Smart Banking Cards

As I noted in my Friday post, I spent last week in Lithuania for work. That same Friday night, I had a conversation with a few coworkers over dinner and a beer about credit cards. They teased me that for all of America’s technological advances and advantages, even in Lithuania they were using more secure forms of bank card payment: chipped cards. And that story seems a perfect segue into today’s post from the Washington Post.

Through a combination of charts, maps, and illustrations—a cropping of which is shown below—the Post details the advantages of using microchipped cards in preventing certain types of fraud. Additionally, because of the integration of the visuals with the written explanations, text can be used to provide longer anecdotes to explain exceptions and outliers when and where necessary.

Cropping of microchipped card story
Cropping of microchipped card story

Credit for the piece goes to Todd Lindeman.

The Best Superbowl Match-up Ever?

Last night the United States enjoyed a little (American, not rest-of-the-world) football match wherein two squadrons competed upon the pitch for the glory of their squadron colours. Thankfully for those of us who wanted a preview of the match on data’s terms, well, the Guardian put together a fantastic piece breaking down some of the numbers.

The Best Superbowl Match-up
The Best Superbowl Match-up

The data is not terribly complicated—I still think baseball makes the most use of advanced metrics, though it helps they play more than 10 times as many games per season. The Guardian looked at yards gained or lost per play by the offence or defence, respectively. Click through the link to explore the other charting forms used, in particular the four quadrant scatter plot and the small multiples that follow. Also, a sophisticated and restrained colour palette allows the user to clearly understand when he or she is viewing the Denver–Seattle matchup or the historic match-ups of the NFL.

Regardless of the quality of the presentation, we shall see Monday morning—I am writing this Sunday afternoon—whether this piece will still hold with its talk of the best match-up ever.

And hey, for all this talk about the best offence, look at which squadron is ranked second. Fly, Eagles, fly.

Credit for the piece goes to the Guardian’s US Interactive Team.

Views on Gay Marriage Around the World

If you have been living under a rock, Sochi, Russia is hosting the winter Olympics this year. A year in which the Russian government passed legislation banning not same-sex relationships but advocacy for said relationships. Several countries, including the United States, take issue with the legislation. But this graphic from the National Journal hints that in order to reverse such barriers to same-sex marriages, the United States and like-minded societies have a long way to go to convince not just Russians, but many other societies across the world.

Views on gay marriage
Views on gay marriage

Credit for the piece goes to Brian McGill.

A Century of Passenger Flight

100 years ago we began to fly commercially. We moved beyond daredevil stunts and novelty and created air travel into a business. To commemorate the history, the Guardian commissioned this interactive graphic story to celebrate said history. It includes charts, narration, and near real-time data on actual flights mapped out as in the introductory element captured below.

Flight
Flight

Credit for the piece goes to Kiln.

Ivory Poaching

The South China Morning Post had a fantastic infographic detailing the hunting of elephants for their ivory. Despite bans to make such hunting illegal, the problem continues and is worsening because of the Asian trade in ivory.

Cropping of the infographic
Cropping of the infographic

Credit for the piece goes to Adolfo Arranz.

Travelling for the World Cup

Well, travel for the teams, not you. It’s a big issue in Brazil because unlike the last couple of times, the teams need to travel big distances to reach the cities where they play their matches. Thankfully, to explain just how far some of these distances are for some of these teams, Quartz put together a nice article with quite a few graphics.

This graphic in particular juxtaposes the travels of the US team and the Argentinian team. Who do you think has it easier?

US and Argentinian travels
US and Argentinian travels

Credit for the piece goes to Jason Karaian and Ritchie King.

Cancelling the Cincinnati Streetcar Project

So Cincinnati was going to have a streetcar. Now it won’t because the recently elected mayor, John Cranley, campaigned on killing the streetcar. I won’t get into the whys and the why nots mostly because I’m not from Cincinnati and others can do it better. Suffice it to say that costs and budget battles played a part. Yesterday the city council opted to pause the project. This will likely suspend federal grant payments, meaning contractors don’t get paid, which means the city faces lawsuits for being in breach of contract, which potentially means the city spends almost as much money cancelling the project as they would completing it.

Ordinarily I would post something from a local newspaper or media outlet covering the story. But today I have the pleasure of sharing some work that my former professor made. His infographic explores the fiscal details of the streetcar project and how much Cincinnati owes if they opt to cancel it in the end.

Funding the Cincinnati Streetcar project
Funding the Cincinnati Streetcar project

Credit for the piece goes to Giacomo Ciminello. You can download the original here. And you can visit his site here.

Illegal Arrivals to Australia

This article on Yahoo by the AFP has an interesting graphic on the problem facing Australia of illegal arrivals via boat that, in part, probably cost Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party of Australia the recent election.

Illegal arrivals to Australia
Illegal arrivals to Australia

I like the overall graphic, but I feel that the data labels are unnecessary on the line chart and the bar chart. They distract from the overall shape of the data and are anyways hinted at by the axes labels within the charts themselves. Also, I am a bit unclear as to the meaning of the grey bars in the line chart.

Credit for the piece goes to John Saeki.