Data visualization is all around you. Sometimes, it sneaks up on you in the most unlikely places. Have you played any video games lately? I bet there was some kind of viz to show your character’s remaining health, your progress toward a goal, or a map to show you the lay of the land and maybe all the places you’d been.
Not only is it fun, but visualization can be incredibly important for the success of an individual, an organization, or even a society as a whole. In 19th-century England, Florence Nightingale turned the medical world upside down with visualizations of data she’d collected over decades of working in military hospitals. When she would present ideas to the “Powers That Be” and they would answer with, “That’s just not how we do it,” she managed to change minds only when she showed a visualization of her data.
Well-designed visualizations save lives and can turn entire industries around, but at the same time, they can also tell you how many lives you have left with your little red plumber guy before you have to restart the game all over again. ;)