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From: TEDtalksDirector
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  • TED talks to hear new ideas.

  • one of my favourt reds

  • This video gives data visualization a bad name

  • why do they always say DATAR

  • at 11:00 Thank you.

  • GOOD!

  • LOL at the breakup peak on april fools. "its over"

    "OH GOOD ONE HAHA!" "..... no seriously."

  • my computer crashed at 00:15 just as he said information overload D:

  • Comment removed

  • At 14:26 - Plants, where is WEED?

    Btw, why is Green tea both above and below the line?

  • love that this guy is not only clever and knows what he's saying, but hes a bit of a joker too :')

  • what are the programs he uses? and where to get them? does anyone know??

  • Great work! You're so right: the design of information is very important.

  • HAHA He says douche a couple times

  • I laughed when I saw 'April Fool's Day'. Hahaha

  • Isn't this a science... Infography? If it ain't, it should be.

    And it should be used everywhere.

  • alw­ays love TED.COM

  • Makes me want to be a data nerd (meant in the nicest way)

  • where can i find all these graphs and apps?!

  • @funnyj i want to know too

  • @funnyj informationisbeautiful (dot) net

  • @funnyj

    flabber.nl for example

  • @funnyj Just type in "david mccandless" into google, and check out the first link.

  • There is an interesting book by tufte on visualization that folks who liked this might want to browse through

  • Wristwatches are for douchbags.

  • I cannot favorite this harder.

  • I agree, that context is very important, but who chooses what's important? I think images are easier to believe, but they contain also way better possibilities of suggesting things that aren't, - even more dangerous than really wrong data, because they might be correct, and still portray and transmit the wrong idea! Think about this for a second. I'd be careful with over rating, and being overly happy with visualised data!

  • well that Rolex advert is totally hypnotising

  • 14:38 only one guy in the back laughs at "douche" like i did

  • data ARE the new oil

  • Whenever a british person says 'master' I think of Jedis.

  • mccandless... david or Christopher McCandless guess depends on how tied up from technology you are

  • I want eleven thousand nine hundred billion Rolexes

  • finally, no more sitting 12000 feet deep underwater and not knowing what time it is!

  • great rolex ad!

    the data from the commercial is beautiful

  • 1926......Oyster

    1931.........Oyster Perpetual

    1956......Day-Date

    1980s......cell phones come out and Rolex is deemed obsolete......

  • Might the weekend troughs and Monday peaks be attributable to a lag in status updates, instead of variances in real breakups?

    Are status updates overall lower on the weekends? Even if normal status updates are consistent on weekends, I might still believe a lag in breakup status updates due to the alcohol consumption and other behaviors triggered by a breakup, and then you'd update your status first thing at work or in class on Monday!

  • @odouroushouseant plausible theory

  • This is the BEST VIDEO I've seen about this type of information in years. Thanks very much David!

  • That bubble graph thing about efficacy of treatments is useless. It doesn't take into account the methodology of each paper, reputation of journal where the paper is being submitted to, origin of paper (alt-med papers in china are usually more positive), funding of paper/research. There are a *huge* amount of things that aren't taken into consideration - it's too much information with zero context. He should have used reviews or meta-analysis, but even then the graphic is useless without context

  • @Hez0 you have no way of knowing he didn't take those factors into account

  • Is there a way, where I can download or view the slide or document about the vitamins?

  • 17:25 cool!

  • He's very good at this... Excellent content also! :)

  • so, it's all "let's make information look pretty enough that you put it up in a gallery, with better layout that make people pay attnetion". Surely what you need to be doing is giving the cold hard facts if you're presenting some very important imformation to some very important people (execs, business men etc), not spending ages making a pretty layout to put it all on? Seems a bit bizarre and not very important, and wouldn't really make much of a difference anway, but I'll go along with it.

  • @DeadWhiteButterflies Are you deaf and blind? Dont you see how using good design makes everything easier to comprehend, thus you can give a shorter or more clear talk.

  • 06:18 so funny

  • 6:20 :D

  • I don't know where he got his bandwidth figures of computer devices at 09:25, but they're all vastly off the mark.

    It shows:

    1250 MB/s - same bandwidth as a computer network

    125 MB/s - USB key

    12.5 MB/s - hard disk

    A computer network is a rather vague description, but 1000 Mbit/s (125 MB/s) is the fastest consumer level network card speed.

    USB 2.0 is limited to 60MB/s. Most USB keys transfer at a max of ~30 MB/s.

