Legal Research

An amazing infographic

By Jason

I’ve been a fan of the Mental Floss blog for awhile. Today, they had an interesting post about 6 less than helpful infographics. This is particularly interesting to me as I’m a huge fan of Edward Tufte, and the whole concept behind visualization.

The post started off strong talking about a typically weak USA Today info graphic.

But the second link goes to what I think is a brilliant graphic from the San Francisco Chronicle. It is a map of the Golden Gate Bridge, listing every light pole, and documenting the number of suicides at every location on the bridge.  It conveys so much information at just a quick glance. The map, colors, and orientation of the graphic instantly tell you something about the pattern of jumpers on the bridge. What I noticed first was how many jumpers leapt from the East side of the bridge, rather than the West. Reading some of the text informs you that there is a bicycle lane on the West side and a pedestrian walkway on the East side. The graphic contains so much information, displayed so simply that I think Tufte himself would proud.

The author of the Mental Floss’ blog post doesn’t like it because the subject is too morbid, and calls it “bizarre and depressing”. It’s certainly sad, but at the same time it says so much more about the phenomenon of suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge than any article or news item I have ever read. Maybe I’m just a visual learner, or maybe this graphic is simply so powerful and effective as to communicate something that’s never been adequately explained to me.

Full post as published by Jason the Content Librarian on January 10, 2008 (boomark / email).