I was a freelance journalist, and it was a struggle because I had to pitch all the time, research, and stay on top of subjects.
David MccandlessWe've seen it in the last U.S. presidential campaign 2016: both sides were trading graphs and circulating data visualizations to make their point. So the political establishment is waking up to the power of a good graph as well.
David MccandlessBy visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes, a sort of information map. And when youโre lost in information, an information map is kind of useful.
David MccandlessThere's a tendency in graphics to allow the trimming of certain parts. But I think that if you're open about your process, your methodology, such as introducing thresholds, introducing filters, techniques people use in research and data management, it's legitimate. It's legitimate to say, "We're only going to show data above this level, or between levels."
David MccandlessThe classic one for me is one of my favorite images - left-versus-right political-spectrum image. I was trying to visualize the concepts on the political spectrum. I'm left-leaning, and I discovered as I was doing it that I had an impulse to make the left-hand side appear better than the right-hand side. That was manifesting in the way I was choosing certain words, framing certain ideas. I shared it with a few people, and they all said, "Oh my God, this is really biased." I hadn't seen it at all.
David Mccandless