How Charts Work

"Every modern data visualisation expert has an opinion on Nightingale's graphs. Some find them scintillating, others confusing or even misleading. But, to my mind, there is something shockingly, brilliantly modern about the battle she decided to fight, and the way she used persuasive data visualisations as her weapon. More than ever, we need to understand how data visualisation works. We need to understand it as consumers - who may be enlightened or bamboozled, depending on our own "graphicacy" and the choices made by the producers of graphs. And we need to understand data visualisation as producers. Graphs and diagrams are powerful tools, supercharged by the ready availability of data and versatile software. But like any tool, they can be used skilfully or clumsily. They may be used to build something wonderful or repurposed with sinister intent"--