At this link you will find one of the best animated data visualizations you’ll ever see. It’s a map of the world with timed animation representing immigration into the US from 1820 to 2013. It only takes a few seconds. Watch it. What better thing are you going to do in the next two minutes?
It’s an elegant way to see the geographic distribution, timing, and scale of millions of peoples individual choices. Two relaxed minutes of watching colored dots will give you a better understanding than what you started with. In an ideal world, nobody would debate immigration in the US until they’d watched it. Twice.
Also, like most good visualizations, it’s beautiful.
Hat tip to Maggie’s Farm.