Many people forget that the real purpose of visualization isn’t just to make pretty pictures, it’s to improve understanding of information. A great example comes from this piece over at orgnet where they use social network analysis to discovery the conspiracy of a slumlord transferring a property through multiple holding companies that are all actually arms of the same company.
Figure 3 shows us that these LLCs were not as separate as they first appeared. The dark red links reveal family ties found in public records. The LLCs were not independent business entities. The business transactions were happening within extended families! A conspiracy was coming into focus.
It’s a great article showing the many layers of data they added before finally coming to their conclusion (I show the final graph above). Definitely something to check out.
