Transcripts For CSPAN2 Alberto Cairo How Charts Lie 20240713

Vanguard of vigil information bread he is the author of several other books, functional art, introduction to visualization and the truthful art, data charts and mask medications in his latest book over there, and he will be signing copies afterwards. Getting smarter about vigil information. So thats the topic of tonight. Thank you. [applause]. Thank you for being here tonight and thank you again for the Northeastern University for having me. This is the third time that i make a presentation at this university. I must feel like home. I would like to begin with a little bit of housekeeping. The first think is, i would like to ask you to give an applause to the students who have signed this beautiful poster. [applause]. Their names, i will mispronounce them. Thank you so much for hanging this beautiful poster. Absolutely like it. I think i like it even better on the book cover but anyway. [laughter]. Or housekeeping, if youre interested in the topic and you find interesting. It you find it enlightening or useful, these are not copyrighted and right after i finished giving the presentation, i will tweet out a link to the slides. Pdf file. So feel free to download this slides and use them at will. In her classes are with your friends and family to work, your company. If you think that the concepts will be useful for you, feel free to use the sites. I will explain why President Trump is over here. So they slides, toll the book. In the talk, how charts like. They go way beyond with the book describes. And the purpose of the things that appear in the book itself. A little bit about the books the title itself convinces part of what the book is about but its about much more than what the title says. For quite sometimes i entertain a much longer title that actually captures more about what the book is about how we lie with them actively even to herself and this is the huge problem. I will address it later on during the talk. How will he become a better sure readers and educator cells are how we become better sure designers and why we are in great need of using good charts and meaningful conversations. This is one of the main topics of the book. Im a great believer in both the dangers of charts but also my great believer in the power of charts to eliminate great conversations and many other countries and other places like brazil italy and spain are in great need of this. Charts are everywhere. Im not telling you anything new. If youve been paying attention to news media in the past decade you may have noticed an increase in the number of data and the conversations on the maps and charts and diagrams. Graphs etc. The reason why this is happening is through the analytics, the news media are people really like stars. People like staying charts in the news that they consume part of everybody sure or graph or a map or diagram in the story, engagement of the story increases. In between out or you post something on instagram, if you had some sort of vigil data graphic like a sure or graph, the engagement that person will probably increase as well. So this hour, there is great news on one hand because i am a journalist. But at the same time, i think we need to do with what i call the epistemic gap. Heres what, i mean. Through all of the years i have been serving that the sophistication of data from the station that we see the news media but not only its increasing let the sophistication of the designers agreed these data Vigil Associates in also increasing. In the sophistication of the tools and that is also increasing. So on one hand, and this trump of knowledge, and the difficult thinking etc. We have two groups that are glowingly, apart. Theyre moving apart from each other. On one hand you have sort of what we could call the experts. Many of you are probably experts. If you are in this. People know how to deal with numbers and how to visualize numbers. What worries me is what happens on the other end of the trump. What happens with everybody else in the public right. Is it being is the public being helped to bring itself up to speed with the new technologies. Does the public in general understand the graphs and the maps in the charts that we see everyday in the media. For it. Perhaps the answered to that is no or maybe we could do a little bit better. One of the metrics of the book and the messages of the talk, is that i think we need and when i see we, i mean designers and charts right. Perhaps we need to stop talking so much as we do about the charts and the techniques, the design that we use, and we need to start thinking about how to perhaps, helping everybody else in friends and family etc. Also learn how to reason. One of the reasons why i see this is throughout the years i have observed people in my field the field right come from, and journalism, spread several myths that i believe are detrimental to understanding data. For example, a picture is worth a thousand words. This has brought true. As some i will try to explain that on a few examples. Also its intuitive. A map or a sure and you would assume that everyone would understand it because we all assume that it is something that we can continue all understand just a quick glimpse. With a quick look. That went out spending time to try and understand what it means. On the third one with analytics, the day it should speak for itself, showing the numbers. Be careful with that. This data never speaks for itself. It need you need to talk and you need to interpret and then what you convey, his interpretation of the data. Chantel. This is very common. I usually joke that some of these myths, can be made true in the second part of the sentence pretty if weekend and Something Else but for example, that picture may be worth a thousand words, either if you know how to read it. If you had read it, then the picture is worth a thousand words. This happens with representations of information and also happens with extra interpretations of data. Let me show you a picture, probably only a few will know how to read this picture right. Take a look at this picture. Commonly many of you are familiar with it. Comes with a slogan. We all know how to read these things. America, runs on dunkin. Why do i read this picture like this. Because i been told how to read it. Nobody had told me how to read this picture, i wouldbe like what is this person running away from the United States. [laughter]. Makes sense nowadays pictures can be greatly ambiguous. Relationship to this picture, has brought in the book but that talk is on extension. Of the book and the first time that my little daughter saw this picture, she was four years old. Shes at right now. And remember i was having a cup of coffee and i wanted this image over here. She asked me, and a perfect british accent by the way, because she was watching at the show by the way was a british show. She asked me she saw that, she said the patient yes, daddy, why is the person waving from inside of the toilet. [laughter]. And realized that she was seeing a toilet. And that person coming out of the toilet for some reason. I tweeted these because i found it so funny. But also so revealing of how ambiguous images can be. If they are not properly explained. I tweeted it out and someone who follow us me and twitter, for life to me staying, that doesnt look like a person from inside of the toilet. It looks like a person waving from behind a martini glass. Actually looks like that as well. Pictures can be interpreted in multiple ways. This happens with such into simple image. Think about how ambiguous this could be that went out having explaining. My way here in the plane, i saw a tweet promoting this app and i incorporated it into the talk today. Tina wrapper. And they have also a weblog. They publish this article staying our developer finds out which country has more historically than russians. If you will believe the russians in the world who have during the most of in the business has brought true particular the data. Natural use data to show that is not the russians who consume more alcohol per person per year. If you click on the link, it will take you to the stars bring the sure show the average Alcohol Consumption pure out Alcohol Consumption per year in person and all of these countries. And you can see the russians are actually