Data visualisations telling complex stories and making numbers visual, more accessible to a wider audience and reveal patterns which would be difficult to discern when just looking at raw data.

This example visualises…120,000 numbers 200 countries and 200 years worth of data telling the story of health and wealth and the trends in global development. This is the work led by Professor Hans Rosling who is a co-founder of the Gapminder Institute, an organisation dedicated to promoting a fact-based world view.

The link takes you to a 4 minute video courtesy of the Open University’s Open Learn Programme and strand called “The Joy of Statistics. Click and play the video,

Data visualisation is anything but new,

• take a look at the work of Florence Nightingale and her graphical representation of patient mortality and causes of death which convinced the authorities to back her planned changes in nursing care. She did this unaided by computer…
• Dr John Snow and clusters of cholera cases in London in the 1854 Broad Street outbreak: another early experiment without technology in spatial history and data visualisation. Click for article on Intriguing History re John Snow

So the use of mapping with other data and media provides a great opportunity for those of us interested in our own specific family, social, local or special interest history projects.

IFH (Intriguing Family History) is researching resources, tools and techniques to find better ways of mapping detailed data and using visualisation to not only for  better presentation but als0 to actually improve and enhance the process of research, documenting, sharing and collaboating with others with complimentary interests and data.

See the article Why Mapping Your History Matters for a further discussion of the principles we are interested in building into a set of tools and services for history projects, without requiring high-end computing power to make them work. Our challenge is to provide these resources and tools in a web-enabled simple pc/mac solution. It is a work in process but take a look at Intriguing History and some examples of our Intriguing Connections Projects starting with Dipnall Family One-Name Study mapping the history of the Dipnall family worldwide.

Have you found interesting maps and visualisations of history you would like to highlight and share? Just contact is to write a guest post about the visualisation and why you believe it is helpful in communicating researching and understanding history using our Contact form