POST: Visualize It: Uncertainty

In a post at Hack Library School entitled “Visualize It: Uncertainty,” Sarah Davis discusses Alberto Cairo’s work in representing uncertainty in data visualization. Davis highlights Cairo’s treatment of “graphicacy,” and what creators of visualizations might assume about their audiences and the skills and attention they bring.

It is easy it is to jump to conclusions in real life situations and while reading and understanding visualizations. Perhaps a chart looks strikingly similar to one you have seen before, but this particular chart you are looking at now has one significant change. If you are not paying close attention or have not been studying how these visualizations are put together, you might miss a key detail crucial to the understanding of the data presented.

Davis closes by covering Cairo’s considerations for addressing uncertainty and suggests their usefulness in critiquing representations of potentially misleading or confusing information.