Here’s a really nice piece of data visualisation from Dave McCandless:

It’s interesting for a few reasons. First, it’s an innovative and very good approach to data visualisation. Second, Gardasil is the poster child here at UQ for the successful commercialisation of academic research – it is often used as an example in classes here since most people know at least a bit of the story. Third, it points out the downside to innovation – in this case, some people die from the vaccine for HPV. The graphic shows very clearly the risk of this relative to the risk of the disease it cures is vanishingly small. Still, it is a very real, very bad outcome for the families of people that are affected. This shouldn’t drive our innovation efforts, but it is still something that we should at least think about when we’re executing new ideas.

The entire site is well worth looking at – McCandless’ visualisations are spectacular.