Description
A prime knowledge visualization skilled explores the bad―and sure―affects that charts have on our belief of fact.
We’ve all heard that a image is value 1000 phrases, however what if we don’t keep in mind what we’re having a look at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous―and more uncomplicated to proportion than ever. We affiliate charts with technology and explanation why; the flashy visuals are each interesting and persuasive. Pie charts, maps, bar and line graphs, and scatter plots (to call a couple of) can higher tell us, revealing styles and traits hidden at the back of the numbers we come upon in our lives. In brief, excellent charts make us smarter―if we know the way to learn them.
However, they may be able to additionally lead us off course. Charts lie in a number of tactics―exhibiting incomplete or faulty knowledge, suggesting misleading styles, and concealing uncertainty―or are ceaselessly misunderstood, such because the complicated cone of uncertainty maps proven on TV each and every typhoon season. To make issues worse, many people are sick-provided to interpret the visuals that politicians, newshounds, advertisers, or even our employers provide on a daily basis, permitting unhealthy actors to simply manage them to advertise their very own agendas.
In How Charts Lie, knowledge visualization skilled Alberto Cairo teaches us not to best spot the lies in misleading visuals, but in addition to profit from excellent ones to keep in mind advanced tales. Public conversations are more and more propelled By means of numbers, and to make experience of them we will have to be capable to decode and use visible knowledge. By means of analyzing latest examples starting from election-outcome infographics to international GDP maps and field-administrative center report charts, How Charts Lie demystifies an crucial new literacy, one on the way to make us higher provided to navigate our knowledge-pushed international.
175 illustrations
