Watch the video (below). Its stunning.

Usually we just see snapshot graphs of one moment in time, eg Aug 2006. Seeing how data and statistics grow and change over time gives us context to understand effects or look at what happened in that time period.

The power of the Transition

The moving graphs also show - transitions. Something we never see in statistical graphs. Transitions are very real-world, they allowidentifiable groups or individual objects to move from A to B. We observe movements and notice patterns. These patterns make sense and give us info to understand.

Most flash websites are all about the transition - one page loading and then growing into another. Phone interfaces will soon be all about transitions between states. An epic movie like 'Dr Zivago' or 'Grapes of Wrath' is all about transition (the people transition). In crouching tiger hidden dragon, the girl catches the cup before it hits the floor in one swift movement.

In none of these is our experience chopped up into segments, disjointed and compromised. In none of these experiences do we just see the highlights or before and after. Humans really understand things when we can see how the objects changed, how they moved and that informs us as to how they effect our environment (even global warming for example). The 'Transition' is crucial to our design in interfaces, in narratives, in navigation and probably most experiences in general and its extremely helpful to stringing separate ideas together, mapping movement and understand causes and the resulting effects.

The talk given by Rosling is also extremely ethical and contributive to dismissing a number of popular myths - 'who is rich?' and, 'how to beat poverty', for example.

Enjoy

If you like this stuff, be sure to check out the cracking site - Visual Complexity cataloging over 400 data visualizations.