Early information was hieroglyphs drawn by cavemen, Egyptians etc. and what’s interesting is they were using symbols and icons to represent data
Charts date back centuries, here is a chart that goes through Napoleons 1812 Russian Campaign, Note how it tells a story through it’s data, it follows their movements, as well as the temperature they encountered on the return path.
This is a bar chart that was used to represent the exports and imports of Scotland, I find it interesting that the time frame is from Christmas 1780 to Christmas 1781
Familiarity has dulled our sense of the importance of Playfair's diagrams and it is easy to underestimate the ingenuity that was required to invent them.
The Periodic Table is also a data form, it was made to categorise different elements in their groups and showcase their respective statistics, Whilst looking for a perodic table as an example I saw that google has an interesting way of representing the data and specific element, if you click on the element it’ll give you a rap sheet of it’s properties and show the actual atom with it’s electrons, this would be helpful for someone who needs a visual reference of what the Neon atom looks like.
We looked at the London underground and how it’s revolutionary representation of data made the tube easier to navigate, as a full geography map was too cluttered so Harry Beck decided to make it like a circuit board, possibly due to his background as an electrical engineer
Now data representation has become minimalist with a clear goal of understanding, but there are charts that are used to tell a story as well, sometimes using interaction, take this example of the clean water and sanitation statistic, it tells you the overall statistic of the water stress in the world, but if you click on the chosen country it’ll tell you the water stress of that country.
They also use scale to represent the dramatic statistic of freshwater and non-freshwater, it is sort of there to scare you a little to wise up even to not waste water and be aware of how much we have.
your data is only as good as your ability to understand and communicate it which is why it is important to represent it correctly.
Data can have lots of different terrains: Trends, Correlations and Outliers