T E D | W ile y V is ua liz in g D at a In st ru ct or M at er ia ls 1 Statistics: Visualizing Data Introductory Essay from the Locks The Reality Today All of us now are being blasted by information design. It's being poured into our eyes through the Web, and we're all visualizers now; we're all demanding a visual aspect to our information… And if you're navigating a dense information jungle, coming across a beautiful graphic or a lovely data visualization, it's a relief, it's like coming across a clearing in the jungle. –David McCandless In today’s complex ‘information jungle,’ David McCandless observes that “Data is the new soil.” McCandless, a data journalist and information designer, celebrates data as a ubiquitous resource providing a fertile and creative medium from which new ideas and understanding can grow. McCandless’s inspiration, statistician Hans Rosling, builds on this idea in his own TEDTalk with his compelling image of flowers growing out of data/soil. These ‘flowers’ represent the many insights that can be gleaned from effective visualization of data. We’re just learning how to till this soil and make sense of the mountains of data constantly being generated. As Gary King, Director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science says in his New York Times article “The Age of Big Data”: “It’s a revolution. We’re really just getting under way. But the march of quantification, made possible by enormous new sources of data, will sweep through academia, business and government. There is no area that is going to be untouched.” How do we deal with all this data without getting information overload? How do we use data to gain real insight into the world? Finding ways to pull interesting information out of data can be very rewarding, both personally and professionally. The managing editor of Financial Times observed on CNN’s Your Money: “The people who are able to in a sophisticated and practical way analyze that data are going to have terrific jobs." Those who learn how to present data in effective ways will be valuable in every field. T E D | W ile y V is ua liz in g D at a In st ru ct or M at er ia ls 2 Many people, when they think of data, think of tables filled with numbers. But this long-held notion is eroding. Today, we’re generating streams of data that are often too complex to be presented in a simple “table.” In his TEDTalk, Blaise Aguera y Arcas explores images as data, while Deb Roy uses audio, video, and the text messages in social media as data. Some may also think that only a few specialized professionals can draw insights from data. When we look at data in the right way, however, the results can be fun, insightful, even whimsical--and accessible to everyone! Who knew, for example, that there are more relationship break-ups on Monday than on any other day of the week, or that ...

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Statistics: Visualizing Data
Introductory Essay from the Locks
The Reality Today
All of us now are being blasted by information design. It's being
poured into our eyes
through the Web, and we're all visualizers now; we're all
demanding a visual aspect to
our information… And if you're navigating a dense information
jungle, coming across
a beautiful graphic or a lovely data visualization, it's a relief,
it's like coming across a
clearing in the jungle. –David McCandless

3. In today’s complex ‘information jungle,’ David McCandless
observes that “Data is the new soil.”
McCandless, a data journalist and information designer,
celebrates data as a ubiquitous resource
providing a fertile and creative medium from which new ideas
and understanding can grow.
McCandless’s inspiration, statistician Hans Rosling, builds on
this idea in his own TEDTalk with his
compelling image of flowers growing out of data/soil. These
‘flowers’ represent the many insights that
can be gleaned from effective visualization of data.
We’re just learning how to till this soil and make sense of the
mountains of data constantly being
generated. As Gary King, Director of Harvard’s Institute for
Quantitative Social Science says in his New
York Times article “The Age of Big Data”:
“It’s a revolution. We’re really just getting under way. But the
march of quantification,
made possible by enormous new sources of data, will sweep
through academia,
business and government. There is no area that is going to be
untouched.”
How do we deal with all this data without getting information
overload? How do we use data
to gain real insight into the world? Finding ways to pull
interesting information out of data can
be very rewarding, both personally and professionally. The
managing editor of Financial Times
observed on CNN’s Your Money: “The people who are able to
in a sophisticated and practical
way analyze that data are going to have terrific jobs." Those
who learn how to present data in
effective ways will be valuable in every field.

