Data Visualisation of Mountain Systems
The aesthetics of science — how data renders the mountain Overview Data visualisation is the art of making numbers visible. It is a translation – from the language of measurement (degrees Celsius, cubic metres per second, metres above sea level, individuals per hectare) into the language of the eye (colour, position, length, shape, pattern). When a climate scientist records the temperature at a weather station on a Himalayan pass every hour for twenty years, the result is a column of numbers – hundreds of thousands of entries, each precise, each meaningless in isolation. Data visualisation takes that column and turns it into something a human being can see: a line rising over decades, a colour shifting from blue to red, a pattern of seasonal oscillation becoming erratic. The number becomes a picture, and the picture becomes understanding. ...