down here. The line has not varied that much. It does not vary that much. The french actually fewer leaders of year although that number has also decreased. Will is the start going to bed pretty charts are never good about it in nashville. The sure itself is good. But whenever we see a sure we can fix it for a long way in one of the first rules and becoming Group Readers of charts, to Pay Attention to the source. And if it is since patent into the nuances. Never to take charts at face value right. We a look at the source of the data, its disclosing the article, well done. The nuance in the data and the interpretations of the data in the knowledge it of the article itself, they did a great job of that. We do read the article carefully, the article says, we need to be careful with this data. This is only measuring Alcohol Consumption captured by Government Data pretty this data has brought considering the consumption outside of the control the government. Like alcohol that you can bring from home. Which is sort of a tradition in the country. Spain. As one of them. This is free advertising for my friend. Anyway so, the day it has a lot of limitations. We why not understand a sure like this yet i am staring at the sure. We need to take a look at the sure and then we need to read the documentation with the source. And that the first rule of becoming a good visualization reader. And also first role in becoming a good designer because this sure is just showing an estimate for its not capturing the entirety of the reality. Only a small portion of the reality. Thats another picture of charts and charts are never accurate representations of the world they are limited of participation. We need to understand their limitations. While we do that by the way, there is the consequence of these, we should never assume that we can continue understand the sure, we should always stop and read it. They are not meant to be seen. They are meant to be read. Visualization essence are not images. These are our vigil and our arguments made vigil. And like any kind of argument, you have to understand it, you need to Pay Attention to it it take example what happens with maps printed hurricane maps. This is the little bit of pet peeve of mine. This is dorian. The Hurricane Dorian from a month and a off ago or something on that. This is one of the latest forecast of Hurricane Dorian. The National Hurricane center which is based in miami, with the one of the public aware of hurricane meiko. They use these kind of graphics right. The cohen graphic. Is one of the most famous and most likely used maps to inform people of where the hurricane meiko. Tasted look at this example and detail in the book so am not going to go into a lot of detail over here but im going to tell a little bit about the limitations of these maps printed in the many ways of which is map can be interpreted. This is the great to illustrate one principal. As a designer, your creator. The following. What you design, has brought what people see. What you design, is that. Thats cone credit but based on the experiential and evidence of observing how people read this map, and actually interpret this map, we know the many people even in miami and other places that are commonly affected by perkins, one of these that cone, they see Something Like that. They see a hurricane growing in size. Now people are not stupid. If theyre not. There is very good reason why people see an area on threat and they see the company thats a natural mapping. Its a very common way to work with an area on threat to use a different shade of color and close with the line. It looks like the area that may be a threat. But thats not true. Someone is the map represent. What is it code actually representing. We do read the fine print, when the read the documentation of the National Hurricane center, they explain how to read this map correctly. What is representing has brought an area on threat. It is a lot of probable positions of the center of the hurricane in the up next five days. They are telling you basically, most forecast is basically this one that you have over here. We estimate that this will be the brunt of the storm however, we why not be sure. Therefore will going to represent a certain loophole of uncertainty that there the cone of uncertainty. The National Hurricane center first about collects tons of forecasts. For the hurricane meiko and we can show those lines and after the center of the storm, then they come up with their own forecast which is basically pinpointing where they estimate the hurricane meiko. They surround those little dots with circles with increasing size that the loophole of uncertainty. They see it could be here from five days from now but it could be here or could be here are could be here or there anywhere. It could be over here. And then they take that circle and they erase the circle and the result is the cone. Therefore fear a plan to move to florida, this is how to read the map up next time that you see a hurricane. No it is a mean also. It means that areas that are outside of the cones, may be affected by the storm. Because the tone is only showing you the possible position of the center of the storm. And hurricanes have hundreds of miles wide. The means and even if you leave for example in this case in South Carolina out here, you may still be affected by the storm in the road. Five days from now. And now this map, is also misinterpreted but very important people by very important people so this is the forecast on sunday september the 11th of the first. 2019. I can see it and i noticed that the day before i want to use my computer. This is the forecast for august 30th. One day. The storm is basically going to be running over the coast of florida. But then in the morning after, at 5 00 a. M. , the National Hurricane center publish this map showing the dorian was going to move towards the Atlantic Ocean at that same morning, a few hours later, it was published by the National Hurricane center, this was tweeted. The additions of florida South Carolina North Carolina and alabama, will most likely be hit much harder than anticipated. Looking like one of the largest turkeys in the left progress on that way my brain just malfunctioned for a second because id seen map and i saw the tweet if my reaction was basically that what are they talking about. It would mean alabama. What is going on right. After a few days, in this case, they said that this tweet was right. It was a best day. But instead of correcting it which is what anybody would do. If i made this best day is very easy to do this. To misinterpret this the right reaction wouldbe to see i was wrong. It was never likely that alabama was going to be hit. Considering that the storm would move over there. So easily a correction put up in the reaction of the right responses case right. But instead of correcting himself, he doubled down. Trickle down i was right. Alabama wasnt threat. I was right and even sit on a briefing in the oval office at few days later, when she shared a map not for responding to the day of this week, a map from a few days before and issued the tweet. You may notice that he shared, actually extended the cone of uncertainty and is the reason we call this event, sharpie. I look at people what if this does happen. Why could be so wrong. So this has brought why he did it correct himself. That wouldve been the right think to do or the right reaction lease but wont he got it wrong, it was nasally mainly because it was exposed from the days heading into september the first, he was supposed to use tons of maps. Showing that actually one of them went from august 30th a few days before, actually show the day was a low profitability affected by this storm may be 1. The two days before the tweet, there was actually a map showing that. It ended at the map, much earlier than that one of the first maps that will produced, produced by the Water Service i believe. They show the sum of the forecast models one over alabama. There will just a few of them. Most of them will showing that that the hurricane was going to go over florida. In a later forecast shared that there are a few of them that actually touch alabama. This map was published much earlier than the tweet later forecast shared again hurricane moving towards the Atlantic Ocean. Where my going. What im going