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Many people, when they think of data, think of tables filled
with numbers. But this long-held notion is
eroding. Today, we’re generating streams of data that are often
too complex to be presented in a
simple “table.” In his TEDTalk, Blaise Aguera y Arcas
explores images as data, while Deb Roy uses
audio, video, and the text messages in social media as data.
Some may also think that only a few specialized professionals
can draw insights from data. When we
look at data in the right way, however, the results can be fun,
insightful, even whimsical--and accessible
to everyone! Who knew, for example, that there are more
relationship break-ups on Monday than on
any other day of the week, or that the most break-ups (at least
those discussed on Facebook) occur in
mid-December? David McCandless discovered this by analyzing
thousands of Facebook status updates.
Data, Data Everywhere
There is more data available to us now than we can possibly

6. process. Every minute, Internet users add
the following to the big data pool1:
• 204,166,667 email messages sent
• More than 2,000,000 Google searches
• 684,478 pieces of content added on Facebook
• $272,070 spent by consumers via online shopping
• More than 100,000 tweets on Twitter
• 47,000 app downloads from Apple
• 34,722 “likes” on Facebook for different brands and
organizations
• 27,778 new posts on Tumblr blogs
• 3,600 new photos on Instagram
• 3,125 new photos on Flickr
• 2,083 check-ins on Foursquare
• 571 new websites created
• 347 new blog posts published on Wordpress
• 217 new mobile web users
• 48 hours of new video on YouTube
These numbers are almost certainly higher now, as you read
this. And this just describes a small piece
of the data being generated and stored by humanity. We’re all
leaving data trails—not just on the
Internet, but in everything we do. This includes reams of
financial data (from credit cards, businesses,
and Wall Street), demographic data on the world’s populations,
meteorological data on weather and
the environment, retail sales data that records everything we
buy, nutritional data on food and
restaurants, sports data of all types, and so on.
1 Data obtained June 2012 from “How Much Data Is Created
Every Minute?” on
http://mashable.com/2012/06/22/data-created-every-minute/ .

7. http://mashable.com/2012/06/22/data-created-every-minute/
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Governments are using data to search for terrorist plots,
retailers are using it to maximize marketing
strategies, and health organizations are using it to track
outbreaks of the flu. But did you ever think of
collecting data on every minute of your child’s life? That’s
precisely what Deb Roy did. He recorded
90,000 hours of video and 140,000 hours of audio during his
son’s first years. That’s a lot of data! He
and his colleagues are using the data to understand how children
learn language, and they’re now
extending this work to analyze publicly available conversations
on social media, allowing them to take
“the real-time pulse of a nation.”
Data can provide us with new and deeper insight into our world.
It can help break stereotypes and build
understanding. But the sheer quantity of data, even in just any
one small area of interest, is
overwhelming. How can we make sense of some of this data in
an insightful way?
The Power of Visualizing Data

9. Visualization can help transform these mountains of data into
meaningful information. In his TEDTalk,
David McCandless comments that the sense of sight has by far
the fastest and biggest bandwidth of
any of the five senses. Indeed, about 80% of the information
we take in is by eye. Data that seems
impenetrable can come alive if presented well in a picture,
graph, or even a movie. Hans Rosling tells us
that “Students get very excited – and policy-makers and the
corporate sector – when they can see the
data.”
It makes sense that, if we can effectively display data visually,
we can make it accessible and
understandable to more people. Should we worry, however, that
by condensing data into a graph, we
are simplifying too much and losing some of the important
features of the data? Let’s look at a
fascinating study conducted by researchers Emre Soyer and
Robin Hogarth. The study was conducted
on economists, who are certainly no strangers to statistical
analysis. Three groups of economists were
asked the same question concerning a dataset:
• One group was given the data and a standard statistical
analysis of the data; 72% of these
economists got the answer wrong.
• Another group was given the data, the statistical analysis, and
a graph; still 61% of these
economists got the answer wrong.
• A third group was given only the graph, and only 3% got the
answer wrong.
Visualizing data can sometimes be less misleading than using

10. the raw numbers and statistics!
What about all the rest of us, who may not be professional
economists or statisticians? Nathalie
Miebach finds that making art out of data allows people an
alternative entry into science. She
transforms mountains of weather data into tactile physical
structures and musical scores, adding both
touch and hearing to the sense of sight to build even greater
understanding of data.
http://emresoyer.com/Publications_files/Soyer%20%26%20Hog
arth_2012.pdf
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Another artist, Chris Jordan, is concerned about our ability to
comprehend big numbers. As citizens of
an ever-more connected global world, we have an increased
need to get useable information from big
data—big in terms of the volume of numbers as well as their
size. Jordan’s art is designed to help us
process such numbers, especially numbers that relate to issues
of addiction and waste. For example,
Jordan notes that the United States has the largest percentage of
its population in prison of any country
on earth: 2.3 million people in prison in the United States in

