What happens if we move to other, richer datasets - lets say a table containing a list of countries, lists of numbers, and lists of dates? (I’m talking about small datasets anyway, nothing that could be called ‘big data’.) The data set not only contains more values, it contains different units. By adding more numbers to the list, the amount of possible combinations rises exponentially. That’s because they don’t depict each value separately rather, they say something about the relation between the values (for instance the ones that represent proportion, or the coordinate systems). New ideas will always appear (like in 45.) Among the methods mentioned in this list, some are scalable to bigger lists of numbers, and others are not. But I don’t think it’s possible to build a definitive list - it just doesn’t exist. I’m sure this list is not complete and could be organized in better ways. I’ll also avoid the discussion about which method is better according to the context and goal. Some have a very bad reputation, but I won’t get into that kind of discussion. I explain only some of the methods in general they are clear and well known. On the other hand, I’m sure many of you will come up with visualization methods not included in the list (in which case, please include them in the comments!). Some of the examples might be seen as variations of the same theme, others will be perceived as excessively eccentric or even esoteric. In many cases, the visualization depends directly on the unit, meaning, interpretation and context of the values. The following is a list of different ways to visualize two numbers. Not only was the number of possible ways to visualize two values far higher than expected, but also each single visualization method admitted multiple and interesting variations and opened new questions and discussions. Yet, we spent more than two hours without having actually accomplished either of the two tasks. With such a tiny dataset, you would think we would complete both exercises in less than 5 minutes. Afterwords, let’s try to pick the best visualization. Let’s try to find all possible ways to visualize a ludicrously small data set of two numbers.

This discussion actually came out as a consequence of another idea, which resonated with most participants, as well: that there should be a guide that indicates the best way to visualize each possible dataset. For a simple data structure - a list of some hundreds of numbers, for instance - around half of 20 participants were convinced that there’s one way that is clearly better in communicating the data, regardless of the unit of the values, their range, meaning, context and possible aim of the visualization. Synesthesia is covered in detail in the book Synesthesia: a union of the senses, though I'm not aware of any specific case studies on individuals with this exact set of skills.Ī term to describe people with Synestesia is Synesthesic.Back in 2010, I was giving a workshop on interactive data visualization in Lima, Perú, discussing whether a dataset has a unique or at least an ideal way to be visualized. It sounds like he's learned to apply his visual-spatial skills to 'arrange' the number forms to aid his calculations. It's hard to imagine just how it would be to perceive the world as a synesthesic person does. It doesn't seem exactly like what he does but it could be a form of it. In particular, it has been suggested that number-forms are a result of 'cross-activation' between regions of the parietal lobe that are involved in numerical cognition and spatial cognition

Later research has identified them as a type of synesthesia. Number forms were first documented and named by Francis Galton in 'The Visions of Sane Persons'. Sounds like a form of Synesthesia, in particular it sounds like Number Form Synesthesia mixed with Grapheme-color Synesthesia:Ī number form is a mental map of numbers, which automatically and involuntarily appears whenever someone who experiences number-forms thinks of numbers.

Visualize numbers