to tell you about what this map. Not the map itself with the caption of the map. Happening is perfect to illustrate the problems we are dealing with today. The caption says, if anything on this graphic is confusion and ignore the entire product. [laughter]. I absolutely love this caption when i saw it. I loved it so much that even considered it as the title of my up next book and captures perfectly and also the dangers of data or read it can also be extremely confusing and hurricane forecast maps, can be very confusing again i believe very wheeling to be anybody and everybody on the cause of doubt. I couldve made that best day myself. Writing about it in a tweet, tons of different maps leading to september the first. We need to correct the stuff whats going on here. Theres a nerdy part of the presentation. Traditional models of understanding of this usually puts a designer first. When the designer, means any of you anybody who produces this, is designing a sure or map or graphic or whatever, you have a certain mental model of how that is going to work. And what it is representing what do you want to show. But at the 794, we do show has brought what people see. Why not. Because one a reader, looks at your graphic, that reader comes with a completely different kind of mental model. Perhaps, they dont have the same knowledge as you do. This is what happens over here pretty when there is a mismatch between the mental model that the designer is using and the mental model that the reader is using to interpret that map, that is when ambassador understanding happens. And there is a certain component i would see to go with his equation of misunderstanding which is the role of mediators or intermediaries. For these mediators. They can be journalists. There is a very good recent tone of uncertainty is so widely misunderstood. Watch tv, up next time that you see a hurricane coming. Notice how tv journalists explain the cone of uncertainty. They usually get it wrong. If they explain wrong. They usually explain outside of an area on threat. Those are the mediators. The mediators have a responsibility to explain this as well printed in order for the public to understand it better. Or the mediators in the case of sharpie gate. The mediator in the case wouldbe the People Racing president , about President Trump. In reason he got that wrong and the reason he said the toy is that morning, on september the first which was sunday, he didnt receive his breathing. He just remembered that maps from the day before and hear the tweet based on those maps. Because he received that from cheek mediators experts. So can we do what we can do several things. Obviously one of the best things are the first things is to issue a graphic. A new one. We assume that in any situation, we can assume one of these rol roles, the designer, the reader or the mediator. But in many cases we will assume more than one role. And i will get to what, i mean, by these. The role that we are assuming, will dealing with a sort of su sure, we can sort of remind yourselves certain roles. We have the designers, for example we can ask ask yourselves how can we help our readers create the right model for the sure that i am about to show. For example, convention, or explaining the graphic. Acting as a mediator and explaining how to read that graphic. If you are mediator, if you are a journalist or a tv person or whatever, how can we make this translation pretty mediator and a translator between the complexity of the science and the public. And then you as a reader, how can we educate ourselves to become more graphic hated. What is that. Graphic sc is sort of a novel term. It was invented in the 1960s to refer to graphical literacy. Graphic literacy. And unfortunately theres a huge lack of knowledge of this kind of literacy. And more kemeny, who is written tons of books about maps. Among them is my inspiration. Its absolute wonderful book about maps. One of the best introductions about sure. In the case, another book called knocking it out and that what he says nowadays, in order for a person to consider herself or himself educated citizen and a republics of the United States, we need to be obviously literate. We need to know how to read men read but we need much more than that. We also need numeracy. And numeracy has brought accepting mathematics. Its not exactly statistics and has brought exactly scientific thinking. Numeracy is more like a sixth sense they come develop by sending all of that. Like mathematics and science and etc. In order to develop that in the back of his brain, like an alarm that will start ringing we do receive number that looks dubious or a sure that looks strange. That numeracy and six since will start ringing in the back of your brain. Continue to look deeper than ever. To basically just sees what lies behind that number. And that extension of it will have graphic sc. The ability to interpret graphics correctly. Unfortunately it seems that we still have a lot of work to do. Back in 2014, the center event conducted a survey in which they asked a sample of 1000 people, what you see in this sure. This sure, can plot showing the association or correlation. The association between an average sugar consumption per capita per country. And you have the average number of her person in Different Countries. There is good news in venice about the results of the survey conducted by the people. The good news is that 63 percent of people in the survey could read this mafic well printed and the grammatical loophole. When i meet at that loophole. The putting it meant that the position of lincoln interpret that the printed the things meant Something Else. So 603 percent of the people can be discharged. 63 percent. His greatness because as a journalist who have been working with us for more than 20 years, i can tell you that we had some activity surveys, 20 or 25 years ago, then that participation was much lower. There will no bar to be seen in these papers. Twentyfive years ago. The cattle plots in the newspapers that have been published in the United States at least, ten or 15 years ago. Therefore, and this is just a guess, that percentage is higher today just because more readers have been exposed to these kind of sure throughout the years. That is as though we still have one third of people, who why not read this graphic even at the grammatical loophole. Some people interpret this this sure is showing change over time. Why. I dont know. But there that right. The graphic is confusing. They didnt have the right loophole of literacy of graphical literacy to read this graphic. Its unfortunate printed because its a novel way to represent data. Is the dive boat graphic that has been around for more than 100 years. For the time in the middle of the 19th century when people a famous dentition would develop many methodists methods. We study correlation. Regression, and stuff. So can we do pretty we can show and we can tell and we can explain. One person that i believe we can look to for inspiration as to how to president data but also hard to explain data and at the same time had weeks when the graphics that i am representing this data is professor hunch water who a couple of years ago. He was a professor of International Health in sweden and he became very famous in a talk that he gave that year. He made data talk. And speak. And have the opportunity that this is his website and it collects multiple talks that he had and he gave before he passed. He also published a book called facts. Its quite interesting. Now this is just a few images, a documentary that he made a few years later called the joy of stats. It was she presented a sure, and as you can see before he shut the data, he is exciting to people, here are the vertical axis. There is a horizontal axis. The mean income. The vertical means year. Ill show you the squadron over here in the squad over here course most of the countries that are a healthy and they live very long etc. So now im going to show you where the countries are in the 80s in the 19th century. Each one of these in the country. So the self is the way he is explaining the data. By explaining this graphic, he was not just explaining the contents of the graphic itself. He was increasing the loophole of graphic and see of his audience by explaining how to read that graphic. These he knew that it