Have you ever wondered what all the statistics you read mean? I’m a very visual learner, I appreciate learning from books that balance text with images, graphics, tables and other visual representations of information. A friend of mine recently pointed out this amazing graphic created by David McCandless at Information is Beautiful.net.

Click on the image above to see the full graphic on McCandless’s website. This visual breaks down the amount of money that the world has given to the disaster relief in Haiti, updated as of January 24, 2010. The information that McCandless’s used is also available on his website. The great thing about this graphic is that it not only shows you the breakdown of dollars given by country and region but it compares the donations to other recent natural disasters like the tsunami in Sri Lanka in 2006.

While the information is dated in January I think that it is a great way to understand donation numbers in a comparative way. How often do we get to compare numbers so easily and so visually. What do you think? Do the numbers tell a better story when they are so in your face like these visuals? Hope you enjoy McCandless’s drawings as much as I do.