Todd provides 5 reasons why data visualization isn't more prevalent:
- People don't know what data visualization is.
- Bad visualization has skewed perception of what data visualization is and what it can be used for.
- People can't interpret charts or new data representations.
- Visualization is difficult to create, but easy to copy.
- People won't pay for visualization.
While all the reasons do have some truth, there are a couple things worth adding.
People Do Know What Data Visualization Is
People have some kind of idea of what data is and know that you can get information out of it somehow. Maybe it's with a graph or it could be with something more elaborate, but most people will get it. They know what data visualization is. They just don't know what it's called. In other words, they know. They just don't know they know.
People Will Pay (A Lot) for Visualization
With all the data out there and the constantly increasing volumes of it, more people want to understand without having to learn formal statistical methods. How can they understand it? Visualization of course. The growing number of examples I've covered here on FlowingData show that there is a growing demand. After all, a lot of stuff I've covered here was commissioned.
Not Too Worried
Anyways, even though not everyone knows about data visualization (yet), I'm not too worried about it. There's just too much data for people not to care... or am I wasting my time? No. If they don't care, we'll show them why they should.