12. 2005 and the number continues to rise.
Jordan uses art, in this case a super-sized image of 2.3 million
prison jumpsuits, to help us see that
number and to help us begin to process the societal implications
of that single data value. Because our
brains can’t truly process such a large number, his artwork
makes it real.
The Role of Technology in Visualizing Data
The TEDTalks in this collection depend to varying degrees on
sophisticated technology to gather, store,
process, and display data. Handling massive amounts of data
(e.g., David McCandless tracking 10,000
changes in Facebook status, Blaise Aguera y Arcas synching
thousands of online images of the Notre
Dame Cathedral, or Deb Roy searching for individual words in
90,000 hours of video tape) requires
cutting-edge computing tools that have been developed
specifically to address the challenges of big
data. The ability to manipulate color, size, location, motion,
and sound to discover and display
important features of data in a way that makes it readily
accessible to ordinary humans is a challenging
task that depends heavily on increasingly sophisticated
technology.
The Importance of Good Visualization
There are good ways and bad ways of presenting data. Many
examples of outstanding presentations of
data are shown in the TEDTalks. However, sometimes
visualizations of data can be ineffective or
downright misleading. For example, an inappropriate scale

13. might make a relatively small difference
look much more substantial than it should be, or an overly
complicated display might obfuscate the
main relationships in the data. Statistician Kaiser Fung’s blog
Junk Charts offers many examples of
poor representations of data (and some good ones) with
descriptions to help the reader understand
what makes a graph effective or ineffective. For more examples
of both good and bad representations
of data, see data visualization architect Andy Kirk’s blog at
visualisingdata.com. Both consistently
have very current examples from up-to-date sources and events.
Creativity, even artistic ability, helps us see data in new ways.
Magic happens when interesting data
meets effective design: when statistician meets designer
(sometimes within the same person). We are
fortunate to live in a time when interactive and animated graphs
are becoming commonplace, and
these tools can be incredibly powerful. Other times, simpler
graphs might be more effective. The key is
to present data in a way that is visually appealing while
allowing the data to speak for itself.
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15. Changing Perceptions Through Data
While graphs and charts can lead to misunderstandings, there is
ultimately “truth in numbers.” As
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner say in Freakonomics,
“[T]eachers and criminals and real-estate
agents may lie, and politicians, and even C.I.A. analysts. But
numbers don’t.” Indeed, consideration of
data can often be the easiest way to glean objective insights.
Again from Freakonomics: “There is
nothing like the sheer power of numbers to scrub away layers of
confusion and contradiction.”
Data can help us understand the world as it is, not as we believe
it to be. As Hans Rosling
demonstrates, it’s often not ignorance but our preconceived
ideas that get in the way of understanding
the world as it is. Publicly-available statistics can reshape our
world view: Rosling encourages us to “let
the dataset change your mindset.”
Chris Jordan’s powerful images of waste and addiction make us
face, rather than deny, the facts. It’s
easy to hear and then ignore that we use and discard 1 million
plastic cups every 6 hours on airline
flights alone. When we’re confronted with his powerful image,
we engage with that fact on an entirely
different level (and may never see airline plastic cups in the
same way again).
The ability to see data expands our perceptions of the world in
ways that we’re just beginning to
understand. Computer simulations allow us to see how diseases
spread, how forest fires might be
contained, how terror networks communicate. We gain
understanding of these things in ways that

16. were unimaginable only a few decades ago. When Blaise
Aguera y Arcas demonstrates Photosynth, we
feel as if we’re looking at the future. By linking together user-
contributed digital images culled from all
over the Internet, he creates navigable “immensely rich virtual
models of every interesting part of the
earth” created from the collective memory of all of us. Deb
Roy does somewhat the same thing with
language, pulling in publicly available social media feeds to
analyze national and global conversation
trends.
Roy sums it up with these powerful words: “What’s emerging
is an ability to see new social structures
and dynamics that have previously not been seen. …The
implications here are profound, whether it’s
for science, for commerce, for government, or perhaps most of
all, for us as individuals.”
Let’s begin with the TEDTalk from David McCandless, a self-
described “data detective” who describes
how to highlight hidden patterns in data through its artful
representation.
T
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18. 1
Statistics: Visualizing Data
Putting It Together: Summary Essay and Activities
What’s Next? Trends and Questions in Statistics and Data
Visualization
TED designed Visualizing Data to enable learners to recognize
the powerful insights data can
provide when presented in a compelling fashion. We will
continue to be inundated with data as
technology makes it easier and easier to collect the data.
Learning how to “see” the patterns and
connections in data will become an increasingly sought after
and valuable skill in virtually every
field. Learning how to create effective data visualizations will
be even more valuable.
Coping with the deluge of what we call “Big Data” is one of the
primary challenges for statisticians,
data analysts, and those who can benefit from the information it
contains. Think of the data you
have generated in the past 24 hours – a record of every website
you’ve visited, credit card
purchases, surveillance video at a business your visited, GPS
tracking of where your phone has
traveled, road sensors that have monitored a vehicle you were
in, photos posted online, every text,
tweet, and email have all been added to the day’s store of new
data.

