the map with great passion. He talked about little interesting events that occurred and I was hooked. This moment was my epiphany. I came to a strong realization that I loved everything Mr. Tufte was talking about an I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.
Edward Tufte
Edward Tufte is an American statistician and professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale University. He is noted for his writings on information design and as a pioneer in the field of data visualization. Mr. Tufte is known for his seminal best-selling books The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983), Envisioning Information (1990), Visual Explanations (1997), and Beautiful Evidence (2006). [SOURCE]
Mr. Tufte has provided the discipline with a vocabulary for bad design (chartjunk, the lie factor), for particular graphic constructions (small multiples, micro/macro readings), and for his own criteria of good design (high data-ink ratio, high data density). [SOURCE]
Sparklines
In his book, Beautiful Evidence, Mr. Tufte introduced the original concept of sparklines. He also refers to sparklines as “wordlike graphics” or “datawords”. A sparkline usually consists of either a fluctuating line like in a line chart, or of a string of very tiny bars. It is usually longer than high, and is not accompanied by an x- or y-axis or other scale. A sparkline enables the visual display of a large amount of data in a tiny space. In addition, sparklines are often presented in a set, enabling comparisons between the data in different sparklines. Tufte presents interesting examples of sparkline uses, and provides practical advice for their design (some draft pages for this chapter can be seen here).
The Fundamental Principles of Analytical Design
“The fundamental principles of analytical design” is the title of the fifth chapter of Beautiful Evidence (I will refer to this book as “BE” going forward). Here Mr. Tufte provides an in-depth analysis of the by now well-known graphic showing the devastating losses of the French Army in Napoleon’s Russian campaign (drawn by Charles Joseph Minard). [Note: We will discuss this map in more detail later in this blog series.]
Ironically, this graphic was basically unknown before Mr. Tufte introduced it to the world in his book The visual display of quantitative information (1983). Then, twenty-six years later, he uses it again in BE to illustrate and explain in detail his six fundamental principles of analytical design, which he formulates as:
- Show comparisons, contrasts, differences.
- Show causality, mechanism, explanation, systematic structure.
- Show multivariate data; that is, show more than 1 or 2 variables.
- Completely integrate words, numbers, images, diagrams.
- Thoroughly describe the evidence. Provide a detailed title, indicate the authors and sponsors, document the data sources, show complete measurement scales, point out relevant issues.
- Analytical presentations ultimately stand or fall depending on the quality, relevance, and integrity of their content.
Mr. Tufte declares that “The purpose of an evidence presentation is to assist thinking”, and that these six principles of analytical design “are derived from the principles of analytical thinking.” (BE, p. 137). He claims that these design principles are universal and “not tied to any particular language, culture, style, century, gender, or technology of information display.” (BE, p. 10).
There are many other key data visualization topics that Mr. Tufte discusses in his books, but I wanted to at least introduce those topics related to Charles Minard’s map. I will be discussing Mr. Tufte and his work more in future blogs.
NEXT: The Life and Works of Charles Joseph Minard
Infographic: A True West Moment and Bob Boze Bell
One of my favorite things to do in life is read the Sunday newspaper. I have been doing this since I was around 10 years old. I always read the comics first, but that has diminished as most of my favorite comic strips are long since retired. However, in The Arizona Republic, one of the first things I read every Sunday is A True West Moment by the legendary Bob Boze Bell.
Bob was born in Forest City, Iowa in 1946. His father, Allen P. Bell, moved his family to Kingman, Arizona where he immediately opens “Al Bell’s Flying A” on Route 66. When he’s not playing right field for the Odd Fellow Yankees (little league), Bob ices jugs for tips in his father’s station.
During his high school days, the high school baseball coach calls him “Bozo” for running backwards to first and second base in a game with Needles, California. Cruel team mates pick up on this, and shorten the moniker to Boze. It sticks.
In February, 1986, KSLX radio in Scottsdale offers Boze a job to do to the news what Ferdinand Marcos did to the Philippines. “The Jones & Boze Show” is born. Boze spend eight years at KSLX (I was an avid listener to “The Jones & Boze Morning Show”).
