Oh the ways data visualization enlightens!

I came across a blog awhile ago by Matthew Hurst called Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media, but revisited it today because of a recent post on data visualization blogs. The blogs he lists are interesting, though there is another one on his side bar called Statistical Graphics (check out the animated 3-D graphic!).

It just is a reminder of how difficult a truly good visualization of data is to create. Mr. Hurst shows an example from the National Safety Council that is truly an opaque graphic, and a great example of data that is crying out for a TABLE rather than a graph. (See here for the article.) I have to admit though, it looks pretty cool. Here's the graphic--can you easily summarize the key content?




But just because a graphic is complex, doesn't make it bad. (I cite as an example the graphic I posted on here.