Can Data Visualisation Save Lives?

Here in the UK, we're being asked to stay two metres away from people outside our household to reduce the risk of spreading or contracting Covid-19.

But just how big is two metres?

For children (and adults) the concept of what two metres might be could be quite abstract. So when telling our children to stay two metres away from others, do they really know what we're asking them to do?

Could data visualisation help make things clearer? And if it's clearer, would it help our children and others maintain that magical two metre barrier to others. Let's find out.

1. What is a Data Visualisation?

In my intro I asked whether data visualisation could make it clearer. But in saying this you might be asking yourself, "how would a chart help our children here?" But data visualisation is more than just bar charts and scatter plots.

In Alberto Cario's book 'The Truthful Art', he describes visualisation as "any kind of visual representation of information designed to enable communication, analysis, discover, exploration etc."

So data visualisation is more than just charts. As per Alberto's definition, I wanted to find a visual representation that is more relevant and relatable to a 6 year-old. But before I share that, let me talk through an experiment we created this morning to identify if we had a problem in the first place.

2. Do we actually know how long two metres is?

To understand if we had a problem we created the following experiment:

1. I found two training cones we had in the garden.
2. One by one (including myself) we sent our family members out into the garden and asked them to place the two cones two metres apart.
3. We then measured the distance between the two cones to see how good we were at estimating two metres.
4. If we over-estimated, then we're leaving plenty of space from other people when out on our walks. If we under-estimated, we were in trouble. 

Image: Astrid estimating two metres.

Here are the results:

Sarah (38) was almost bang on but me (38) and Astrid (8) under-estimated, where as Dylan (6) and Matilda (3) over-estimated. 

So as a family of 5, we are all over the place in understanding how big two metres is. So how could we fix this with Data Visualisation?

3. Introducing Non-Standard Units for Measurement.

We typically measure objects and distances using standard measurement units, such as kilograms, litres and metres. These are great for precision, but if you don't know what a metre is in the first place then it can be pretty meaningless.

So what about non-standard units then?

Non-standard units are used by children in early years of school to introduce the young to the concept of measuring without having to read any scales. Rather than reading scales, they help children understand the concept of heavier, lighter, longer, shorter etc. by comparing objects they already know and understand. So for example:

1. Is a book heavier than a cup? or
2. Is a table longer than a pencil?

I believed we could use the same principle to better understand what is two metres, or more specifically how far away do we need to stand from others to be safe?

4. Visualising two metres.

Image: Dylan measuring out two metres.

Using a tape measure, we measured out how long two metres actually was and then used some blue masking tape to mark out the safe zone between two people.

We then got to work finding objects, or multiple objects, in the house and the garden that we knew about that we could use to fill that gap.

We did this because using the principle of non-standard units of measurement, if we could say to our children for example stay two skipping ropes apart from the person coming down the road, this would make more sense than two metres.

And this is a selection of what we came up with:

46 Lego Mini-figures

23 Disney Princesses

12 Blu-Rays

10 Shoes

2 Scooters & 1 Bike

2 Crutches

(and perhaps best) 2 pairs of arm lengths.

Now you might think that 46 lego mini-figures is equally as unhelpful as saying two metres to someone that can't accurately visualise what a metre is, but kids know lego and 46 is a pretty big number so they'll likely think I have to leave a decent space to fit them all in.

But even better, we found that when we used 'big non-standard units' such as people and scooters, it was much more understandable and something they can better visualise in their heads when we're asking them to keep a safe distance.

5. Conclusion.

So what we ended up with was a visualisation (or series of visualisations) that were more personal, understandable and, most importantly, allowed for a more effective means of communicating how far apart we need to stand from other people when out and about.

And if we all do that, we have the potential to keep safe and save lives.

​Ergo, Data Visualisation can indeed save lives.