In 1999, Boze would take over the legendary True West Magazine. Launched in 1953 by the legendary Joe “Hosstail” Small in Austin, Texas, True West is a popular history publication with a loyal, core readership, and the oldest, continuously published Western Americana publication in the world. Thanks to the proliferation of TV Westerns in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the magazine enjoyed broad circulation (200,000+ newsstand sales). But, as the market and his health started to decline, Joe Small sold out in 1974 and over the next decade, the magazine bounced around the Midwest, finally settling in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Unfortunately, the Oklahoma owners did not have the capital to stay current with the changing times and the magazine began to lose significant market share, as newer, slicker titles such as Cowboys & Indians and American Cowboy came into the marketplace. By mid-1999, the publication, along with three other titles, was for sale, and the current owners came to the rescue. True West Publishing (including assets and trademarked names of True West, Old West, Frontier Times) moved to Cave Creek, Arizona, in October 1999. [SOURCE]
In 2003, the magazine celebrated its 50th anniversary. The year also marked the incorporation of True West Publishing and an increase in the magazine’s frequency to 10 issues. True West now also publishes an annual shopping guide called the Best of the West Source Book.
ILLUSTRATION: World Without Water (Telluris Theoria Sacra) – Thomas Burnet
Sacred Theory of the Earth
Thomas Burnet’s best known work is his Telluris Theoria Sacra, or Sacred Theory of the Earth. The first part was published in 1681 in Latin, and in 1684 in English translation; the second part appeared in 1689 (1690 in English). It was a speculative cosmogony, in which Burnet suggested a hollow earth with most of the water inside until Noah’s Flood, at which time mountains and oceans appeared. He calculated the amount of water on Earth’s surface, stating there was not enough to account for the Flood. Burnet was to some extent influenced by Descartes who had written on the creation of the earth in Principia philosophiae (1644), and was criticised on those grounds by Roger North. The heterodox views of Isaac La Peyrère included the idea that the Flood was not universal; Burnet’s theory was at least in part intended to answer him on that point. [SOURCE]
Burnet’s system had its novel features, as well as those such as the four classical elements that were very traditional: an initially ovoid Earth, a Paradise before the Flood that was always in the spring season, and rivers flowing from the poles to the Equator. Herbert Croft published criticism of the book in 1685, in particular accusing Burnet of following the Second Epistle of Peter rather than the Book of Genesis. During the 1690s John Beaumont and Johann Caspar Eisenschmidt picked up on Burnet’s ideas. They engendered a great deal of controversy at the time, and Burnet defended himself against selected critics, John Keill and Erasmus Warren.
Isaac Newton was an admirer of Burnet’s theological approach to geological processes. Newton even wrote to Burnet, suggesting the possibility that when God created the Earth, the days were longer. However, Burnet did not find this explanation scientific enough. Lengthening the days would require an intervention on God’s part. Burnet tightly held the belief that God created the world and all its processes perfectly from the start.
“Map of the world, shown as if the oceans were dried up. Thomas Burnet was the first Englishman to attempt a scientific account of the origin of the earth. His treatise, Telluris Theoria Sacra, is a curious blend of geography and archaeology, which aroused considerable interest at the time. California is shown as an Island, but no Northwest passage, an unusual concession for an Englishman of this era.”
Visual Effects Pioneer Ray Harryhausen Dies at 92
Animation effects wizard Ray Harryhausen, who pioneered many of the stop-motion techniques that have become today’s industry standards, has died. He was 92.[SOURCE]
Revered for his cutting-edge effects work in the 1950s and ’60s on such fantasy classics as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Harryhausen developed the technique of projecting footage from the front and rear, one frame at a time. He dubbed the technique “Dynamation” and used it to bring to life mythological figures and prehistorical creatures.
An example of Mr. Harryhausen’s groundbreaking visual-effects techniques, which inspired later filmmakers: “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963).
For Jason and the Argonauts, he created a famous skeleton swordfight and came up with the extra-terrestrials for such films as Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).
In 1992, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences presented Harryhausen with an honorary Oscar, a tribute to his visual magic. He was presented with the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, an Oscar statuette, given to an individual “whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry.”
