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Humanist Archives: July 11, 2019, 5:49 p.m. Humanist 33.132 - on graphical communication

                  Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 132.
            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
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        Date: 2019-07-10 13:08:23+00:00
        From: Henry Schaffer 
        Subject: "data, charts and maps for communication"

What does that have to do with the digital humanities/DH? I'll come to that.

I went to a lecture/presentation by alberto cairo on that topic and ended
up buying his book "the truthful art" on graphical communication. The
Subject: above is the books' subtitle. I've been reading it for some time
as it is very concentrated and even a few pages gives me a lot to think
about.

But as I went through, its focus was on presenting data and statistical
analyses in more visual way so the viewer got a better appreciation of the
meaning than would come from restricting the view to tables of numbers. The
focus on statistics was very evident and even led to a couple of chapters
on statistics which could be part of a statistics course. I could argue
that a DH practitioner should have all of those tools honed and ready, but
those tools aren't "DH".

And then I dug into Chapter 12, the concluding chapter, "On Creativity and
Innovation." Here are the sub-sections:
The Popularizers
News Applications
Those Enchanting Europeans
Making Science Visual
Culture Data
The Artistic Fringes

Still digital emphasis, but especially in the last two (which are too
short!) I felt the merging of culture, art and quantitative visual
presentation - surely I was swimming in the sea of DH and it was warm and
invigorating - but then I finished the book.

Nothing left to do but try to share it with you - and it would be wonderful
to hear your reactions.

--henry schaffer



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