What were the greatest causes of death in the 20th century, our "worst century"? War? Disease? Natural disasters? You might be surprised.
We gathered and examined mortality data from around the world – from disease to murder to mudslides – then calculated and visualised what killed the most people.
The result was a 6m x 2m visualisation art-piece for the Wellcome Collection's free London exhibition,'Death: A Self-Portrait – The Richard Harris Collection'. Now released online for your morbid fascination.
Download a free hi-res PDF of this image
The Data
See it all in this dataset: http://bit.ly/20thDeath.
Data involves rounding, broad estimation and ball-park estimates.
There is also some inevitable double-counting which we've marked on the dataset.
We used a regression algorithm on some figures to roll back current mortality figures to the beginning of the 20th century.
Sources
WHO Mortality report (PDF) & app, WHO Global Burden of Disease (PDF), OECD Mortality Stats
Concept & design & research
David McCandless
Lead researcher: Miriam Quick,
Additional research: Ella Hollowood, Pearl Doughty White, Daniel Hampson, Andrew Key
Regression algorithm: Laurin Janes
Art direction: Kathryn Ariel Kay
Additional design: Tatjana Dubovina, Piero Zagami, Peter Ayres, Paulo Estriga
About Us
We are InformationIsBeautiful.net, dedicated to visualising information, ideas, stories and data. Twitter @infobeautiful. The updated 2nd Edition of our book of infographic exploria, is called Information Is Beautiful. (HarperCollins 2012). In the US, the book's called The Visual Miscellaneum . It's published in nine other languages.
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Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk
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