TED is a world famous nonprofit that is devoted to exploring ideas from across the globe. It initially began as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment and Design, which is how it got its acronym. Ever since then, its scope has become broader and its reach wider.
Today, TED talks and conferences are held worldwide and TED fellowships are awarded to deserving people from various walks of life.
Here are some of the best TED talks on data visualization in recent years:
David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization
David McCandless turns complex data sets (like worldwide military spending, media buzz, Facebook status updates) into beautiful, simple diagrams that tease out unseen patterns and connections.
Hans Rosling on HIV: New facts and stunning data visuals
Hans Rosling unveils new data visuals that untangle the complex risk factors of one of the world's deadliest (and most misunderstood) diseases: HIV. He argues that preventing transmissions -- not drug treatments -- is the key to ending the epidemic.
Demo: Stunning data visualization in the AlloSphere
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, a new way to see, hear and interpret scientific data.
Anders Ynnerman: Visualizing the medical data explosion
In this talk, scientific visualization expert Anders Ynnerman shows us sophisticated new tools -- like virtual autopsies -- for analyzing this myriad data, and so on.
Aaron Koblin: Artfully visualizing our humanity
Artist Aaron Koblin takes vast amounts of data and at times, vast numbers of people, and weaves them into stunning visualizations. From elegant lines tracing airline flights to landscapes of cell phone data, from a Johnny Cash video assembled from crowd-source, Aaron Koblin has experimented with all.
Tim Berners-Lee: The year open data went worldwide
At TED2009, Tim Berners-Lee called for "raw data now" -- for governments, scientists and institutions to make their data openly available on the web. At TED University in 2010, he showed a few of the interesting results when the now-public data gets linked up and re-imagined.
Jer Thorp: Make data more human
Jer Thorp creates beautiful data visualizations to put abstract data into a human context. At TEDxVancouver, he shares his moving projects, from graphing an entire year’s news cycle, to mapping the way people share.
Jean-Baptiste Michel - TED Speaker Profile
Jean-Baptiste Michel explains how we can use large volumes of data to better understand our world.
Shyam Sankar: The rise of human-computer cooperation
Brute computing force alone can’t solve the world’s problems. Data mining innovator Shyam Sankar explores the rise of human computer cooperation in this TED talk.