19. Organizing all of this data to be useful, while maintaining
appropriate safeguards on individual
privacy, is an ongoing concern. New technology enables us to
collect and store vast amounts of
data, but developing technologies that allow us to access,
process, and display it in an
understandable form to address questions of interest is a
daunting task.
While the TEDTalks in this series show how experts can extract
and communicate valuable
information from data, one of the major challenges is to develop
this capacity in non-experts who
have questions that data can help address, and to educate the
general public to be intelligent
consumers of data-based analyses.
In the activities that follow, we encourage you to explore other
uses and styles of data visualization.
These options just begin to scratch the surface. Start looking
and you will find data visualizations
being used in almost any field. What are you interested in? Go
explore the data and see what you
find!
Summary Activities
1. Watch Nic Marks’s TEDTalk “The Happy Planet Index”.
Marks argues that when we
measure only economic indicators such as GDP, we are focusing
on the wrong things. What
does Marks think we should be measuring? How are these
things related? How does he use
data visualization to make his point? In his main graph, what

20. should we be focusing on for
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_
index.html
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the countries shown in the bottom left? What should we be
focusing on for the countries in
the top right? Consider Marks alongside Hans Rosling,
comparing the messages they share
about the relative well-being of the world’s nations and the data
visualization tools they use
to make their points.
2. Watch this NOAA video on CO 2 levels in the atmosphere.
This powerful visual
representation of data starts out only showing a small piece of
the full graph. Why do you
think the designers created it this way? Can you think of other
ways the designers might
have displayed this data? How might Nathalie Miebach have
represented this scientific
data?
3. “Exploring Climate and Development Links” from the World
Bank shows excellent
visualization of predicted temperature and precipitation changes
over the next century

22. under different scenarios. Look at projected temperature
changes and projected
precipitation changes under both scenarios. Be sure to scroll
around on the map to find
your own region. Why do you think the designers chose the
colors that they did? Do you
find the colors effective? When you click on the map, an
overlaid graph appears. What
does this graph show?
4. Watch the CDC’s animated demonstration on trends in
obesity levels in the United States.
You’ll need to scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the
graphic labeled “Percent of
Obese (BMI ≥ 30) in U.S. Adults.” The animation shows how
obesity rates have changed
over the period from 1985 to 2010. Be sure to watch the entire
thing: Stop the animation
and use the previous button to scroll it back to 1985 and play it
from the start. Do you find
the data visualization effective? Does this animation catch your
eye and stay with you
more than reading a paragraph describing the obesity epidemic
in the U.S.? Discuss the
use of color in this data visualization. Do you find the colors
effective? Would you change
anything in the design of this data visualization? How might
David McCandless or Chris
Jordan have represented this data?
5. Read the blog post “How Governments Can Better Use Data
Visualization” by economist
and data visualization creator Jon Schwabish. In his blog post,
Schwabish shares five
examples of poor graphical representations of data. Pick two of
the five to analyze. In each

23. case: Describe why Schwabish believes the graph is not
effective. Do you agree with his
assessment? Discuss ways in which the data might have been
presented in a more effective
way.
6. The webcomic xkcd.com includes movie narrative charts that
illustrate character
interactions over space and time. These include charts for the
Lord of the Rings trilogy, the
original Star Wars trilogy, Jurassic Park, 12 Angry Men, and
Primer. What do you think
about presenting the information this way? Explain why the
charts for the last two movies
12 Angry Men and Primer are not as interesting as the first two.
(You might have to look up
a summary of each movie if you’re not familiar with one or
both.) Name another movie for
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html
http://climate4development.worldbank.org/#/risk
http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
http://www.visualisingdata.com/index.php/2012/08/guest-post-
how-governments-can-better-use-data-visualization/
http://xkcd.com/657/
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which you think this method would be interesting and effective.

