Hi, I'm David McCandless, founder of Information is Beautiful. Love pie. Hate pie-charts. AMAs are beautiful.

Hiya. I’m David McCandless, a London-based author, writer, designer and founder of Information is Beautiful (Facebook / Twitter). I’m interested in how visualized information & data can help us understand the world, and reveal the hidden connections, patterns & stories beneath the surface. Edit (12:00 ET): I’m back, chomping through these great questions. Keep asking. Edit (12:21 ET): Nice (inevitable) discussion on pie charts already: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3ol03x/hi_im_david_mccandless_founder_of_information_is/cvy3emu Edit (12:37 ET): Getting stuck into Excel now too… https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3ol03x/hi_im_david_mccandless_founder_of_information_is/cvy3eq3 **edit (13:50 ET): Taking a break - back in 10 or so. Back and on it. edit (15:12 ET) I’m done. My brain is cooked! What amazing and insightful questions. Thank you all very much for a great experience. I’ll try to pop back later and answer some more questions. I’ve been a big lurker on Reddit for years but maybe now I will come out a bit more. At least to polish off some of the fights below… My main passion is visualizing data & information about anything I don’t fully understand, such as Snake Oil? Evidence for Nutritional Supplements, A Million Lines of Code, or How Many Gigatons of CO2 Will it Take to End the World?. The more stupified or confused by a subject I am, the better the resulting viz, I’ve found. I particularly love applying a visualization / design lens to unusual subject matter. Like The Left vs Right Political Spectrum, Psychological Defenses, Rhetological Fallacies or The Best Data Dog. Before design, I freelanced for outlets like The Guardian and Wired. Before that, I was a video games reviewer and Doom champion (I have eerie gaming skills). And yes, it’s true. I made The Helicopter Game. These days, I’ve been playing with software, developing a platform called VizSweet to generate static & interactive data-visualisations. Examples: World’s Biggest Data Breaches, The Internet of Things or every key relationship in the Middle East. I’ve recently started teaching too so happy to answer questions on What Makes a Good Visualization?. I see visualization as a new language, culture and form of expression. I’m very excited about its future. I’m a longterm Reddit lurker - so very honoured to be here. Here’s proof that it’s me. I’ll be back at noon ET to answer all your questions. In the meantime, Ask Me Anything.