Knowledge Matters™

I don't idly web-surf very often, but today I am and it has proven fruitful. I like numbers and I like visualisations even more, so naturally I like the web site of Chris Jordon which is called Running the Numbers: an American Self Portrait . Chris has come up with the novel idea of depicting statistics using multiple images of the statistic in question.

For example he shows the number of people who have been arrested and held at US-run detention facilities with no trial or other due process of law by creating a montage of Abu Ghraib prisoner photographs. The montage consists of 83,000 photographs, which allegedly is the statistic!

Scroll down the page a bit and he depicts one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours. Further down is a visualisation of two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes. Even further down is a montage of the Victorian era park scene, except the visualisation is constructed from 106,000 aluminium cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

Each visualisation is aesthetically pleasing and presents a novel way of presenting the message for things that matter, or should matter, in our world.

Regards, Graham