A Primer on Information and Data Visualization

On We Make Money Not Art is a summary of Jose-Luis’s talk on some of the history of visualizing data and some more modern pieces.

It begins with Charles Joseph Minard’s march of Napoleon and then onto John Snow’s cholera map, both of which were made ever so popular by Tufte. By now, if you’ve cracked open an infovis book, you’ve seen both.

Moving on to more modern stuff, there’s The Dumpster, 10×10, Listening Post among some other interesting pieces. If you’re new to visualization, it’s a good “intro to vis” post. If you’ve been around for a while, you’ve probably seen most of the examples, but there might be a couple you haven’t.

On a semi-related note, there’s also an interview with Miguel on WMMNA discussing our humanflows project. Thanks, Regine!