Nicholas Felton spent an average of $9.35 per ride he took in taxis during the year 2007.
How do I know this random trivia about a complete stranger? Well, he told me all about it in his “Feltron 2007 Annual Report.” And, if I you’re interested, you could probably look up historical data in the 2005 report to find out what Felton was up to then. But, Felton’s not the only one turning their life into what seems like a graduate-level Statistics class project. There’s a growing number of folks on the Internet using pie-charts and graphs to organize information about everything from aphorisms and observations, to the emotions they feel at concerts, and much much more. Has the USA Today spawned a new generation of citizens obsessed with boiling everything down to raw numbers digestible in Microsoft Excel format? Perhaps, but maybe this isn’t a bad thing. The aesthetic of interesting information design, like the Feltron Annual Report, forces us to take a new look at data we might shrug off in the aggregate. When it’s hyper-individualized, we can see the impact one human being has on this Earth– their consumption habits, their preferences, and, in a meta fashion, the way they conceptualize their experiences through statistical analysis. And, if we’re more aware of the exact impact of our choices, the feedback loop will inevitably lead to more informed decisions.