February 9, 2026
Chart Wars: Pretty vs. Petty
Information Is Beautiful
Beloved data art is back—nostalgia, 'chart crimes', and a morals skirmish light up the comments
TLDR: Info Is Beautiful returns with fresh trainings and a trove of data visuals, from positive “Beautiful News” to rankings of AI and popular PIN codes. Commenters split between nostalgia and accusations of misleading “chart crimes,” with extra debate over an old Left vs Right graphic’s moral framing—proof that visuals still spark big feelings.
“Information Is Beautiful” just re-dropped like the classy chart museum it is—live trainings, streamable lessons, and a buffet of visuals from Beautiful News 2024/2025 to Most Common PIN Codes and even Major AI models ranked by MMLU (a big test of general knowledge). Cue the comments: one camp got misty-eyed for the golden age of infographics, with esafak calling it “from the heyday of infographics,” then quickly clarifying they weren’t saying design is dead. The other camp? Out came the chart police, led by r/dataisbeautiful veterans rolling their eyes at “objectively terrible and misleading” visuals and those cursed equal-population country tiles.
The real sparkler was politics: a throwback Left vs Right chart describing a “community based on morals” had readers side-eyeing how much has shifted in 15 years, with this page getting dissected like a high school debate. Fans dropped a love letter (and book link), while skeptics yelled chart crimes and color bias. Meanwhile, jokes flew: “lies, damned lies, and donut charts,” “if your PIN is 1234, change it,” and “MMLU? More Like My Little Unicorn.” Between myth-busting vaccine visuals, war timelines, and climate charts, the vibe was half art show, half courtroom drama—and 100% peak comment section energy.
Key Points
- •The site promotes data visualization education with live virtual seminars and streamable pre-recorded trainings.
- •Editorial coverage spans multiple domains, including arts, design, economy, climate, science, health, and technology.
- •Featured collections include annual “Most Beautiful News” rounds for 2024 and 2025 highlighting positive trends.
- •Highlighted visualizations address topics like myth-busting, vaccines and autism evidence, and the Russia–Ukraine war timeline.
- •A feature ranks major LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) using the MMLU benchmark, alongside other numeric/technical visuals (e.g., water distribution, common PINs).