Too Many A Second?
Posted Thursday, 13 November 2008 by Pippin
Via FlowingData I came across the visualisation tool So Many A Second which pretty much does what it says. It helps visualise how many times thing X happens every second. Above, for example, is a screenshot of the visualisation of the number of trees being cut down per second.
As is pointed out on FlowingData, the power of the visualisation is in relating a statistic to a human scale. Most importantly, it helps us to have a feeling about statistics.
While playing with it, though, I did wonder if it was largely the low frequency events which had the most impact. Once a certain number of objects were being displayed per second, I found that the sheer volume desensitised me. With the lower frequency statistics, such as the number of smoking-related deaths (0.15) per second, there was a real feeling of awe each time a single skull-and-crossbones dropped past.
Tags: statistics, visualisation