This week’s visualization comes from https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/what-could-really-increase-life-expectancy-lifespan-and-longevity/. This graphic displays how different components may affect a person’s life expectancy. There is a line going vertically down the middle of the graphic with bars extending out left or right, depending on if the expectancy increases or decreases. These components are filtered by how strong of science there is behind them to back them up: suggestive, good, and strong. The top of the graphic shows components that have suggestive ways of increasing a person’s life expectancy, such as being optimistic and eating less food. The ones with good supporting data include having more pets and avoiding heart disease to increase life expectancy. Things like eating healthy and exercising have strong science backing up the claim that they will increase a person’s life expectancy.
The visualization uses color to help break up the data and let the user understand how credible each component is. Displaying the lines to go out horizontally, makes comparing them much easier. For example, avoiding cancer may increase a person’s lifespan, +15 years, significantly more than having more pets, +3. Some of the components are also based on if a person is female or male, and have little icons displayed next to them if they are. Overall, this visualization is very easy to read and understand and is quite interesting!