Just Pinned to Education and Digital Cultures: Big Data Humor: Power of the Pie http://ift.tt/2moCA7p

I pinned this image to Pinterest because it is amusing but also because it says lots of things to me about Learning Analytics and infographics. Learning Analytics companies are keen to promote their ‘dashboards’ where information is depicted graphically, enabling users to understand performance, trend or numbers at a glance. I am suspicious of these kind of duplo infographics which resist all nuance to deliver headline news. The visual representation of statistics is, by definition, devoid of intricate detail, but the view of information these graphics embody is more akin to advertising a reality than reflecting one. Infographics are selling us a view of information, the gathering of which has ready-encoded in it the decisions and motives behind the view it wants to promote. Advertising is designed to be appealing, persuasive and agentic whilst subtly constitutive of a social and political stance.