As engineers (and project managers), we’re naturally attracted to the practical use – and conveyance – of good information.  Systems that take complicated or disparate information and “promote” it into knowledge and wisdom are, well, it sounds goofy, but they’re beautiful things.  There’s actually a whole science dedicated to the advancement of data to wisdom – see this link on the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom pyramid. That’s why we like a book like “The Back of the Napkin“, by Dan Roam.  He has a knack for taking an idea and illustrating it – and if you read the book he can show you how to do that yourself.

Microsoft Project and some of its add-in programs have this same effect on us.  If software can take a 500-component Work Breakdown Structure and generate a chart that shows us when resources will be short – we like that.  Alot.

So it’s no wonder that we had a sense of wonder when we came across a site called informationisbeautiful.net .  And we liked it even more when it featured several images – or rather diagrams – on “climate”.  We of course want to direct you to those but we also encourage you to spend a moment drifting though this site and gazing at the way in which they show how information can be presented in a form that is striking.  And it’s not only visual – one of their more recent posting has a music box (complete with music) represented by the planets’ orbits around our sun.   Creative, engaging stuff.

We’d like to direct your attention to one particular climate image regarding the skeptic and consensus view of climate change.  We don’t want to steer you to either side, we just want to have you look at the way in which the information is presented – balanced, with the data in the center and the opinions on the appropriate “side” of the “argument”.  Project managers can take a tip from this style of arbitration.  Get the facts on the table.  Put the information in perspective.

Now – we realize you won’t be able to read this tiny version of the chart, and that’s why we gave you this link to the image (click here).

We also provide you with a link to the main site (click here).

And, for completeness, the source of the consensus view (click here).