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A nice profile on Edward Tufte.

Edward Tufte occupies a revered and solitary place in the world of graphic design. Over the last three decades, he has become a kind of oracle in the growing field of data visualization—the practice of taking the sprawling, messy universe of information that makes up the quantitative backbone of everyday life and turning it into an understandable story.

I just printed this infographic of the interpersonal relationships of the characters of Infinite Jest. I’ll use it as a bookmark should I ever find time/energy to pick the book up (again) and read it.

Edward Tufte will be joining President Obama’s staff and will be bringing his infographic expertise to the mix. This is exciting news as I believe we’ll better (visually) understand some of the data we constantly hear from the White House. Combine this with how well designed Obama’s campaign was and we’re beginning to see how important branding and design are.

Touching a little on the Data Visualization in Everyday Life post, I found this post by Ben Fry wondering if electronic medical records are about data . I’ve wondered that too. Right now I’m in Michigan and would like to go to the doctor. I’ve lived in three different states since graduating college and have not done as good of a job as I could have with transferring my medical records.

While the majority of this is my fault, I do believe that the whole process of storing my medical data is rather archaic. How do they organize, find, store and understand the information in those aisles of folders? And, how exactly does anyone, including the doctor, read his or her own handwriting? Usually that stuff is chicken scratch.

There have been efforts to take medical records online. Google Health seems to be the most easy-to-find option. But, I guess my biggest question is with all the advanced technology in use in factories, businesses and our personal lives, how is there not a way to automate make going to the doctor more technologically savvy?

I’d imagine there being a tablet pc on a secured network where the doctor can see all past treatments, clearly read notes from a previous diagnosis, cross-reference with other similar symptoms and update the medical record in question in real-time. Not to mention the possibilities of the user tracking his or her data (think: moods, food, exercise, drinks, smoking, blood pressure, etc) for the doctor to see hard evidence to recommend a treatment.

But back to my original point, the data to be tracked, organized and stored here could be used to help see trends in ailments, successful treatments, easily present the data to the doctor immediately and clearly.

The area where I think data viz could most quickly and easily make a difference is in the area of bills and statements. It seems like a dull topic, I know, but imagine the impact of suddenly giving millions of people genuine and immediate insight into their spending habits, cell phone behaviours or energy consumption. It’s data people are generally either bored or intimidated by but the impact of genuinely understanding and seeing patterns in it could be hugely empowering. Knowledge, as they say, is power.

Agreed. And, I’ve been saying that for a while now. I guess I should preface that with the fact that I’m an amateur data visualization wanna-be; I have no idea of the best way to do things, I just know that when I look at a good example, I love it (and vice versa with bad).

I think good data visualization can really help businesses make decisions and clear up any vague areas that data provides. I’d really like to partner up with someone to work on improving different areas where I see problems.

More to this point is the amount of data we can learn about ourselves. I’ve mentioned the quantified self before, but if we can find a way to easily track data on ourselves then present it in a pretty way using data visualization, I believe this will be a marketers dream.