what an inspiring keynote by David McCandless! Here are some the things that I noted:

1. Play with your data, get your hands dirty

“Data is the new Soil” – David McCandless

"Data is the new oil … but perhaps data is the new *soil*, where you can get your hands dirty, build & nurture" – @mccandelish #passbac

— PASS BA Conference (@passbac) May 9, 2014

2. set the context while communicating what data is trying to tell.
Example: China has the largest army but compared it to their population they are 120ish! So measuring just the army size does not give you necessary context & sometimes it can meaningless

3. Data visualizations help you combine the language of the mind (numbers) with language of the eye (visuals)! Humans are better at processing visuals.

If human brains process pictures more efficiently, then demos should be presented more than PowerPoint text #passbac

— Mark Tabladillo (@MarkTabNet) May 9, 2014

4. Make sure your data is true & keep your personal bias out of analysis.

5. Other than making sure that the data integrity is achieved in visuals, they should be interesting and functional.

6. Design is about removing unwanted things & distilling the visual to it’s functional essence.

You can check out David’s work at http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/