Lace Padilla, Ian Ruginski and Sarah Creem-Regehr Examine the Effectiveness of Hurricane Visualizations
With the recent hurricanes affecting this country, it is an excellent time to examine how predictions of hurricane movement are communicated to the public.
A recent article in the Psychonomic Society’s journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications examined the utility of various different types of visual displays for the forecasting of hurricanes. Researchers Lace Padilla, Ian Ruginski, and Sarah Creem-Regehr were particularly concerned with the differences in efficacy between ensemble displays and summary displays.
Their experiments showed that different methods of displaying the data led to dramatically different perceptions about the size, intensity, and likely path of the hurricanes.