The Importance of Visualization in Information Design

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I love that idea of trying to do a public service by presenting information well. I feel like in practice, it's such a problem because what's two things? One, if you're trying to make a cool looking visualization, that can actually be at odds with presenting the information in the most useful and informative way. Second, it's so easy in presenting information to sort of bias the answer based on what you want the answer to be. There's actually a lot of choices in the way you present information that can lead to very different conclusions.

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What is the Great Rationality Debate? What are axiomatic rationality and ecological rationality? How irrational are people anyway? What's the connection between rationality and wisdom? What are some of the paradigms in cognitive science? Why do visual representations of information often communicate their meaning much more effectively than other kinds of representations?

Anna Riedl is a cognitive scientist with a primary research interest in judgement and decision-making under unmeasurable uncertainty, a field in the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. She loves the scientific method so much that she regularly spreads her joy about it in various formats of science communication. In the end, she cares about ideas being applied in the real world, solving problems, and benefitting humanity. This means she often plays the role of being an interface between the two worlds of ideas and their application by humans. Over the last years, she has founded and lead different organizations in the DACH region that work on improving the world. You can find more about her at riedlanna.com, follow her on Twitter at @annaleptikon, or email her at annariedl.office@gmail.com.

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