is sort of an unusual way to represent data for people who are not trained in statistics or any science or other things. So it wouldnt encourage you to represent his in my opinion, one of the most influential and sort of influential designers in these century. In the second matter on the second accommodation is to invite complexity. And this is for the journalists in the room. I know that ive been working journalism and for many years you asked them what their main task is. And some of us will see, we want to simplify matters right. Want to simplify matters for readers because we want to president information by understandable by everybody. To simplify is very dangerous. I prefer to use to clarify. Nigel holmes, a Graphic Designer uses that. What is the difference between those tours. Those two words, they put you in a different frame of mind. When you are in a frame of mind simplification all of that you care about is reducing the amount of data that you president to the public. That sometimes is correct. We should not overwhelm people with numbers. That are needless to understand the story. Sometimes that drives and that simplify can lead us to oversupply matters. Sometimes we need to increase the amount of data that we show in order to clarify story. Take a look at this sure. There is nothing right with this sure per se the sure can be misinterpreted very easily. And showing the murder rate in the United States for 100,000 people between 1960 up to 2015. Will all part of the story claim increasing during the 70s and the 80s and same morals and the same increasing in the 90s and in the 2000 news. And then in the past two or three years it would expand the signup to the person, and that line keeps increasing. I know because i heard this. The many people will describe this sure is the United States is becoming a much more dangerous country. In this description, this verbal description of the sure that we see every day, can blatantly bias of perception of the sure. Because this sure has brought showing that the United States is becoming a more dangerous country. Its not showing that. Why not. Because most places in the United States are very safe. We could plot every single town, city, neighborhood whatever. Geography that you want to use on that, on that vertical axis, most of the United States wouldbe down there. There wouldbe around the National Rate or below the National Rate. Responding to a city or town or a place in United States. What is going on over here. It is trade values. There are certain outliers in certain cases and places, and the United States that have become so dangerous in the past five years or so, that a murder rates have increased so much in these places that they have distorted the rate. Is pulling the lineup like to make it so these are a perfect example of the difference between two simple fight, and to clarify. The only show me the National Rate, if you only show me that measurement of rate, of the journalists publishing the story about this in the newspaper. You are assuming that i already know that there are outliers that may be distorting the National Rate. And i may not know that therefore that simplification, may be obscuring the information for me. The reader who doesnt know that much about these issues. But instead of doing that, if you show me a sure of the National Rate, and also you and have an explanation of these extreme values that need changing in the pattern over the dive boat data by the distorting lines moving the line up or down this explain these values in these places become so dangerous in about two years and now you are clarifying by increasing the amount of data that you are showing. Therefore we need to put ourselves in a frame of mind to clarify not to simplify. What else could we do, if you do not trained for this or data scientists etc. Five in the case of most journalists. It continues a long way to read about those matters. Partially plenty of popular books that dealt with the main way that statistics may lie to us and how to represent them correctly for example recently, like a month ago or something, the art of statistics. We also have the classic statistics which mostly intricate methods and statistics how to understand numbers correctly and how not to be wrong, the statistics unplugged. There are plenty of books out there the people like me, only some of you in the room have not been formally trained in numbers, can get the smoking they can really help us come up to speed with all of these matters. And we can give them to other people as well. In order to understand the data and the clarification of the data. The understanding also how to deal with numeracy. Look at the numbers three and a fourth, the accommodations over here wouldbe to become a little bit more mindful about her bias. Both ideology full bias and cognitive bias. Where you will be the confirmation bias. How strong we are to project what we want to believe or what wed like to see onto the charts are stories that we see every day. That happens to all of us. It happens to all of us however, we can control ourselves. We can become a little bit more mindful about the tricks of the brain plays unconsciously in order to be deceive us. Let me show you an example of the many that the book touches us. You are a cigarette smoker, he spoke tons of cigarettes every day. And you of growing tired of telling you you should stop smoking because smoking is really bad for your health right. But someone for example, i show you that sure. That is it will take a look at that sure right. Take a look at the horizontal axis. Its not cigarette consumption per capita in the vertical is live expectancy in years and as a journalist i can tell you that someone like me with will describe the content of this sure this way. I know this because i have done this myself. For most the mistakes of the ones i made myself suffer my personal experience. Many people will read this sure, member when i told you before about verbal descriptions. They can bring a bias in the way we interpret the sure. Many people will describe this sure as the more we spoke, the longer we will live. That is very dangerous. To describe the start this fight because sure why not be described that way. It will be a much more accurate description of the sure. At the national loophole, there is a possible association between considered pearl bull but that doesnt mean that these things are connected to each other. It and the other levels of aggregation, the association in this is the correlation that was in there, maybe may disappear. That is the right way to explain the start because one of the things that we need to remind yourselves of is whatever we see a sure, there is another role in the book that i didnt put in the talk. And i want to mention it today. It can help us become better sure readers. A sure shows only what it shows and nothing else. Everything else that using the sure, happens to be a correlation in her sure and your brain. This sure has brought showing that the more we smoke, the longer we will live on the more i smoke, the longer i live. Because this is only shutting data aggregated at the national loophole. Its not showing individual person by person and data. In fact this is the great example to explain to people certain heart and biases and problems whenever we interpret data for example, the fallacy which is the term we all need to get acquainted with. Or amalgamation particles. If we start desegregating the data, by income levels, take a look at what happens. There is no association anymore. Knowing grouping the countries by income loophole. The strong positive that we had before, becomes much fuzzier. Why because we are dealing with several underlying variables that we are not taking into account for example. Well. Whenever the old staying, correlation has brought causation but we need to go beyond that right. Wealth is the lurking variable and way of not contemplating. It may explain the variation of those two variables that we have in the sure right. Their wealthier people are, or the wealthy the country the more cigarettes they consume in their live expectancy may be lower. But therefore at the same time they have safer environments. They also have access to better healthcare pretty and for the live expectancy that human lives by increasing the camp assumption, it may