So how big is an acre?

Someone smart, when talking about the difference between data and information, once asked the question "how big is an acre?" The official answer is 43,560 square feet. But who remembers that sort of thing? And how useful is that number anyway? Unless you manage/design/build large buildings, do surveys, or love measuring things, the data isn't helpful.

A more useful answer? An acre is about the size of an American football field with the end zones cut off. For many people, that's far easier to understand.

So, today my colleague pointed me to this presentation by Jeffrey Veen, a designer who like Edward Tufte does a great job of helping people understand data through visualizations. Jeff tells a great story about how empowering people with software tools helps them make sense of large sets of data. There's a particular demo near the end that is particularly compelling. It combines four groups of data into one user-controlled visualization, through which you see the devastating effect of AIDS on Botswana.

If you're interested, I do occasionally tag interesting visualization resources like this one (also available as an RSS feed).