The InformEd team spent last week in Cleveland, Ohio attending the American Evaluation Association (AEA) conference.  If you haven’t had a chance to check out the AEA, I highly recommend it.  It’s a great conference and I promise that you will leave with new skills, ideas, and perspectives.  I first attended AEA in 2013.  I still remember sitting in on my first data visualization presentation. I hadn’t given much thought to data visualization up until that point and then it dawned on me – a chance to combine creativity with data.  More importantly, a way to keep attention and effectively communicate complex topics. 

Flash forward to tonight, the discussions from AEA are swirling in my head, I’m coming off a 2-day workshop on Communicating Data Effectively with the very impressive and inspiring Stephanie Evergreen, and I’m watching the mid-term election results.  Graphs and statistics are flying across the screen as pundits analyze incoming results.    

While InformEd works in international development, it’s beneficial for us to learn from other data folks.  Elections provide us with a unique opportunity to look at how different media outlets are communicating the same results.  Let’s look at some of the best and worst data visualizations on election night.