Information visualization expert, David McCandless, has posted on The Guardian web site a word cloud (a “consensus cloud” to be precise) showing what he found during his research. How was the list developed?
I scraped the results of over 15 notable book polls, readers surveys and top 100’s. Both popular and high-brow. They included all Pulitzer Prize winners, Desert Island Discs choices from recent years, Oprah’s Bookclub list, and, of course, The Guardian’s Top 100 Books of All Time. A simple frequency analysis on the gathered titles gives us a neat ‘consensus cloud’ visualisation of the most mentioned books titles across the polls.
Direct to The Guardian Article
More superb visualizations and more on Information is Beautiful from David McCandless