The 1790 census thing aside, I think what makes this such a nice infographic is that the creator didn't try to squeeze a bunch of numbers in there. Aside from the the pie chart (which I actually like since it is intentionally used to demonstrate misleading statistics) and a few other cases, it's primarily a written description.(I wish it would provide citations, but I'm satisfied with the accuracy of the information)
It didn't fall into the trap of trying to ornament charts by substituting icon for point on a chart or create 3D or otherwise exotic charts that are nearly impossible to interpret. Simply stuck to telling a story and that seems to work.
[edit: I should add. I definitely fall into the category of "Data Scientist". So while I have a lot of appreciation for quality visualization, I think in this case it was best to stick with a narrative and not try to incorporate anything quantitative into the visuals.]
Comments
The 1790 census thing aside, I think what makes this such a nice infographic is that the creator didn't try to squeeze a bunch of numbers in there. Aside from the the pie chart (which I actually like since it is intentionally used to demonstrate misleading statistics) and a few other cases, it's primarily a written description.(I wish it would provide citations, but I'm satisfied with the accuracy of the information)
It didn't fall into the trap of trying to ornament charts by substituting icon for point on a chart or create 3D or otherwise exotic charts that are nearly impossible to interpret. Simply stuck to telling a story and that seems to work.
[edit: I should add. I definitely fall into the category of "Data Scientist". So while I have a lot of appreciation for quality visualization, I think in this case it was best to stick with a narrative and not try to incorporate anything quantitative into the visuals.]
Good infographic. Although:
"The first big data collection project in history was by the U.S. Census, which started in 1790."
Errr....
Hmm. I can push that back to the doomsday book.
And probably every single tax collector in history.
I think tax collection records are always one of the earliest examples of writing in a ancient language
Hear hear! Utter bull. Undermines the entire infographic.
The link goes to "Database Error - Error establishing a database connection" which is kind of interesting, given the subject of this thread.
good summary, also see http://www.quora.com/Educational-Resources/How-do-I-become-a... and http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/06/what-is-data-science.html