"Beauty is truth, truth (is) beauty. that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know - John Keats (1820)

In ages 5 - 10, Math was one of my favorite subjects, along with English. All that changed when I had this "not so pleasant" Math teacher in my 5th standard and suddenly I went from loving numbers to struggling to pass my mathematics exams and barely scraping by. It had a huge psychological impact and this continued all the way into my Engineering days.

More than a decade and a half after college, I started re-discovering my love for numbers and data. Today am absolutely fascinated by data and I almost see Data as a person with a personality of "her" own. The more and more data visualizations I see, the more fascinated I am like a kid in a candy shop. One of the most interesting applications of data is to tell a story and data oriented story telling can be as rich and immersive as language-oriented stories.

Here is one such story I stumbled up which left me speechless. This data visualization tells the story of Napoleon's Disastrous and failed invasion of Russia in 1812. The map itself has been drawn by Charles Minard, a French civil engineer in 1869. Minard was 80 years old when he created this and today even in the era of some of the most advanced data visualization tools this ancient map drawn 152 years ago on paper with ink is still considered one of the best "Info-graphics" ever created.

Below is the Actual map created by Charles Minard in 1869. Notations in French:

Below is the English language representation of the same map:

If you look closely, Minard's chart intelligently blends six types of information (1.Geography, 2.time, 3.temperature, 4.course & 5.direction of troop movement and 6.number of remaining troops) in one single visual effectively telling the entire story of the failed campaign and it's tragic consequences as a tale. The thicker and brighter line on top (to be viewed from left to right) represents the size of the advancing force(he starts with 4,22,000 troops), you can see the temperature lines on the bottom, as the temperature gets colder and harsher, troops die and the size of the line keeps gets thinner all the way till the troops reach Moscow. Due to bitter weather and brutal defeats after half a year the remaining 1,00,000 member troop started withdrawing and retreating (represented by thinner and darker line at the bottom to be viewed from right to left). The retreat started on October 18 and by December 7 when they reached their destination only 10,000 survived. As we can see clearly, the purpose of a good data visualization is insight and impact not numbers and info.

Data can be used not just to tell a story, but also as a powerful means to investigate facts, reveal concealed information. Here is one such data visualization example from around the same period. In the 1800s Cholera was a ruthless killer with both rapid onset and severe symptoms. By the time the disease made its way to London and New York in the early 1830s, hundreds of thousands of people had died across Europe, Asia and Africa. At at time the medical community was largely in the dark about how it spreads at it was guesstimated to spread through the air in densely populated localities. Along came Dr. John Snow (no, not the GoT reference), an English physician, (specialized in Obstetrics and anesthesia) who had a deep interest in Mathematics. In 1854, by drawing a map of the infections, he found the clusters of infections concentrated around one particular drinking water pump in London and he thus concluded that Cholera was waterborne. This was the major breakthrough that helped in discovering how Cholera spreads and brought and end to a devastating pandemic

Map of Cholera clusters along streets in London showing concentrated cluster around a particular waterpump Dr John Snow (1854):

The bars in the map above show deaths by cholera and one bar indicates one death. The visual maps Cholera deaths alongside the streets of London and clearly shows a concentration of Cholera cases in close proximity to a specific water pump, thereby isolating the possible disease source. This is how it was concluded that Cholera is spread through water. The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.

Isn't it wonderful how maps created more than one and a half centuries ago still hold the benchmark for being the best data visualizations? What is also interesting to note is that it doesn't matter which specific area of expertise you hold, usage of Data and Data visualizations can help in bringing you major breakthroughs which can advance your field, help you find answers and chart the course of action. Imagine the impact of data in every single field today.

How would you like to use your data?