The Lost Wallet Experiment: Simple Visualizations Can Be Compelling if they Tell a Good Story

Published on International Business Times on 26 September 2013.

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Reader’s Digest wanted to know how honest world cities are, so it “lost” 192 wallets in 16 cities — that’s 12 wallets in each city — to see how many would be returned.

A fun little illustration that superimposed a very simple two-category dot matrix visualization on a standard map projection. One of my most-shared infographics, this is evidence that the simplest visualizations can be compelling if they tell an interesting story.