    A hard disk transfers at up to ~150 MB/s.

    Where did he get these numbers?

  • @brinstar117 Well, these numbers surely aren't really exact. But you are also pretty vague comparing it to 'consumer level network cards' (why do you expact consumer level here). And hard discs with 150 MB/s? They exist, but not on 'consumer level' (which usually does not have SSD). So you both compare different things that cannot really be compared. ;)

  • I disagree about the military numbers. What's important in a military is how much damage it can do to other nations, not how much money is available to be spent, or how many people AREN'T in it. When you get down to it, a military only represents and acts on the orders of its government (if that) and is not accountable to the people at all.

  • Rolex Deepsea.I bet Aquaman has one.

  • Excellent stuff, really gets you thinking.

  • It would be AWESOME to visually see were our personal money goes

  • @arhabersham try mint.com

  • @arhabersham isn't this what Mint.com is working towards?

  • Comment removed

  • @arhabersham use mint.com dude! it was an eye opener for me

  • @arhabersham check out mint.com! it does just that!

  • @arhabersham

    I know there is a site out there that tracks dollar bills. It works by you registering a number and writing on the bill, and then you register the bill, you geo tag it and you can see where the bill has been before you. Trying googling it.

  • @arhabersham easy. pay slip + bank statement + excel spreadsheet + graph maker

  • @arhabersham ...in relationship to satisfaction?

  • Calefacient piece of stuff, this is!

  • He has some pretty pictures.

  • sorry... I dont find his data visuals to be beautiful

  • cont...

    The USA gives, per capita roughly $1.2 pa – contrast this with the roughly $4 that the UK gives, a similar figure to France. Seen in this light the majority of average Europeans (with several notable exceptions) donates roughly three-four times as much as the average American.

    Source CIA World FactBook

  • @Origen305 Ironically all this proves is that visual data can be jsut as easily manipulated as text data.

  • @KGR89

    I couldn't agree more

    It is ironic in the sense that this guy is trying to ‘shaft’ one with statistics in ways you never thought possible. The Obsequious Lackey with the gall to use the same PowerPoint magic to show OPEC = bad, US=Best, US army small and dainty, North Korea = military Behemoth . Can we arrange for Rosling to school this child.

    We need a save TED campaign!!!

  • huh

  • theres no bad data. its correct information, people not understanding things is not relevant. and I dont see difference between visual and nonevisual

  • @wasdwasdedsf

    "There are lies, damn lies, then there are Statistics" First Lord Acton

    No one is questioning the data, but rather its use....or misuse, and obsequise presentation.

  • eh

    where

  • @wasdwasdedsf

    Reqd my comments, qnd those of others. I am not inclined to show you the obvious in a video I though I had left mercifully behind me - months ago. Maybe if your language was more precise rather than

    "uh, eh, where?"

    then one might be inclined to respond to your grunts.

  • I think it someone what disingenuous of someone of such a calibre to play sycophant to his US (?) funders, by omitting to mention a crucial factor when stating that the American’s are incredibly generous people (I do not doubt the statement given my own empirical encounters) but it is somewhat disingenuous (or obtuse) to reify the statement using the GROSS foreign aid donation figure when a PER CAPITA figure is the more normative value used (and more useful in so many ways).

    cont...

  • "When you're lost in information, an information map is kinda useful." Indeed.

  • dude got the colors wrong. left = blue. red = right.

  • @DrQuijano That is a (quite strange) Americanism. For the majority of the countries in the world, red is the colour of the left and blue (if any) the right. Think Red Russia, Red China, Red Vietnam etc etc.

  • @DrQuijano I'm with cykolink - though USA has it the other way, in most other countries red is for the left and (maybe) blue on the right. Orange for the more socialized/unionized left, (red and) black for the fascists, green for the environmental, etc.

  • @DrQuijano it depends whether your from Uk or USA doesn't it. Information is beautiful do versions for each.

  • "Let the dataset change your mindset."

    Nice one!

  • 3000, billion for the wars !! damn the warmongers.

  • Here... come, look here look at our sophisticated line of watches that all speakers here at TED personally endorse and wear. You DO wanna be part of the smart, witty and progressive crowd that you know that we are, don't you? Of course you DOOOO! ;) Come join us... welcome, visa mastercard accepted. You know you want to...

  • @nonz3r0 u can say the same about nearly all products starting with an "i" !!!

  • @nonz3r0

    'The smart witty and progressive crowd' - I want in got the watch, but which suit, what hairstyle and which font is my favorite?