get balanced out by that good healthcare. And by the environments and that may be a possible exhalation but as i said before correlation and causation is the whole other story. One about a paradox. What in on what market she particles happens when a pattern that you see at a certain loophole of segregation, national loophole. More cigarettes and more live expectancy but if you go to a lower loophole of aggregation for example the individual loophole. Data person by person. The association that was may reverse completely. The more cigarettes you consume, the shorter you will live. And this is happening in this particular case. Do you dig for greatness even more, by continent. Then we get to the individual loophole and person by person data, the positive association that we had before, becomes a negative association. And person in the data rep person we know already that consuming more cigarettes in general, live in general with exceptions to these patterns, live a shorter live in general. So cigarette consumption shortens lives. But we dont know that, it would take data at the national loophole. So that leads to the policy which is that whenever we take a look at data aggregated at a certain loophole, we why not assume that the patterns that we see in this loophole will repeat themselves at the local loophole for example. We why not assume that that is true for me. It is true country by country the more cigarettes, the higher expectancy but maybe not for me. Because i want to find out about myself right. I want to know i want to know whether smoking is good for me. But if you have to read a sure like this, it would meets the jew. It would reassure your opinion or your decision to smoke to keep smoking. So how to deal with these. Im going to recommend tons of books today. Sorry about that. I love reading. Reading is one of the best things to knowledge. There are plenty of folks nowadays that we consult and learn about our biases and perhaps how to curb them. These books talk about how the brain plays. But at same time they also do something to cover that by becoming more mindful. By becoming more attentive to what happens unconsciously inside of our brains. Mindfulness. Paying attention to what happens inside of our brains. Some have the classic for example mistakes will made by not by me, by carl, a psychologist, excellent introduction to Cognitive Biases in the sea or on is of my favorites, the numa of reason which basically explains that the theory that our intelligence, our capacity to understand the world through a process of information helps discover the world works. It is also to persuade other people and to persuade ourselves of the righteousness of our own positions in order to attract people to our own groups and our own tribes etc. Pretty and according to these authors, this to convene and persuade. Only that we can continue extend the world news operating the knowledge illusion explains that knowledge doesnt happen individual. Its attributed. So the weight to understand that process. And then learn a little bit about the mindfulness and attentiveness and paying attention to all of these issues inside of our brains can help us quite a lot. It will also help us be more ethical and there is a final part of the presentation. I would like to circle that. With the try angle between the designer and the reader are the user and the mediator. And i go back to the be the end of the talk. Nowadays, very often we all assume the three yearolds, depending on the situation. I said before, this has a lot of power. As a classic movie says, with great power comes great responsibility. We need to be responsible of those tools. If you are a designer of this, you are responsible to help people understand the data that you are presenting. If you are a mediator, i know a lot of mediators these days because will social media. Some will also sort of journalists in some sense. And we distribute the information. We are all up mediators every day we have a responsibility we are presenting to our. As readers we also have a responsibility to be attentive to the information that we see every day. We need to cultivate a culture of attention and a culture of attention. His wonderful book in the final book i would like to recommend today. My professor from here and from this university, ive been reading it for the past month or so. Read it. The social path. It really explains this network of connections. Past models of information distribution we have literal edit receiver of information the designer conveying the information and receive information. Today information is attributed that day. Today we all contributed to this network. We will repurpose it. If we are all part of this network and we are all responsible for making this network work correctly. If this is an ethical responsibly. One of the classic books in the history of journalism, says the essence of journalism is the discipline of verification. Thats one of the classic introductions to the journalism. The first time that i read that sentence, something popped out in my brain. Its just not the essence of journalism with the verification is the said before all of us nowadays is social media will all distributors of information. The innocent of citizenship and reformed republic or democracy, plans to be a discipline of verification. We are all responsible to create a better informational environments. It i believe this was the last message today. Which basically repeats what i just said. We need better conversation pretty goes back to the beginning of the presentation. In order to inform all of these conversations we need to take into account all of these roles that i explained. We all have an ethical responsibility to be better designers, better readers, also better mediators because of the role that we assume more often. Thank you so much. Thats it for today. [applause]. Im not in a rush. Sure absolutely. [inaudible conversation] [background sounds] hello. So we do are talking about biases and the availability of her estate. I think plays a powerful role in how we fuel our confirmation biases. So we see so many newspapers reporting murders, and report the people who will murdered. Its all of a sudden we think that the world is much more dangerous place than it actually is. Yes because we see it more often right. Human so we can recall that event, more often. Its social Facts Network has made this even more verboten. And robust. I completely agree. Obviously just one hour why not talk of all of this. Of all of the biases. And they connect to each other. Thats the reason i came back to this library here. Its a huge one. It is very well covered it in the first book over here. Its connected to the confirmation bias yesterday again we dont Pay Attention. We are responding to the message that we see receive every assorted live automatically. We dont suffer and think about, well i might be eight bias by all of this news about murders and violence etc. Is it really for what is happening representation thats happening in the country. Its a question that you need to of course your brain to ask itself. For more information. I do have a question for you though. At the beginning, you will talking about the ambiguity of visuals. You made i think an offhand comment. And i wondering whether you think ambiguity skills and a complexity. Literally or non glenoid. Actually. I dont know whether we can measure that be aspirated the more data and more information you put in that sure, and the less you explain it, the more ambiguity. In the more people will tend to see what they want to see in the sure. In one of the way that i explained that is a love cat . Scatterplots. But it can be greatly very often misinterpreted. A causation instead of gestation and stuff. But im usually see, what if you have all of the scatterplots, that skill, multiple cause and causational links between the what you are presenting. You can party is at. The reason why put so much emphasis on the role of is the procedure. The mediator. In summary says will take a look at this sure, and showing cigarette consumption on live expectancy. Yes the application is real. Is there in the data is then tainted. It showing that however be careful not to see all of these kinds of things. Its ambiguity. In certain principles of design but you can also review ambiguity by having