Like all quasi-autistic geeks, I love pointless factoids - almost as much as meaningless statistics. Such as the fact that the Tokelau Islands boast a staggering 1,300+ domain registrations per capita.

So I was delighted to learn that Disraeli’s glib one-liner - “lies, damned lies and statistics” - now has a Web 2.0 proof with Swivel.com.

Swivel bills itself as a Web 2.0 data visualization site. So far, so boring. But what it excels at is one of my favourite past times: using statistics to prop up baseless-but-fun assertions. Let’s examine some of my favourite examples:

• Wine consumption vs violent crime
• Drug use in the USA vs the Dow Jones
• NASDAQ as predictor of shark attacks

Now Joe Schmo can now equate cause and effect with no supporting evidence beyond a super-swish 3D line graph. Now that’s what I call organising the world’s information!

PS. I am a genuine fan of Swivel, despite my droll examples, so be sure to try it out.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Housekeeping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.