Like many people, I came across Edward Tufte’s book the Visual Display of Quantitative Information years ago and was fascinated with the charts and images that it contained. The graph that showed the diminishing size of the French army in Russia, matched against weather conditions, is terrifying in its simplicity. I do think that when people can see data, they can grasp abstract concepts that they might not have the time or patience to engage otherwise. For this reason, I love this new GIF by Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading, which shows the increase in global temperatures between 1850 and 1916. This might be a good tool to embed in a course shell during the “Environment” week of an “Introduction to International and Global Studies” course. On my version you will have to double-click the GIF to activate it; you can also view it here:
