Over the past few months I have been working part time for an online political campaigning organisation. Through this work I have been impressed with how statisitcs can be tranformed into real life tangible information that can be used and manipulated to evidence certain things. Of course this is not new (see freakonomics, wordle and almost 2 years of writing statistical reports for Barnardo's after leaving university), but recently I have been falling in love with how beautiful this information can look.
And then, when at my paid job, I found this book: information is beautiful
Which hit the nail on the head.
It is full of beautiful diagrams and colourful charts of how information can be translated visually. And then I found a whole host of treats on the blog here. Including lots of things to play with.
This diagram is completely lovely: http://www.rhfoundation.org.uk/
(although perhaps the data not entirely interesting on a personal level)
Consequently I found myself sat on the tube reading a leftover guardian environment supplement which was completely full of lots of lovely numbers and visualisations. for more, try the guardian's datastore here.
I heart information.
