visualizations – Montessori Muddle

Wind Patterns (for the U.S.)

wind-map-300 — U.S wind patterns (excerpt from April 10th, 2012) ᔥ HINT.FM

HINT.FM has an amazing animation of winds over the U.S.. A major part of the awesomeness is that it’s updated hourly from the National Weather Service’s weather database, which has an awful lot of excellent data available.

Stop-Motion Recipe

I’ve always been in favor of alternate means of presenting information, especially for recipes.

Stop-Motion Biscuit Cake from Alan Travers on Vimeo.

(via The Dish)

The Visible Universe

Everything depends on your point of view — more or less. Our picture of the universe has changed in the last 60 years as telescope technology has improved. Popsci has a great interactive visualization showing how much more we can see now.

Notice that in this picture, the Earth is at the center of the universe (the Sun is a little way off to the middle lower left). After all, we’re looking at the universe from the Earth, not the other way around.

visible-universe-500 — The universe as it appeared in 1950, compared to what we can see now (2011). Image from Popsci.com

Beating the Odds: The Sheer Improbability of Being Here

visual.ly posts and hosts some excellent graphics. The one below, calculates the nearly infinitesimal probability of just being born. There’s hardly a better argument for appreciating life.

It’s also a good example of working with probabilities [and] exponents. Very large exponents.

by visually via