http://www.gatesnotes.com/globalpages/bio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates
Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display by Johanna Drucker is a brief about how digital humanists have started to incorporate visualization tools and methods to display information on their work about the social sciences. The paper’s thesis is that “we need a humanities approach to the graphical expression of interpretation” in order to have an accurate representation of data. “Assumptions of knowledge as observer-independent and certain, rather than observer co-dependent and interpretative” are made while visualizing information, and without the process described data will not be understood as “capta” and the wrong message will be interpreted. “Capta is “taken” actively while data is assumed to be a “given” able to be recorded and observed.” Drucker argues that data visualization needs to be reworked to the digital humanists’ process so for the smooth transferring of knowledge.
Infographics are a recent internet fad and a form of visualizing data. Performing exactly what Drucker discusses in her article, most of the time they refer to tall, skinny (to fit Pinterest dimensions) images with eye-catching colors and multiple graphs to stop an internet user in his or her tracks. A lot of backlash from digital humanists is that they are intended to look pretty instead of providing accurate information.
Recently I stumbled upon an infographic that tracks Bill Gates’ life story. A lot of the time when I stop and look at infographics, I immediately assume that their figures are correct and that its sources are reliable. Because of Drucker’s article, I’m going to use this blog post to quickly double check whether the Bill Gates infographic is accurate or not.
Anna Vital cited two sources for her infographic: Walter Isaacson’s book The Innovators and gatesnotes.com. Gatesnotes.com has a timeline of Bill Gates’ life, which aligns with Vital’s infographic. However, Vital’s infographic also includes the not-so-amazing parts of Gates’ history, such as designing a program to schedule students into classes which he used to schedule himself into classes with more girls. How do we know if that information is correct?
A quick Wikipedia search reveals that Bill Gates quoted that story in a press room speech, which was retrieved on July 13, 2013. Since more than 50% of the information is accurate, I’m going to assume the entire infographic to be accurate. Obviously you’d want to check the entire infographic, but most people (including myself) are not willing to go through every detail to make sure what they’re reading is correct. This goes back to Drucker’s point that by approaching graphic visualization from a digital humanities viewpoint is important to make sure the data we portray is accurate for users.