Paul Ryan is Your New Speaker

Paul Ryan is about to takeover for John Boehner as Speaker of the House. So the Washington Post put together a nice graphic-featuring article about how Ryan compares to previous speakers—turns out he is fairly young. But the end of the piece uses this graphic to look at the number of days, i.e. experience, each speaker had prior to taking the role.

But try comparing him to someone other than Boehner…
But try comparing him to someone other than Boehner…

By putting the dots around a circle, the Post has created an interesting graphic. But the format makes it difficult to compare individuals who are not close together.

Credit for the piece goes to Philip Bump.

Sailing Through Southeast Asian Waters

Today the US sent a guided missile destroyer through what China claims—but few recognise as—its sovereign territory, twelve nautical miles off the coast of semi-artificial islands. This piece from Quartz illustrates just some of the overlapping claims of the Spratley Islands. In the end, nothing happened to the destroyer as China did not counter it with ships or aircraft.

Who owns what now?
Who owns what now?

Credit for the piece goes to the Quartz graphics team.

English Votes for English Laws

Last week the British government announced plans to solve the West Lothian Question that centres on devolution parity for England. Many legislative powers have been devolved from London and given to the regional parliaments in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. And on the one hand that is great as the national parliament no longer tells Scottish schools what to do, which is important because of England’s clout in London because England is by far the largest part of the Union. But the on the other hand, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish MPs still get to vote on schools in England. You can begin to see how the English feel that is unfair.

So the BBC put together this graphic trying to explain what was announced, because it is far more complicated than just giving England its own parliament. It’s a tricky and complicated issue that is worth a read. If only because the government apparently did not realise that its plan can be acronymised to EVEL.

It's EVEL I tell you. Pure EVEL.
It’s EVEL I tell you. Pure EVEL.

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.

Trump Leads the Pack

The day after the Canadian elections, let’s turn our gaze back upon the states via this Washington Post piece. How are the Republicans doing in their primaries?

It's all about the hair
It’s all about the hair

Yep, still the land of I can’t quite believe it.

Credit for the piece goes to the Washington Post graphics department.

The Canadian Elections

Canada held an election yesterday. For your briefing on it, John Oliver did a great job on Last Week Tonight. But for the serious coverage, we have results.

Here we have the results coverage by the National Post. It’s your standard choropleth coloured by the victor in each riding, or constituency. From a design side, I find the pattern fill interesting and not something I have seen done before for a political map.

I just chose a place I had visited in Canada
I just chose a place I had visited in Canada

But I really like what the CBC did. They built an interactive application to cover the evening’s results as they arrived. This screenshot is for the riding in Fredericton, where my ancestors lived in the 19th century. (I had to have a connection to the ridings somehow.) In particular, I liked the ability to star ridings of interest and have them immediately retrievable. The CBC complemented that with a list of ridings to watch. It was a great resource for the evening.

Fredericton results
Fredericton results

But then they also covered the results with an article with interactive graphics. This is more your standard fare with choropleths, bar charts, and line charts. But they flow through the article quite sensibly. Overall, a solid results piece.

Party results per region
Party results per region

Credit for the National Post piece goes to the National Post graphics department.

Credit for the CBC piece goes to the the CBC graphics department.

McDonald’s All-day Breakfast

I don’t know about you, but I have seen a lot of those all-day breakfast bags sitting about the city of Chicago the last few days. (That they are not in waste bins is a different story.) CBS took a look at where the biscuit vs. McMuffin offering is available in the US—hint, not Chicago—and compared that geographic spread to something else. It’s worth a quick look.

Where to go for biscuits
Where to go for biscuits

Credit for the piece goes to CBS graphics department.

The First Democratic Debate

Last month we looked at the Washington Post’s coverage of the second Republican Debate. For those unaware, the first Democratic Debate was held last night. And so it is only fair for us to look at the Post’s coverage of that event.

Who engaged whom
Who engaged whom

Credit for the piece goes to Samuel Granados, Richard Johnson, Denise Lu, Ted Mellnik, and Kevin Schaul.

The Safe List

Migrants and refugees continue to reach Europe. But some of those people can be sent back, depending upon their country of origin. The tricky part is that there is no common set of countries as this graphic from the Economist shows.

The safe list
The safe list

In terms of design, we see nothing too elaborate here. This is really just a table where checks, half-checks, and exes would have sufficed. But, sometimes, a table is really all you need to convey the important data.

Credit for the piece goes to the Economist’s Data Team.