    TED's quality nose-dive plays out worse than Gibbons 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'.

  • Here's a visualization. Huge block labeled "Bullshit from David McCandles" Small block labeled "Amount of FUCK I give!"

  • War & Fraud - insanity for all to see

  • Wait a minute! Did this guy just say (at about 16:00) that because he is a journalist that he "naturally" leans to the left of the political spectrum?

  • Reminds me of playing with google trends :)

  • So. In essence, this guy grabs things from info threads on 4chan and posts it around? :P

  • I had a breakup two weeks before Christmas. Turns out to be a popular time. Who knew.

  • LOL@ all the people replying to me....

    I'M SORRY I KNOW MY DIGIT PLACE VALUES AND ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE!!

    Oh and, USD is the unit, not billion or trillion.

  • The military budget is $1T, not 600 billion according to a peer reviewed study in 2009.

  • Caron Neutral Volcano ftw

  • I think data visualisation is the new wave that will transform the way we look at the world. Foursquare tells you where you hang out, Sniftag tells you who your dog is seeing and augmented reality adds another layer to reality. What comes after that could be scary: setting standards and automatic adjustments. Coming home and your intelligent house putting up a Michael Bolton song because you seem "stressed".

  • His billion dollar thing is wrong however, some boxes of say, 20 billion, are much bigger or smaller than others of the same value.

  • Does the Rolex add remind anyone else of Zoolander - "water is the essence of wetness, wetness is the essence of beauty"

    I love data visualisations BTW - makes me wanna be a data analyst!

  • Douche. 

  • that rolex ad is class

  • Left RED and Right BLUE?! What world is tis?

  • @happysplodie He's British, our 'Left' is socialist hence Red. Our 'Right' is conservative (also with a upper case C) hence Blue.

  • @happysplodie

    It's the case in pretty much every country in the world. There is a reason why the flag of the soviet union and china are in red. 

  • DOUCHE

  • Comment removed

  • douche

  • rolex? really?

  • @Santi2c So where's it come from in the first place?

  • Interesting

  • douche

  • First off, why is the right red and the left blue? And where can i see these infogrpahics? they look very intriguing.

  • @braap02 does it fucking matter?

  • @GuildyDawg Nothing matters. We live and then we die and nothing really changes. Typically, red is associated with republicans and blue with democrats. This might confuse simple minded American folk (Teabaggers?).

  • Profiteering = where the money comes from in the first place

  • Very good video of data !

    thank

  • I was schooled in a Private Christian school that watch recorded classrooms on tape and we had supervisers, but my point is that I grew up watching television to learn and same with cable television as a child. Im a History / Discover / Science channel lover.

  • douche; how apt

  • 14:44  Douche!

  • How about a visual representation linking religious belief with lack of education,

  • @lmhjs1000 Is it just me or Does Hans Wilsdorf look abit like the great late Heath Ledger, lol

  • at 2:35 he says "douche"... the appropriate sound effect.

  • lets see if everyone can handle truth?

  • Nice, Rolex. So if I ever decide to go Scuba Diving in a deep-sea trench, I can rest assured that my Rolex watch will remain perfectly intact and functional, even if I no longer am.

  • @takigan - Look on the bright side. At least people would have a reason to recover your body ;-)

  • @takigan but if you stop the watch right before you die they'll know exactly when you died

  • @takigan I respect a watch that is more badass than me.

    (That's not very much, but still. It's very hard for a watch.)

  • @takigan i would thank rolex for making ted possible

  • Amazing, Thanks David McCandless for doing this. Let the Truth prevail always!

  • the speech shows too little of visualization but too much of statistics, fail!

  • He says USA is very generous of foreign aid but if you investigate the foreign aid programs usually goes to propp up dictators and their cronies.

    Even if the foreign aid would actually be used to help the people in need. USA is still not generous compared to other countries who gives a far greater amount of money per capita than USA.

  • @lordmetroid No, he actually showed that the amount that US citizens give to charity dwarfs their foriegn aid budget. That's what he meant when he used the word 'generous'. Of course there are all kinds of charities, some of which aren't really very charitable.

  • Why is the intro so fucking loud?! dammit

  • @mikeyman211 HAS IT GOT YOUR ATTENTION NOW

  • I wonder how many threads per square inch are in his jacket...

  • Program ends at 18:14

  • Rolex, thank you for helping fund these talks.

