The world’s wealth in pizza: Improving the comprehension of large numbers through information visualization

Abstract

Extreme numerical magnitudes are part of our daily lives, from science to economics to politics. Specifically for large monetary measures, however, there are no comprehensive models for visualization practitioners to promote their understanding. Previous works on this topic have provided a framework for the visual depiction of complex measures but did not assess its effectiveness in communicating the real magnitude of the presented measures. In this thesis I bring together findings from Information Visualization and numerical cognition to extend the existing framework and assess the effects of different strategies, with a focus on monetary measures. For this, I created three visualization prototypes and conducted a series of user tests focused on insight creation. User tests highlighted advantages and disadvantages for different strategies and yielded various findings for their implementation in Information Visualisation.