The Importance of Visualizations

[cahwyguy]

Visualizations and charts make our lives easier, and sometimes can give us insights we hadn’t considered before. Here are three examples:

• When To Walk Your Dog. Your dog has to pee; you take him or her for a walk. But when it is too cold to do so? The answer is: it depends on the dog. Here’s a handy chart to guide you.
• Commonly Used Passwords. Here’s an interesting visualization: take the most common 500 passwords, group them into categories, and the size them based on their strength. Do that, and you get this. This is compiled from multiple data breaches, and it reveals that peoples’ choices of password fall into 10 categories.
• Segregation and Schools. This last visualization is perhaps the most interesting. It looks at how children are divided racially into their home schools, and how school districts manipulate what the home schools are to amplify the racial divide. It allows you to look up your school district, and talks about ways to fix the problem to reduce segregation in schools. It also explores why the answer IS NOT to let people go to the school that is closest to them. A really really interesting (but long) read and visualization.

 

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