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Today, data visualisation is ubiquitous, created and used by experts and laypeople alike to make sense of an increasingly intricate – and intricately measured – world. However, some 200 years ago, the notion that fanciful images could accurately represent hard data wasn’t taken seriously among scientists. This stylish animation walks viewers through two centuries of data visualisation. Moving from the physician John Snow’s cholera ‘dot map’ of London from 1854, to a disturbing instance of eugenic misinformation, to the ‘warming stripes’ charting today’s climate crisis, the video highlights five data visualisations that gave rise to the form, and changed the world.
Video by The Royal Society, BBC Ideas
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Meaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes
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Making
On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way
6 minutes
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Animals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
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Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes
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History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
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Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
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Biology
Butterflies become unrecognisable landscapes when viewed under electron microscopes
4 minutes
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War and peace
Two Ukrainian boys’ summer unfolds just miles from the frontlines
22 minutes
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Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes