The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo

Whole-Brain Communications

This 10-minute video effectively encapsulates the mortgage bubble and subsequent financial meltdown.  Using site, sound and simple graphics, this whole-brain approach is a case study of effective presentation.

One thing struck me as funny, though, and that is how to depict “irresponsible homeowners” graphically.  Mr. Jarvis chose to do it in contrast to the “responsible homeowners” who had one child and a dog.  The irresponsible ones had a load of children, smoked cigarettes (or something) and no pets.  I’m still running that through my politically correct filter.

Where credit is due

I ran across this on the excellent FLOWING DATA site which “explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better – mainly through data visualization. Money spent, reps at the gym, time you waste, and personal information you enter online are all forms of data. How can we understand these data flows? Data visualization lets non-experts make sense of it all.”

The site is run by Nathan Yau.  “In a previous life I was an electrical engineering and computer science student at Berkeley, but now I’m a UCLA PhD candidate in Statistics interested in data visualization. Data analysis is great and all, but for me visualization is just so appetizing, it’s irresistible, and if done right, provides results for everyone — not just the statisticians and/or scientists.”

I just became Nathan’s follower on Twitter.