A Living Tree(map)
I’ve talked about visualizing greenhouse gas emissions before, but Sam Savage’s book The Flaw of Averages made me wonder whether there were even more powerful ways to understand data than simple graphs and charts. He calls them “Mindles.”
The concept goes something like this: you don’t learn to ride a bike by studying the equations for gyroscopic motion. You learn by riding. And in the same way that a handle provides a point of contact and interaction between your hand and the bicycle, a mindle connects your mind to some concept in an interactive, intuitive way. “Connecting the seat of intellect to the seat of your pants,” is how Sam describes it.
So what happens when we take a Tree Map of building carbon emissions and allow the user to “touch” it. Let’s find out.
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The chart represents individual buildings as boxes – their size corresponds to the carbon footprint of energy supplied to the building. The colors show how the emissions changed between 2007 and 2008, orange indicating increased emissions, and blue showing a decrease. You can select a box to get further details, zoom into a building type, and change the color scale to reveal outliers.
Mindles tend to be simulations, so this may not count, but it does allow the viewer to ask questions and get hints of the answer. For instance, you’ll notice that Genetic Medicine and Kenan Music Building are bright orange. Why? It turns out that they were under construction in 2007, so the 2008 increase is simply due to the buildings being completed and occupied.
Learn more about Mindles at FlawofAverages.com.
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