    I don't even own a watch, but out of gratitude that you are funding this sort of talk, I'm sure my next watch will be a Rolex.

  • @neoaeonian

    you wont be able to afford it

  • @psalib89 Re: able to afford the Rolex

    I know what I couldn't afford, and that is to put on all these talks. The watch costs less than going to a talk, and since it appears to be funding these talks.

    So what I don't understand is why people who can't afford to create the talks are angry at a sponsor who is providing some of the funding to make the talks possible. Rolex is paying for the ad space, which keeps it going, like commercial TV. Gratitude is more appropriate than envy.

  • 1:15 Where the f*ck is the color red, he is referring to? I can spot a pink.

  • ban sick commercial.....

  • A Rolex is a piece of jewelry, nothing more. I can't afford one, but hating on people that can is pathetic.

  • 2 green teas

  • @TheLiberalSoup saw that too

  • Great Ted talk. Rolex however can piss off, we have cellphones now that tell us the time and do a thousand other things more than their stupid watch.

  • That was an epic Rolex commercial at the end O.o

  • carbon neutral volcan! haha

  • 4chan info thread anyone?

  • The graph can't possibly be correct, the evidence for St. Johns Wort isn't "strong"

  • @Doazic I think he considers anecdotes as evidence; the number of positive google testimonials. Aka, hes full of sh*t.

  • @IdleGod No, the size of the circle is what indicates google hit ratio, the height is actual evidence. St Johns wort for mental health is hard to objectively measure, but there are definitely studies that show a positive correlation (better then placebo).

  • @JoesephKatana Go to his website, find the spreadsheet he used. The study he cites has significant flaws. Even if it wasn't flawed, it was only set up to show that it wasn't harmful; meaning you cannot conclude a positive effect from it.

  • @IdleGod I'm not gonna defend saint johns wort or the presenter, I could care less for either, but there are studies such as the one I described in existence, whether or not they fudged the numbers or followed proper testing procedure in those studies I don't know. Personally I wouldn't use it without further research.

  • Does this guy not know that 1 thousand billion is a trillion?

  • @WeatherManToBe Interesting you point that out, switching between using trillions and billions lends little to the equal comparison of data, often causing people to picture something off by a factor of 1000. Seeing as how that was the primary focus of his presentation, it would be absurd for him to do so.

  • @WeatherManToBe - Do you not know that words like "trillion" and "billion" have different meanings, depending on your country? Trillion, for the record, may mean either 10^18, or 10^12.

  • @WeatherManToBe obviously. but he was measuring in units of a billion, which is more convenient to think about, rather than having to convert it in your hand, kind of what the whole talk is about come to think of it

  • @WeatherManToBe yeah, but he wanted to keep the same units for better comparason. That's the whole point of this lecturesd: presenting data properly. Don't compare apples with oranges.

  • @WeatherManToBe Of course he knows, I'm sure he did it on purpose.

  • @WeatherManToBe What's easier to visualize and compare?

    1 trillion and 20 billion?

    or 1,000 billion and 20 billion.

  • That's a brilliant design. It's so obvious that you have to wonder why it's not been in use for years. It would be great if there was a search engine which collated all the information and shown it as a graphic comparison.

  • @ShallowBeThyGames and think of the pornography organisation!

  • @hcortens Something tells me that graphic would be big and dick-shaped ;)

  • @ShallowBeThyGames

    I've actually tried to make a statistics website that uses a model like that instead of just relying on the X Y model where variables are static and non comparable.

    The problem was that there is too much data out there and sorting everything out in the right order takes a huge amount of time and effort, which is why I had to shut it down. Yet still I believe that we will need a software like that in the near future to be able to visualize data and come to new conclusions

  • @MrDemonshalo Fair play. I'm not entirely sure that it necessarily needs to be incorporated into every bit of data. If it were only used in news, I'm sure it would raise the impact given to certain fact and figures. Just seeing the difference in carbon emissions by the Icelandic volcano and the grounding of planes was quite the eye opener for me.

  • @ShallowBeThyGames

    That certainly will be the case. I was for instance thinking of taking all the data the cia.gov website has through a simple script and then make countries like China & US comparable on all possible scales like x = age, Y = child-mortality, Color = total inhabitant per country and regular Text for additional variable comparison =)

    How main question is, how many people would actually use such a service?

  • data means knowledge ... and knowledge, as everyone knows, is power. But I'd never thought I'd say data equals beauty.

  • I can see the next generation of apps for the internet with all of it's data. WOW!