A short (~4 minute) sweet overview of the political power of data visualization, by Tufte disciple Alex Lundry. He says so-called "dataviz" exists (you guessed it) "at the intersection of art and science." Quite right, sir!
You'll note Lundry makes use of the classic pirates-global warming relationship, Tufte's "pie charts suck" message, and so on. It's one of several good videos from a great event I really want to get to - igniteDC. I'd also like to mention that I'll be reviewing Connie Malamed's new book, Visual Language
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It's ironic that the slide projection of a talk about data visualization suffers from the all-too-common aspect ratio error.
Compare the slides seen on the screen to the close-ups of the slides themselves, and you'll see that the screen images have all been stretched horizontally to fit the wider image shape used by the projector. (For example, all the circles become broad ovals.)
Once you start noticing this problem you'll discover it everywhere. It's really common on digital TVs (because people get the settings wrong) but it's also seen in a lot of material put out by professionals who should know better.
Cool video! I love learning about how visual presentation affects how we understand and remember it. Also cool how, in a lecture about how presentation can create bias, he stays totally neutral. I was surprised to learn that he's a right-winger, because when I watched it I projected my own left-wing attitudes onto him. Now I've watched it again and it's easy to see him as either.
I know! I had to watch it a second time to look for any political bias, too, and I agree with you. Although as a graphic designer, he may genuinely feel distaste for a deliberately confusing flowchart even if it does advance his political goals. . . :)