Hopefully by now you know how much I love visual data. To me it's the fashionable side of math. Google apparently agrees because they just launched a new search feature, "Public Data Search" that takes the reams of numbers collected by the US and puts them into easily understood, possibly beautiful, charts and graphs.
To try this out, go to Google search and type in what data you want followed by a location. For example, I typed in "unemployment rate hawaii". That action delivered a nice blue line on crisp white chart, slightly nautical looking. Clicking on the chart brought me to a page where I could choose other states to compare. I've always been told (mostly by people in Hawaii) that the state's economy trails the US. Turns out this was right--in the past. But the next time this comes up in conversation (it could happen), I now have an orange, blue and white wavy print (Missoni-ish in a minimalist way) proving this is no longer true.
Google's acquisition of GapMinder's Trendalyzer software a few years back makes all this possible. While they are starting off with somewhat boring data, the Google blog claims they will soon add things of more interest like the price of cookies. That's commendable as long as they keep the colors pretty.
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