So Many A Second

There's an ingenious data visualization effort to be found at So Many A Second. To understrand their description of the software, it helps to know that "mondial" means global or worlwide.

"so_many_a_second is a visualizer that shows mondial statistics on a human scale.
Depicting the ongoing stream of events, this application tries to get the user in touch with the emotional actuality of these objective data."

Translated, this means that data that we can put in some sort of timeframe or frequency, like "4.2 babies are born every second," turns into a rainshower of infants falling at -- you guessed it -- 4.2 infants per second.

It's really a fun tool that does give you a real sense of the data on a more visceral level than a static picture or graph might. Take a look and play with it -- they let you add your own data, though the choice of graphics isn't very large yet.

Data sets come from Worldometers, which we've talked about before.

Take a look! And keep those ideas coming.

(Hat tip: FlowingData.com)