Comparing Numbers Blog Post
National Geographic created this awesome visualization showing how COVID-19 affected income levels worldwide. They compared three income ranges across different countries and made it super clear that the pandemic pushed 100 million people into extreme poverty. The dark background makes the numbers pop - you get it instantly.
There's this incredible "History of Pandemics" infographic that compares every major pandemic by scaling the visuals to match death tolls. So the bigger disasters literally look bigger on the chart. It's genius because you can see which pandemics were the worst just by glancing at it.
NASA's asteroid tracker is basically like Google Maps for space rocks. You can compare thousands of asteroids at once - their sizes, how close they are to Earth, where they're heading. Instead of boring spreadsheets, you just look around and immediately see which ones are huge vs tiny, close vs far away.
This meteorite map won a Webby Award for showing 34,000 meteorite impacts. You can see where they hit, when they hit, and how big they were - all at the same time. Way better than trying to read through thousands of rows of data.
And there's this water usage visualization that compares how much water different foods need. Turns out chocolate needs way more water than you'd think! The visual comparison makes it obvious which foods are water hogs.
These examples work because they make comparing numbers feel natural. Instead of making people do math in their heads, good visualizations let you see the differences immediately. That's the real trick - turn number comparison into visual comparison.
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