Social Math...for Everything
Social math is the shorthand messaging folks use for the kind of number that helps your argument make a connection with your audience. Social math is not "2.9 million people died from AIDS/HIV in 2006." Social math is "One person dies every ten seconds from HIV or AIDS."
Enter the World Clock from Poodwaddle.com:
I think it pretty much speaks for itself.
Comments
This is a fascinating clock. May I make one suggestion. To put the death statistics in perspective, it would be helpful to order the diseases not alphabetically, but by magnitude (cardiovascular first, leprosy last). This way, the display itself will allow comparison since the length of the numbers will show (within a power of 10) the relative sizes of the maladies.
For more on this, please see Edward Tufte's four fantastic books, most notably "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information". The web site is www.edwardtufte.com.
Posted by: Eric Howell | August 3, 2007 6:02 PM