25. This space/time
illustration for movies might remind you of the visualization
method used by Deb Roy. How
are they similar?
7. The” Many Eyes” project sponsored by IBM includes lots of
interesting data visualizations
and has features that let users create their own visualizations
based on a vast array of
contributed datasets at the site or by uploading their own data.
You can search by keyword
for data that interests you and choose from an assortment of
visualization methods to
create and modify displays within the site. Give it a try! You
can publish a visualization you
create to the site, submit comments on those already there--and
maybe someone else will
comment on yours.
8. Google Fusion Tables is an application that allows you to
combine your own data with other
data on the web, collaborating with other users, visualizing the
data and sharing it via
Google Drive. Google provides excellent tutorials on creating
data visualizations and the
application also points users to many public data sources. Pick
one of the data sources and
create your own data visualization.
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/
http://www.google.com/fusiontables8. Google Fusion Tables is
an application that allows you to combine your own data with

26. other data on the web, collaborating with other users,
visualizing the data and sharing it via Google Drive. Google
provides excellent tutorials on creating data visua�
Lab 2 Guide: Visualizing Data
This week’s lab is designed to give you an introduction to
visualizing data in creative and intellectually rewarding ways.
Complete the following steps for this week’s lab.
1. Read Intro Essay for TED Studies Statistics: Visualizing
Data.
2. Watch Modules 1-6.
a. These TEDTalks are pretty cool examples of creative uses of
data.
3. Read Putting It Together: Summary Essay
a. Complete activities 1, 2, 3, and 6.
b. Respond to the activity questions in your lab report. Make
your responses brief but clear. Use the Lab 2 Report Template.

27. 2-Watch Modules 1-6.
The beauty of data visualization - David McCandless
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zg-C8AAIGgThe best stats
you've ever seen | Hans Rosling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6wNathalie
Miebach: Art made of storms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbhNaj88uL4Chris Jordan:
Turning powerful stats into art
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f09lQ8Q1iKEBlaise Aguera
y Arcas: Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-8k8GEGZPMDeb Roy:
The birth of a word
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE4ce4mexrU
3-Read Putting It Together: Summary Essay
a. b- Respond to the activity questions in your lab report. Make
your responses brief but clear. Use the Lab 2 Report Template.
Lab 2 Report Template
Use the following template to complete your lab report. Before
turning the report in, delete unnecessary information, such as
these directions and examples, and save the report with a file

28. name using the following convention: Your Last Name_Lab 2
Report (Ex: Petrak_Lab 2 Report).
Each section of the report should start on a new page (as in this
template).
Putting it Together Activity Responses
1. The Happy Planet Index
Watch Nic Marks’s TEDTalk “The Happy Planet Index”. Marks
argues that when we measure only economic indicators such as
GDP, we are focusing on the wrong things.
a. What does Marks think we should be measuring?
b. How are these things related?
c. How does he use data visualization to make his point?
d. In his main graph, what should we be focusing on for the
countries shown in the bottom left?
e. What should we be focusing on for the countries in the top
right?
f. Consider Marks alongside Hans Rosling (Module 1 speaker in
this lab), comparing the messages they share about the relative
well-being of the world’s nations and the data visualization
tools they use to make their points.
2. NOAA video on CO2 levels in the atmosphere
Watch this NOAA video on CO2 levels in the atmosphere. This
powerful visual representation of data starts out only showing a
small piece of the full graph.
a. Why do you think the designers created it this way?
b. Can you think of other ways the designers might have
displayed this data?
c. How might Nathalie Miebach have represented this scientific
data? (Nathalie Miebach is the author of the Module 4 talk,
which is not required watching for this lab. A simple search
about her is enough to give you a good idea of how she would
conceptualize a representation of data.

29. 3. Exploring Climate and Development Links” from the World
Bank
“Exploring Climate and Development Links” from the World
Bank shows excellent visualization of predicted temperature and
precipitation changes over the next century under different
scenarios. Look at projected temperature changes and projected
precipitation changes under both scenarios. Be sure to scroll
around on the map to find your own region.
a. Why do you think the designers chose the colors that they
did?
b. Do you find the colors effective?
c. When you click on the map, an overlaid graph appears.
d. What does this graph show?
6. Movie Narrative Charts from xkcd.com
The web comic xkcd.com includes movie narrative charts that

30. illustrate character interactions over space and time. These
include charts for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the original
Star Wars trilogy, Jurassic Park, 12 Angry Men, and Primer.
a. What do you think about presenting the information this way?
b. Explain why the charts for the last two movies 12 Angry Men
and Primer are not as interesting as the first two. (You might
have to look up a summary of each movie if you’re not familiar
with one or both.)
c. Name another movie (or series) for which you think this
method would be interesting and effective. Explain your choice.
a. If you can’t think of a movie that would be an interesting
illustration of this method, then give an example of a movie (or
series) that is especially poorly suited to this method and
explain your choice.
d. This space/time illustration for movies might remind you of
the visualization method used by Deb Roy. How are they
similar?