Is peace a question of Money?
I was exploring the different mediums of presenting data visualization. One of the medium which i looked at is 3D installations.
The 3D installation below has been created by Uta Hinrichs from Lubeck in Germany.It shows the relation between the wealth of a country(gross domestic product per capita; GDP) and its peacefulness(global peace index; GPI).
The GPI uses 24 indicators that can be categorized into militarization, societal safety and security, and ongoing domestic and international conflict. Countries are assigned a score between 1=peaceful and 5=less peaceful. The data assessed in the year 2008 include 140 countries.
In the visualization, each country is represented by a cylinder made out of paper. The GPI score of a country is mapped to the height of a paper cylinder. The shorter the cylinder, the more peaceful the country according to the GPI data set. The area of each cylinder represents the GDP of the according country. The more area a cylinder takes up, the higher the country's GDP per capita. Cylinders are roughly arranged according to the geographical location of the country they represent and are labeled with the country name to ease comparison.
The visualization shows that cylinders tend to be wide and short or narrow and long – peacefulness seems to be a matter of wealth. Furthermore it gives an overview of the geographic distribution of peace and money. For example, countries in the northwest appear to be richer and more peaceful.
I was exploring the different mediums of presenting data visualization. One of the medium which i looked at is 3D installations.
The 3D installation below has been created by Uta Hinrichs from Lubeck in Germany.It shows the relation between the wealth of a country(gross domestic product per capita; GDP) and its peacefulness(global peace index; GPI).
The GPI uses 24 indicators that can be categorized into militarization, societal safety and security, and ongoing domestic and international conflict. Countries are assigned a score between 1=peaceful and 5=less peaceful. The data assessed in the year 2008 include 140 countries.
In the visualization, each country is represented by a cylinder made out of paper. The GPI score of a country is mapped to the height of a paper cylinder. The shorter the cylinder, the more peaceful the country according to the GPI data set. The area of each cylinder represents the GDP of the according country. The more area a cylinder takes up, the higher the country's GDP per capita. Cylinders are roughly arranged according to the geographical location of the country they represent and are labeled with the country name to ease comparison.
The visualization shows that cylinders tend to be wide and short or narrow and long – peacefulness seems to be a matter of wealth. Furthermore it gives an overview of the geographic distribution of peace and money. For example, countries in the northwest appear to be richer and more peaceful.
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| SMALL TEXT LABEL-showing the names of the countries |
There are some things which I like and somethings which i don't understand about this 3D piece of data visualization:
THE GOOD:
- Comparison: Comparison is made easy with the use of two variables i.e. height and space. The cylinder's height represents the GPI score(the shorter the more peaceful) and its area or space shows the GDP(the more area, the higher the GDP)
- Positioning: the positioning of all cylinders based on the geographical locations of all countries help the viewers to draw conclusions as to which part of the world is more richer and peaceful and vice versa.
- Simplicity: Minimalistic use of shape, color and material makes the data effortless to understand.
THE BAD:
- Confusion: The minimalist difference in height and space is hard to understand as there are no actual numeric values mentioned
- The designer here in his blog has not mentioned where will this piece be used. And so i am not able to figure which kind of audience has he made it for and where will it be displayed.
Overall a very different and new way of presenting the information which will definitely grab anyone's attention.
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