that person explaining that graphic two people. We should more often, we should show and tell people rather than just showing and walking away from the sure. We call that by the way the role of words spoken and written, the annotation player of this and sometimes the annotation player, is something that these as designers. We dont pay enough attention to that. And we should. Hello. Have a question about, you will mentioning how we often see that a picture is worth a thousand words. In the visualizations should be simple and they should be able to look at it and exactly no. I hear that a lot. In newsrooms and i try to push against that. I have been trying to explain that if we expect or allow readers to read however many hundred words can get to spend time with that, we should also give them the chance to spend that much time with the data. In the resolute visualization. The push but that i have to get his wealth, the words in the story, are important and that the visualization is just eye candy are there to dress it up. How do you push against that. Or how would you suggest to people and im here to push against that idea that the real story or the real journalism is what is written by a narrative writer and that everything else, is just sort of in service of that. Use examples. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt work and it has worked for me to do this in the past. Give the the push back, i asked that person. What a fair favorite sources of information. What you favorite newspapers or magazines. Your favorite websites. In the usually would see, the near new times. What is the Gold Standard of generals in. Based in new york. See how they work. This like the assume very consciously, the put the words and the visuals and exactly the same loophole of importance. The visuals dont come from it or supplement the words. Same with the words not supplement the visuals necessarily. They supplement each other the same loophole and sometimes emphasize more of the visuals will sometimes emphasized the words for than the vigil they make the decision based on, discussions on how to officiate the story. The public is the same think. One of the Gold Standard in the reporting, its one of the Gold Standard is mostly the use of this connotation so the followup question is pretty you want to be more like republican. While this is what they do. Sometimes this is how it works and sometimes it doesnt. And that is one of the reasons why i write all of these books. Because there basically, like weapons. Take a look at the sure. You find it illuminating but not simply finding information, very rich in the data that it presents. It is a long term fight. We all get that. Ive been in business for 20 years and having fighting against that sort of pattern and is media for quite a long time. Steve mayday statement the verification you mayday statement that citizenship is verification. Student not only but as part of it. Its is it too hard still like be able to verify information. I rely new and reporting on hurricane and so forth on twitter. Vote kind of already answered this previously but part of that is a bit of privilege for having understanding of Data Literacy and graphic literacy. Sorted from the line. It would trust and how i trust them. And also, in circumstances that i dont have this knowledge of the graphics. Excellent question. Actually thats one of the things and deal with in the book. So in one hand, actually have two or three answers to the question. Let me try to phrase us and a much way. The first think is that we can continue still verify. So im a journalist. I am a writer. Actually study journalism to work in radio. That was my privilege greg i wanted to read the news. On the spanish radio for three months during a somber during your internship. Anyway and i ended up in a different world. So i dont have a formal training in numbers however i can still read the description of a study in a narrative description. I can sort of see to take a look at a sure and see that it is showing a murder rate. They look to the source and read what they mean by a murder rate i can sort of understand that. This knowledge in a statistic. Thats what, i mean, by verification rated dont mean that you need to go extremely deeply into the data or understanding very a dip loophole. Just elementary. Very shallow verification it only takes 30 seconds for one minute. Make sure that what the sure says, that what it is measuring, it is actually what is being measured pretty and isnt taking a long way to avoid many mistakes. And i am basically spreading charts that are dubious right. Actually one of the books, if it doesnt disclose where the data comes from, if it does not disclose it. Destroy the sure. That is the first role. On one hand i think that anybody can become more used to sort of, like the start i have a couple of these in the charts that i retweeted myself pretty mindlessly. And i thought twice. Wait let me look at the primary source. I have an example of how to do that. If it was written in a way that sort of adopted by High School Teachers or something to teach sort of this very elementary techniques to high scores so dont retweet something mindlessly. It needs to be destroyed if it doesnt have a source. You need to reassure yourself. Now im going to post it online after i verified it. We take very long, i take a lot of education, but we can do it. That someone had pretty other hand is that we why not lose this in every single case. It only takes one minute. Thats enough. Our several minutes or an hour. We also learn that we can continue develop sort of a healthy romanian diet. I asked for accommodations. I dont know if it works for everybody but how i did that for myself. You can do that immediately. In the long term it by following news media from all over the political trump. As closely as you can and sort of for an example whether the media sources that you are usi using, and whether they correct themselves and how often they issue corrections. The amount that the issue usually correlates to the quality. As a good proxy for quality. Then you start noticing a pattern of deceit for example. And just push that hillside. As how we can develop a healthy way. The same that went out you Pay Attention to what you put into your body through your mouth right. To eat right. We also need to be mindful of what we put into our brains. We need to develop that sort of medium. That diet. And again i know i am talking from the point of view that of privilege. I have a Higher Education but i think again that the basic techniques of how to develop a healthy diet can talk to anybody. The school the High Schoolers, some optimistic about all of this. In the long term we may get there. If we all contribute a little bit to push these patterns of information. We have several questions over there. [background sounds] thank you very much for the very interesting talk. You mentioned new technologies and how they changed the way we communicate the use of more charts and journalism and social media. But we are still using sort of try to replicate our names. So the slides are flat, New York Times is still trying to look at the New York Times on its pages. The right we still write books. So my question is, what you think is the future of media. And, have you seen any way of any sort of media that make you feel excited about new ways of communicating. For journalists and for researchers. I only talk about visualizations. Graphics are about the only think i can talk about. Let me go back to one of the first lines that i shared this presentation. Because the supplies to sort of links to your question. On one hand i am staying new technology that looks very promising to me. For example, Virtual Reality meets mental reality in all of this virtually Reality Technologies can have a lot of application to the dissemination of information. And can explain the world to the public. Abstract data in 3d and a virtual environment. What im excited about is applications for bics oriole associations like pictorial representation of objects you see in the real world, you map a highresolution model of a human heart of a patient, you are doctor and you look inside the heart and see the heart from the inside. That is something i saw a while ago. The applications are profound but when i was presenting this talk these technologies applied to the end of the spectrum. Im not that worried about the other spectrum. For people like these, friends, family, my own dad, they bring themselves up to speed with 2d kinds of traffic. Those are extremely useful. We need to educate ourselves and using them. We can multitask in developing new technologies but at the same time strengthening the knowledge and understanding and societal understanding of traditional technologies to work that information because otherwise this gap will grow wider and wider and we cannot allow that. Thank you for your talk. My question is about the simplification of your talk. The more i think about clarification, it seems to me adding more data to your graphs, you are probably as we talked about earlier, the complexity. If i think about a reader who is new to charts, you are telling them about what then can follow which simplification, so that part where it was not true the cranberry was rising but a simple annotation would have been better than clarification. That is exactly what i meant. You can show the chart and if possible you could add secondary charts showing where those exceptions are. That doesnt add complexity to the chart and it can clarify the information. I dont mean in every case we need to increase the amount of data. We can reduce the amount of data to clarify. Certain aspects of the chart to make it clear. There is a saying attributed to outward einstein talking about science. Apparently einstein once said everything should be made as simple as possible but no simpler. You can reduce the amount of data but if you go across you would be oversimplifying. The amount of information you provide to understand a story. How can you decide on the spectrum between showing the data point, the complexity and dimensions, and other kinds of aggregations. Should you be here or over here . Ton of different factors. The stories had nature of the data is, should i show what really matters. What is the right place to stay. And weighing all these factors so you understand the data. There is a call to test our graphics, and people that are similar to the audiences to talk to. Having read the graphic for 5 minutes, come back to them later and ask what did you learn and have them talk about that, that is an ethnographic technique behind analysis, not a very scientific way of understanding how people need to understand, it is very illuminating to help and there is one reason why i put so much emphasis on the cone of uncertainty. The first time i saw the cone of uncertainty i described it to myself wrong. I saw it as an area of several focus groups in miami in which she we show those maps and talk about them openly. Tell me what you see in the graphics and i dont know if you will remember, it is a for anyone. Im not going to make fun of the participants of these studies at all. Another misinterpretation of this map, i can see where it comes from and you can see the cone, its not a continuous object, one area is shaded and what is dotted. What is the difference . Is not a qualitative difference between the shaded area. And forecasting in the next 3 days and the dotted area is the fourth and the fifth way, that is the way to interpret that. Theres a caption that explains that. When people see this graphic it is a little isolated and difficult to see. People tell you that is probably an area of rain, people are not stupid. Another assumption we generally make sometimes when talking about readers, readers dont Pay Attention, readers are stupid or silly, readers are intelligent. If you explain things to them clearly and show things to them clearly people will understand and Pay Attention. I went beyond your question. I forgot to mention before. Thanks. We have more questions over here. How would you redesign that . Who is talking . How would you redesign that with so many interpretations . Ask me one year from now. I can tell you. Designers have strong opinions, they dont know how to design anything. Their assumptions are wrong. I tried them all. Using different lines to show variation or uncertainty or whatever. None of them is completely effective so i dont know yet. We may come up with different centers, the National Hurricane center is working on making these maps more understandable. I dont know what the outcome will be. I have nothing against these maps. I dont think the cone of uncertainty is a bad graphics, only that it is not properly explains. I wrote a piece for the New York Times explaining how to read these graphics and i saw people, friends of mine who didnt know how to read the graphic before but now they know how to read the graphic because i explain it to them. Sometimes it is not just a function it is the function of the explanations we attach and presents to the public. Who knows . The future may be an animated version of this map where the National Hurricane center explains how to interpret these maps. I believe in putting human face to the data we present. Who knows . The role of the mediator. More questions . I have a mic next. You touched on this briefly but the question on verification, i am interested to hear who bears the responsibility of graphics literacy. Every time that comes up, literacy, i feel like there are contentious arguments, you can run into the ivory tower, a group of experts, or you are condescending, and educate people. Maybe it is the role of the designer to obtain or create graphic advocacy but these roles are blending, who do you think has the responsibility to attain it or produce it. And and the guy with the sharpie, a great believer in individual responsibility. One of the things that drives me crazy about the role of technology and misleading people is all the blame is put on the platform and the platforms, we see facebook has a huge responsibility, twitter has a huge responsibility. It has fallen into our own biases. We have the responsibility not to do that. And then the word or the verb to educate. I dont mind being educated. Show me, teach me, i love that. There is nothing condescending in using that sort of language. There is nothing condescending in that. Educate me about astrophysics, i am not an expert in that, or statistics. They were not condescending at all, they were working as mentors. We can mentor each other, mutual mentorship, one of the books we mentioned before, reciting on the network of people. I am rumbling a little bit. Over here. Can you speak about accessibility in visualizing data for people who cannot see or see accurately . I can tell you, getting interested in those issues, how to make data, participated a while ago on an open source tool to transform data into sounds. It works in your browser, two tone. Very experimental little tiny tool, used sounds to give you an impression of the data and will that help in accessibility. And with this by using 3d printing techniques to transform data that you can touch, transforming data into public spaces. And authority beyond the most elementary stuff that are colorblind friendly and things like that. You mentioned misunderstandings homes from leaders having a different mental model than the designer and im wondering, and designers and journalists, understanding other mental models and designing for other mental models and have to bridge polarization. Presenting data to people, to help people read etc. Both in terms of how much time in the graphic and the contents of the graphic we pretend to them. Learning a little bit about factors take is a long way. Im not an expert in any of that. Learning about there are plenty of books published about suicidal prioritization, and cognitive bias that goes a long way to developmental models. And the traditional model of human understanding, we see data and base our opinions on the data we see with a stepbystep process. We form an opinion, emotionally, and try to recruit the data to confirm that opinion. That is a mental process, something we understand and predict and prepare for when we design the graphic. This sounds very vague but it comes out to reading, learning, presenting graphics to people. In an interconnected world, you ever come across a verification that might work for an audience in america and crossing to audience be it muddies it. And some examples of that and how do you fight against it are there any emerging techniques that are more towards the