The Truthful Art (Intro, Ch1 & Ch2) : The beginning - MariaAguilarV/JMM-622-Infographics-and-Data-Visualization GitHub Wiki

Explaining something with illustrations is much easier and more interesting than explaining it by words; for example, a complex topic as planets’ spinning can be explained by just 5 images as Cairo illustrated. Coming from an engineering background as me and after taking a bunch of physics, chemistry and calculus classes, I know that, back to those undergrad days, drawing where the best way to learn, understand and therefore pass those courses. Also, illustrations are helpful tools to impact audiences, whether in the news as a journalist or in a conference as a researcher, if you show a graphic, people will assimilate the message better than reading it in a simple sentence.

Really excited by the preface and introduction of the book "The Truthful Art", I continued reading the first two chapters and they gave me the best intro to this new world of data visualization that I am getting in. I have been listening terms as infographics, data visualization, plots and other words since I started my graduate studies but I actually did not know what they mean or when to use them accurately. Although Cairo says that there is no much importance on the taxonomy and that these concepts may be used in different ways by other authors, I needed to have a basic sense of what they are related to. Here are some key terms explained in the book: Visualization, the umbrella of everything, any kind of visual representation of information designed to communicate; chart, sometimes called plot, diagram or graph, it is a display in which data are encoded with symbols that have different shapes, colors, or proportions; infographic, a combination of images and text intended to communicate one or more specific messages; data visualization, a display of data designed to enable analysis and allow people to make their own conclusion; and news application, special kind of visualization that lets people relate the data being presented to their own lives.

Then, Cairo also gives a set of qualities of great visualizations: they must be truthful, functional, beautiful and insightful, and as a result of these 4 we will obtain enlightening visualizations. I want to highlight the importance of choosing topics ethically and wisely, I liked the example of “Buffy the vampire slayer”, a great visualization made by one of Cairo’s students; although I found it interesting and I was tempted to make some similar visualization of movies or series that I love, Cairo states the importance of making illustrations that communicate something important to the world, something that will make the world better. After reading these chapters, I went to YouTube and found some interesting TED Talks about data visualization and I found one interesting video called “How not to be ignorant about the world” where Hans Rosling (A global health expert and data visionary) and his son state that there is a need to communicate, people don’t know the problems that are going on around the world, people trust in their intuition and are biased by their surrenders, or they have pre-conceived ideas and outdated concepts about our contemporary world that they don’t care much about child mortality, governance, economy, women education, etc, etc.

“Good data visualization and explanation infographics communicate information and, as a result, they can increase our understanding. But graphics may also prompt exploration (…)” says Cairo. To be honest, I did not know what to expect about the “Infographics and Data Visualization” class that I am taking this semester, but I am starting to understand the importance of it, I want to learn to make meaningful illustrations to delight people and make them want to know more and more.