“Ray has been a great inspiration to us all in special visual industry,” George Lucas once said in a statement posted on the Harryhausen Facebook page. “The art of his earlier films, which most of us grew up on, inspired us so much. Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no Star Wars.”
In those early years, Harryhausen performed his stop-motion techniques on very low-budget projects. His effects created spectacular havoc in such disaster films as The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955). He re-created dinosaurs in One Million Years B.C. (1966).
During the ’70s and beyond, he created cutting-edge special effects for the films The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) and Clash of the Titans (1981), which starred Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Claire Bloom and Ursula Andress.
“They were considered B pictures because they were made on a budget. But we outlived many of the A pictures made at the same time,” he once noted.
“The Valley of Gwangi” (1969).
Harryhausen considered his specialty to be creating “fantasy creatures,” where he would insert the monsters believably in the same frame as actual actors. “I don’t do monsters, you know. Monsters are associated with horror. I’m not interested in horror … I don’t’ want to deceive or frighten. I want to create illusions, fantasies, legends,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1981.
Harryhausen inspired a cult following and was the subject of the 1986 documentary, Aliens, Dragons, Monsters and Me, directed by Richard Jones.
Other films included the documentary The Animal World (1956), Mysterious Island (1961), First Men in the Moon (1964) and T he Valley of the Gwangi (1969).
Of today’s films and special-effects-propelled plot lines, he was less than enthusiastic: “Now you have to sit through two hours of people dying … Today, everything’s so graphic, it’s rather unnerving,” he once said.
History
Harryhausen was born June 19, 1920, in Los Angeles. As a teenager, he saw 1933′s King Kong and was dazzled by its special effects, becoming, he said, a “King Kong addict.” He was inspired by King Kong effects guru Willis O’Brien and paid a visit to O’Brien’s home, showing him some amateur creatures he had created. In high school, Harryhausen joined a sci-fi club and met up with two enthusiasts who would become lifelong friends: Ray Bradbury and Forrest J. Ackerman.
He was an avid photographer and attended Los Angeles City College, where he studied photography and sculpture. He went on to USC, he where studied drama and art direction. After graduation, he worked on George Pal’s series of animated Puppetooons films and entered the service during World War II.
After being discharged, Harryhausen began his movie career in 1949 with Mighty Joe Young, where his boyhood hero, O’Brien, was chief technician. In 1953, he was hired by Warner Bros. to be in charge of special effects for Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, where he implemented his split-screen technique to insert dinosaurs and other awesome creatures into the story backgrounds.
He next worked on three science-fiction films at Columbia, including The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and a documentary that was highlighted by his monsters interacting with the stars and buttressed by Bernard Herrmann‘s tempestuous score.
In 1981, Harryhausen was honored with an exhibition and retrospective covering an entire month by New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He was later paid tribute by the American Cinematheque. In 2006, Harryhausen was the subject of a retrospective at the historic Byrd Theater in Richmond, Va.
The Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation, a charitable trust set up by the visual effects maven in April 1986, is devoted to the protection of Harryhausen’s name and body of work as well as archiving, preserving and restoring his extensive collection. The Harryhausens married in 1963; Diana survives him.
Click here to see a video of Ray’s work
DataViz History: Henry Beck and the London Underground Tube Map (1931)
Henry Charles Beck (June 4, 1902 – September 18, 1974), known as Harry Beck, was an English engineering draftsman best known for creating the present London Underground Tube map in 1931. Beck drew up the diagram in his spare time while working as an engineering draftsman at the London Underground Signals Office. London Underground was initially skeptical of Beck’s radical proposal — it was an uncommissioned spare-time project, and it was tentatively introduced to the public in a small pamphlet in 1933. It immediately became popular, and the Underground has used topological maps to illustrate the network ever since. [SOURCE]
Before Beck
Prior to the Beck diagram, the various underground lines had been laid out geographically, often superimposed over the roadway of a city map. This had the feature that the centrally located stations were very close together and the out-of-town stations were spaced apart. From around 1908 a new type of ‘map’ appeared inside the train cars (see more on this below); it was a non-geographic linear diagram, in most cases a simple straight horizontal line, which equalized the distances between stations. By the late 1920s most Underground lines and some mainline (especially LNER) services displayed these, many of which had been drawn by George Dow. Some writers have postulated that these in part inspired Beck.
