A Whole Brain

In my International Relations class, we were given a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of columns of data on it. The amount of data was overwhelming: statistics had been recorded from the early 1900s to 2010 for hundreds of countries (displaying their Foreign Direct Investments, percentage of the population living in poverty, gross domestic product, gross domestic product, gross domestic product with allowances for purchasing power parity, etc.). We had to, using this data, find some sort of correlation between the sets of data. Because I consider myself to be more right brain oriented, I had a hard time trying to understand the hundreds of columns of data, much less trying to identify some sort of correlation between the sets of data. The assignment would have been more inclusive of right brain reasoning patterns had it included, for example, some metaphors or colorful diagrams that would serve to explain what each of these financial terms are and how they relate to each other. If these terms could have been visually represented/explained somehow, I think the assignment would have been more impactful because I would have understood it a lot more.