Data Visualization: When Mendeleev met Tufte

This article was originally posted on September 08, 2007.

I recently read in BusinessWeek about a great tool for people who perform data visualization, actually kind of a “meta-tool” (a tool about tools). It’s the output of a project put together for several universities to help promote “visual literacy,” or teaching students how to visually represent concepts.

This project created what looks like a periodic table of the elements, but each cell in the table relates to a graphical way to present data. When a user hovers over each cell, a pop-up illustration of that cell appears on-screen. It serves as a useful reference tool for knowledge workers.

The table can be found at: http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html. Image below.

Originally published at https://mikegil.typepad.com.