Hans Rosling said to me "graphics won't do everything - they'll simplify some points, they'll introduce the idea and help to highlight important areas, but for some of the more complex explanation like causation or correlation, they have their limits".
That is borne out in the comments of this piece on redesigned health reports in Wired.
I personally think the graphic pieces are good enough to illustrate the point, but probably aren't to a productised standard. You could say 'yeah but it was a magazine deadline' but you could say 'don't give lame excuses'. Both sides are right. (and i still buy Wired).
No one is going to disagree with the idea that health data could be given visualsiation attention and could be made more useful.
But the reality of doing anything good when dealing with this stuff is that it takes a tonne of work to understand the problem first.
In research at the BBC, a repeat issue was the fine line between making things simple (good, useful,accessible, focussed) and simplisitic (glib, generic, useless).
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