ACCIdEntAl tEChnOlOgISt

d ata visualization has become a hot topic over the last few years. This popularity can be seen every-where. The New York Times revolutionized itself by creating gorgeous, interactive visualizations of everything from political campaigns to nutrition.1 There is a suddenly vibrant data visualization blog scene, lead by stellar resources FlowingData and Information is Beautiful.2 More and more software programs have appeared that make creating compelling visualizations easier and easier, but also more and more data are collected and analyzed digitally. Our new means of collecting data necessitates new means of representation to communicate the message of massive and messy sets of data. The immense success of computing in the second half of the twentieth century has brought about a correspondingly immense challenge: how do we deal with all of this data? Design thinking stepped up to the challenge by allying with statistics to create the half-art, half-science of data visualization