global audience or global citizenry of today. I dont have an answer to that question other than a graphic, the language people speak, each language has its own nuances, portuguese and spanish are quite similar but if you write in portuguese the same way you write in spanish nobody will understand you. You need to use the language, the symbols, the words, etc. I dont have an answer to that. However, i would say one of the Research Agendas i hope somebody will adopt at some point is crosscultural or comparative cultural, different cultures and different environments. Whether they are shaped by the culture people come from, i tend to believe it is so preliminary, there are certain principles that may be universal. And they may be dependent on culture in Different Countries and may affect the way people design interpretations coming from brazil. And may have been shaped by the local culture. I would like to see more comparative studies in the future so sorry for not being able to answer the question. Hello. I am struck by the need for education. Track the scientific visualization committee very well. Trying to figure out how pie charts work. And the lowlevel research. This education, figuring, how do you see it coming together to bridge this . It connects to the answer to the question you asked me for, superexcited to high end innovation, new techniques and excited about basic research. There is a rule which is if you are going to design a bar graph dont do it by accident. It is a rule i feel right about in the book. In the encoding, the height of the bar, if you crop the y axis that will distort the chart. There is a caveat which is we dont really know yet if most people when they read a bar graph they focus on the meaning of the chart by focusing on the sheer area of the sides or the upper edge of each of the bars because if they focus just on the upper edge there is no difference between the y axis of the bar chart and truncating the y axis of the line chart which is considered a property that is a role in the association of the community. For now i tell people that it makes sense not to truncate the yaxis of a bar graph because it is the height of the bar. The trunk of the axis is proportional to the data. 99 of people dont care about that, they focus on the relative position on the upper edges of the bar to meet the change so there is a huge space in terms of cognitive science to explore how these are read. Im excited about that as well because it informs the data we use every day. There is lots to be discovered, lots to be discovered. Sometimes people who write about this, that includes myself, sometimes we sound too certain about what we know and sometimes we know much less than it seems so we need to be less uncertain about our opinions. We had a question about differences observed between cultures. I wonder if you could comment on differences between subcultures, turnouts on the one hand, social scientists and physical scientists. A huge difference. There should be, theres nothing wrong with those differences. Let me rephrase that. It all comes down to who is going to be the reader . That is the question. When a scientist produces a salutation, shes going to talk to other scientists, therefore she designs those graphics in a certain way because shes going to pretend the community she is supposed to share, a Common Knowledge base, journalist doesnt make that assumption because we usually create graphics assumed by people from coming from all over the spectrum so we need to make assumptions. People with other sorts of assumptions in their company they also have a certain level of basic knowledge of internal functioning of the company. There are huge differences. Certain problems arise when you have a frame of mind adapted to a certain culture and you come through the culture and have graphics that are in a completely different environment and proved to be wrong. At the university i do workshops for communicators, journalists, Graphic Designers and workshops for scientists. What i emphasize in those workshops is completely different. When i talk to marketing, journalism student i emphasize the data understanding part of the process, the principles of data based on the geometry of the graphics and stuff. I focus on that. When i speak to an audience of scientists i usually talk more about the storytelling or the narrative part or the annotation part, important not to assume people know about the content of the graphic, you need to overcome that what some call the curse of knowledge which ails all of us. You know so much about that subject that you assume your audience will know as much as you do about that and that is usually not true. I have two questions. Would you get inspiration to better storyteller data and what are your three favorite visualization tools . Inspiration . I follow everybody basically. One of the best ways to learn is to copy shamelessly from other people. I dont mean plagiarize. I mean getting explanations. The best thing about this is they are very welcoming. You have the Data Visualization society, something you can join for free. And other communities, makeover monday, they try to redesign it and it is great. I get inspiration from all of them. It is important to pinpoint specific designers nowadays but i really admire because there are so many. I could talk about organization. Im a fan of the New York Times and propublica, great Data Journalism work and you ask about tools. I can talk about the tools that i use. I will not say they are the best tools, on a very elementary level, cleaning of the data and visualizing it. And i use a variety of tools, a tool called flourish for Interactive Data and the data wrapper i mentioned before, i use a tool for cartography and mapping and one of the main brains behind the free tool which is always wonderful. There are so many. You asked for my favorite tool, what are the best tools . Whatever gets the job done. Whatever works for you just go for it. I use the r programming language. Fine. Use it in a low voice, our is better, sorry. No. Python is fantastic. If it works for you go for it, great. If you prefer another tool, if it gets the job done that is the right tool for you. Anyway anything else . Question over here . Before i forget if you want to see tools, in my website, i have these ready. I will tweet out these lights. If you go to my website, the functional arm is the title of my first book. On the upper right corner the editorial section i post the free tutorials throughout the year for my students about xl, flourish, insights, i want to give them publicity. The programming language that was created by the department of state statistics at the university of oakland in new zealand within the public created a tool in new zealand. Inside is a tool for Data Analytics that works on the process for quick and dirty analysis. They created it to teach statistics to high school students. It can be used for High Schoolers but it can take you a long way. Pretty sophisticated stuff and i include a few of them. You had a question. You need to represent the causation and individualization. You mentioned what we need to solve between correlation doesnt represent causation. And also most they care more about causation rather than correlation and their originally designed for the correlation. We need to decide a new tool. Perhaps but i have no idea how i would represent that other than using an abstract diagram with arrows. I dont know how to represent that. There are so many things to discover like different kinds of uncertainty and there are tons of things to be explored so causation may be Something Else that needs to be studied and represented visually. [applause] over there, sign up. Sign up. A look at our prime time lineup. Astronaut katherine sullivan, the First American woman to walk in space because her nasa career, computer and Information Science professors Michael Kearns and aaron rough discuss the issues and algorithm design. New york magazines Thomas Williams considers race and identity and craig surely chronicles the life of George Washingtons mother mary ball washington. That starts tonight at 7 00 eastern on cspan2s booktv. More information consult your Program Guide or visit our website, booktv. Org. Well, nice to see all of you nice folks tonight. I see some familiar faces, some