Clickstream

Data Visualization Applied to Politics

Someone created a chart that compiles data on past terror alerts correlated with political events. The information comes from a timeline that includes sources for all of the information. Quote from the creator:

"I compiled all these correlations and organized them chronologically into a timeline. I also added additional news items and other instances that I found out, detailing the terror alerts over the last few years, and located the original sources for many of these news articles. Soon, Biltud and I started to research together all these occurrences, and more interesting "coincidences" started to appear. We finally built this timeline of terror alerts and how they relate to the news headlines of the days immediately prior to that very alert. I think it's very easy to see a pattern recurring."

There are a few disturbing correlations that can be drawn, mirroring what some cynical people are saying about the terror alerts being used to prop up the administration's sagging approval rating or unfavorable media events.

I thought this was an interesting way to visualize the events, although the presentation could use some design improvements. I'm looking forward to a future where textual information can be parsed and interpreted automatically, then linked with numeric data to make richer BI applications.

Posted by Mark Friday, August 06, 2004 12:19:00 AM | permalink |