Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Massaging the Data

Nearly every day this election season I have considered it my duty to obsessively check the Presidential election polls on my current favorite polling website, Pollster.com, and to read all the politics articles I can get my hands (or mouse) on. In one of my recent descents into election madness, I stumbled across an article on the Wall Street Journal site that described my poll-watching as a national trend. This election cycle, Americans are delving into the minutiae of poll results: getting live updates on their Blackberries, critiquing interview methodologies, and rejoicing at even the teensiest shift in the polls in favor of their candidate.

In an effort to lighten up a little about the polls and remind myself that statistics can't tell me how happy I'm going to be over the next four years, I picked up Gary Rimmer's Number Freaking, How to Change the World With Delightfully Surreal Statistics. Ever wonder if  your boyfriend really is worth his weight in gold? If he's 180lbs, he's worth about a million bucks. Is he worth his weight in chocolate? Mine is worth about $800 in grocery-store grade chocolate. How long would it take all the beer consumed in the world every year to flow over Niagara Falls? 6 hours and 29 minutes. Rimmer takes bits of info and widely held suppositions and turns them into strange and wonderful visions of the world. He firmly comes down on the side of fun rather than fact in the pursuit of great number freaking and arranges each mini-chapter as problems you can solve. Or you can just find the answer at the bottom of the page, like I did.

One thing that keeps me going back to the newspaper and polling websites is the use of beautiful and engaging interactive maps and graphics. The article that pointed out my trendy status also has a rich zig-zag graph that tracks the poll results over time from several different polling companies. Another site I've seen has a map infographic that lets you decide which states will be won by each candidate and tallies up electoral votes as you go. When I think about creative graphics for data, I think first of Edward Tufte. His books have become essentials in the worlds of design, statistics, business, and information. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is about more than just producing the right chart for the right data. He also is a proponent of beauty in graphical representation, both in terms of the specifics of type and lines, as well as in the efficient truth presented by a well-designed graphic.

Maps as a means of representation have always enthralled me. My first job in a library was in the map department at my university. My working hours passed quickly as I familiarized myself with the collection of maps available for students to use: topographic maps for the entire region and beyond, nautical charts for that boat trip to the San Juans, aeronautical charts from the Defense Mapping Agency in case I needed to fly over disputed territory. Katharine Harmon shares my fascination with maps, but her predilection leans towards maps that capture a personal vision over data. Her book You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination is a collection of maps that range from a 1943 Pictorial Map of Loveland populated by always-accurate cupids and lovesick couples to A Dog's Idea of the Ideal Country estate which includes two butcher shops and lots of mud. Maps from the intimately personal to the broadly universal are included and knit together with several essays that illuminate and deepen the images.