Not a very accurate instrument, the human hand. I was talking with my next door neighbor, whose wife is 39-1/2 weeks pregnant. She went into labor last week, a bit premature, and the contractions weren’t that close or that regular yet, but I gather she was not too comfortable. Anyway, the doctors kept her there for a while, then sent her home. My neighbor says it was frustrating, because they’d hear three OBs in a row, 3 cm dilated, 8 cm, 5 cm; 80% effaced, 25%, 50%. I mean, these are not precision machined calipers, these are fingers.

So I doubt feeling around on the corrugated surfaces will give you any better “feel” for the numbers than a quick glance would.

Also, to be frank, I dont think the original paper pie is effective, it provides poor contrast, although you can touch and grope (in authors words) to find exact values.

The Information Aesthetics blog focuses on visualizations that present data or information in original, intriguing or artistic ways. I don’t think it’s about the most effective ways to understand data. It’s always seemed more like a romp through beautiful and unexpected visualizations, using data as the raw material of the design or artistic process.

Take this, for example: http://infosthetics.com/archives/2009/01/tidal_data_as_a_table_data_furniture.html. As an informational chart, it’s useless. (As furniture, it doesn’t look very practical either.) But it’s a thing of beauty nonetheless.

I don’t know Andrew, but I’ve been an Information Aesthetics reader for quite some time. He’s not looking for useful analytical tools. He’s encouraging people to have fun and be creative.

I can’t wait to see the results, even if they are useless.