Tube map of 1908
The first combined map was published in 1908 by the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) in conjunction with four other underground railway companies using the “Underground” brand as part of a common advertising initiative (see below).
The map showed eight lines – four operated by the UERL and one from each of the other four companies:
- UERL lines:
- Bakerloo tube – brown
- Hampstead tube – grey
- Piccadilly tube – yellow
- Metropolitan District Railway – green
- Other lines:
- Central London Railway – blue
- City and South London Railway – black
- Great Northern and City Railway – orange
- Metropolitan Railway – red
Being geographically-based presented restrictions in this early map; to enable sufficient clarity of detail in the crowded central area of the map, the extremities of the District and Metropolitan lines were omitted, so a full network diagram was not provided. The problem of truncation remained for nearly half a century. Although all of the western branches of the District and Piccadilly lines were included for the first time in 1933 with Harry Beck’s first map, the portion of the Metropolitan line beyond Rickmansworth did not appear until 1938 and the eastern end of the District line did not appear on the map until the mid-1950s.
The route map continued to be developed and was issued in various formats and artistic styles until 1920, when, for the first time, the geographic background detail was omitted in a map designed by MacDonald Gill. This freed the design to enable greater flexibility in the positioning of lines and stations. The routes became more stylised but the arrangement remained, largely, geographic in nature. The 1932 edition was the last geographic map to be published, before the diagrammatic map was introduced.
Beck’s concept
But it was clearly Beck who had the idea of creating a full system map in color. He believed that passengers riding the trains were not too bothered about the geographical accuracy, but were more interested in how to get from one station to another, and where to change. Thus he drew his famous diagram, looking more like an electrical schematic than a true map, on which all the stations were more or less equally spaced. Beck first submitted his idea to Frank Pick of London Underground in 1931, but it was considered too radical as it did not show distances relative from any one station to the others. After a successful trial production of 500 copies of Beck’s map in 1932, the map was given its first full publication in 1933 (700,000 copies) and the reaction of the travelling customers proved it to be sound design; it immediately required a large reprint after only one month.
The map after Beck
Beck continued to update the Tube map on a freelance basis, but the future Victoria Line was added in 1960 by the Publicity Officer, Harold Hutchison. Many other changes were also introduced to the map without Beck’s approval.
Beck struggled furiously to regain control of the map, but responsibility for it was eventually given to a third designer, Paul Garbutt. Garbutt changed the style of the map to look more like Beck’s maps of the 1930s, and also introduced the “vacuum flask” shape for the Circle Line. Although Beck preferred this version to Hutchison’s, he wasn’t completely satisfied. He started to make a new map, based on both his earlier works and Garbutt’s ideas. When this version too was rejected, despite its simplicity and ease of reading, Beck realized London Transport would never publish any map in his hand. Nevertheless he continued to make sketches and drawings for the map until his death.
Anomalies
A physical anomaly is that the City Branch of the Northern Line actually passes to the west of Mornington Crescent on the West End Branch; Beck’s original map showed this correctly, but later versions show the City Branch to the east of Mornington Crescent.
Other works by Henry Beck
In 1938 he produced a diagram of the entire rail system of the London region (as far as St Albans in the north, Ongar in the north-east, Romford in the east, Bromley in the south-east, Mitcham in the south, Hinchley Wood in the south-west, Ashford in the west, and Tring in the north-west). It included both the Underground and mainlines. It was not published at the time but was seen in Ken Garland‘s book, first published in 1994, and it took until 1973 until any official attempt was made to replicate a rail diagram for the entire London region.
Beck produced at least two versions of a diagram for the Paris Métro. The project, which Beck was never commissioned to do, may have been begun, according to Ken Garland, as early as before the start of World War II. A version dating from approximately 1946 is published in Garland’s book. His second version is published for the first time in Mark Ovenden‘s book about the Paris Métro and is on display at the London Transport Museum.
