Catherine Mulbrandon's Visualizing Economics Blog

In my quest to become better-informed in topics related to finance and economics, I came across the Visualizing Economics blog. The author/designer of this blog is Catherine Mulbrandon. She has a degree in economics from the University of Chicago, and a graduate degree in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon, focusing on information and interaction design.

Not until I took a class in information visualization did I fully appreciate the importance of this way of understanding, interpreting, and sharing data.


Catherine's "Manifesto" explains why this is important:

• I believe design can contribute to public debates by creating information-rich, easy-to-understand graphics revealing the meaning of data without hiding its complexity. While the Internet allows even greater access to economic data than ever before, much of it is hidden in databases, spreadsheets and academic papers. At the same time, the discussion of economics in the media can be confusing and contradictory. Often numbers are quoted out of context, while political agendas distort the presentation of economic data. The goal of this site is to help people who are interested in the subject of economics (but are not experts) to understand and participate in public discussions about economics through data visualizations.

I will post links to information/data visualization and economics websites in my next blog entry.