Sunday, September 13, 2020

The Visualization of Points of View

I'm a fan of Edward Tufte and have all three of his books on Visualization of Data (see bottom of this page). It occurred to me that you could show the two "extreme" points of view of Covod-19 in a single info-graphic.

So there are those who say Covid-19 is a hoax or not really a problem, and there are those who say it is a catastrophe for humanity. I think the two points of view are summed up by this image:


The population of England and Wales is 57 million, and the number of deaths from Covid-19 this year is about 42,000 (so far). So the doubters say: "Deaths caused by Covid are less than 0.074% of the population.

You can hardly see the thin red line under the red text of the bar graph.

Personally I think that, yes, the number of people directly affected is very very tiny, but the effect on the nurses, doctors, actual patients, our healthcare system is huge, and we must respect that fact.

Anyway this info graphic came to my mind so I made it.

Here are the wonderful books of Edward Tufte, full of examples of good and bad info-graphics, a joy to see, read and understand. Anybody who thinks that Excel's graphing functions are all you need to know, should read at least one of these.