Visual Style: 30 Interesting Kentucky Derby Hats
The Kentucky Derby will be held later today. Ever since I watched the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince Williams a few years back, I became fascinated with the hats the women wear to these events. Over to the right is the hat that Princess Beatrice famously wore to the wedding.
The Kentucky Derby (pron.: /ˈdɜrbi/) is a Grade I stakes race for three-year-old Thoroughbreds, held annually in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, on the first Saturday in May, capping the two-week-long Kentucky Derby Festival. The race is one and a quarter miles (2 km) at Churchill Downs. Colts and geldings carry 126 pounds (57 kilograms) and fillies 121 pounds (55 kilograms). The race is known in the United States as “The Most Exciting Two Minutes In Sports” or “The Fastest Two Minutes in Sports” for its approximate duration, and is also called “The Run for the Roses” for the blanket of roses draped over the winner. It is the first leg of the US Triple Crown and is followed by the Preakness Stakes, then the Belmont Stakes. Unlike the Preakness and Belmont Stakes, which took hiatuses in 1891-1893 and 1911-1912 respectively, the Kentucky Derby has been run every consecutive year since 1875. A horse must win all three races to win the Triple Crown. The attendance at the Kentucky Derby ranks first in North America and usually surpasses the attendance of all other stakes races including the Preakness Stakes, Belmont Stakes and the Breeders’ Cup. [SOURCE]
I have compiled photos of 30 Kentucky Derby hats that I found to show grace, style and uniqueness. Visualization isn’t only about a chart or an infographic; there are many ways to focus attention on the visuals surrounding us in our world. [SOURCE1] [SOURCE2]
Enjoy and have a Mint Julep for me.
Michael
Architecture: Structurally Sound Buildings That Look Like They’ve Been Smashed
Structurally Sound Buildings That Look Like They’ve Been Smashed [SOURCE]
There’s something super-comforting about living in a building with super straight lines — it looks sturdy and reliable. But what if you lived in a place that looked like the Hulk had attacked it? Or a tornado had hit it? Here are some livable buildings which look messed up. On purpose.
Above: Dancing House or Fred and Ginger House (after Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers), Prague, Czech Republic
Designed by Vlado Milunić and Frank Gehry in 1992, and completed four years later.
The upside-down White House, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, 1992
Crooked House (Krzywy Domek), Sopot, Poland
Built in 2004 as a part of a shopping center.
Ray and Maria Stata Center or Building 32
Designed by Frank Gehry for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an academic complex.
The Hole House, Houston, Texas
Ripley Believe it or Not Museum, Niagara Falls, Canada
Blog note: I have actually been to this one!
Honey Bee Hive House, Jerusalem, Israel
Designed by Zvi Hecker in the 1970s and built by the National Ministry Of Housing.
Below: Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Odditorium, Branson, Missouri
Andrew Abela’s Chart Chooser
A question I am often asked is what chart is best for me to use?
First, think about what it is you want to show. Is it a relationship between two variables, a distribution, a comparison? The answer to this question will lead you to the right suite of charts that might be appropriate. Andrew Abela (www.ExtremePresentation.com) has developed a chart chooser to help with this exercise. [SOURCE]
Once you’ve answered the question of what you want to show and determined the right suite of charts that might be appropriate, the right answer to the question what is the right chart for my situation? will always be the same: whatever will be easiest for your audience to read. There’s an easy way to test this, which is to make your visual and share it with a friend or colleague. They don’t need any context; actually, it’s better if they don’t have any (this puts them in a position similar to your audience, who will always be less familiar with what you want to communicate than you are). Ask them to talk you through what they see: where they focus, what observations they make, what questions they have. This will help you to see if you are on the right track when it comes to whether what you want to communicate is coming across, or in the case that iteration is needed, where to focus your effort.
The meta-lessons here are 1) choose a visual display that’s appropriate for the data and information you are trying to show, and 2) seek feedback, there is tremendous value in getting a fresh perspective from someone less familiar with the data than you are to help you iterate for success. A related tip is to start with a blank piece of paper, which can be helpful as you try to determine the visual display that will work best as part of your early iterating process.
Do you have other resources or tips for choosing the right type of visual display? Leave a comment with your thoughts!
Regards,
Michael
