Walking Down the Street

Business Insider posted a neat graphic that compared the walkability of a suburban neighbourhood outside Seattle to a dense urban neighbourhood in Seattle. Turns out you can walk a lot more and further in a gridded mile than in a faux-organic sprawl.

How far can you walk?
How far can you walk?

Credit for the piece goes to Sightline Institute.

Economically Isolating Russia

The West hesitates to use military force to push Russian troops out of Crimea. Likely with good reason as any such campaign would be neither cheap nor bloodless in addition to running the risk of spreading beyond the borders of Ukraine. So that leaves diplomatic and economic isolation. Diplomatic isolation is already underway—the G8 conference to be hosted in Sochi this summer is all but dead. But economic isolation is still being discussed.

Isolating Russia
Isolating Russia

The United States is generally in favour, but Europe—namely Germany—has been more cautious. But as my graphic shows, without Europe a sanctions regime would be largely toothless since half of Russia’s exports go to Europe. Except that Russia is also responsible for a significant proportion of Europe’s imported natural gas and sanctions on Russia could cause an interruption in that fuel to Western Europe. Naturally, most of that natural gas is, of course, transported through pipelines running across Ukraine.

Ukraine

A lot of things happened in Ukraine this past weekend. Unfortunately, I was not able to quite capture all of the events and the background I wanted. So, until I do, this quick graphic will have to suffice. In short, Ukraine is a big European country, one of the largest prizes remaining in the struggle between the West/EU and the East/Russia. I took a look at the forecast for Ukraine in 2050 for both number of people and the size of the economy and put that in the context of Europe. And while forecasting that far out clearly has risks, one can see with a grain of salt that Ukraine is set to be an important middle-sized European nation.

A quick introduction to Ukraine
A quick introduction to Ukraine

But, like I said, there is more to do. I just was not able to do it.

The Science Behind the Thoroughbred

I do not know a thing about horses. I leave that knowledge to others in my family. However, this piece from the South China Morning Post explains quite a bit of why the thoroughbred is such a famous type of horse for racing.

The science behind thoroughbreds
The science behind thoroughbreds

Credit for the piece goes to Alberto Lucas López.

Potholes

Today’s piece is from the Washington Post. However, it is less data visualisation and more of a neat little motion graphic explaining the formation of pot holes. Since it seems to be about that time of year when roads are destroyed by the things.

Potholes
Potholes

Credit for the piece goes to Sohail Al-Jamea and Bonnie Berkowitz.

Household Income Inequality

The Washington Post published this dot plot graphic to explore inequality in household income across numerous American cities.

Household income inequality
Household income inequality

The chart, as most dot plots do, does a good job of showing where several distinct points within a set fall within the entire range of data. Or to put it into other words, where do the poorest, the richest, and the most middlest households in Philadelphia fall within all Philadelphia households? The data is interesting because you will begin to uncover some significant outliers. For example, by quick glance, the 50th percentile in both Detroit and Cleveland earn less than the 20th percentile in San Jose.

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

Baseball Windows

Spring training has begun for baseball fans. The glow from the Red Sox victory last October is fading as we now wonder if we can repeat. Fans of other teams now wonder if this is their year. Over at SB Nation, an article plotted 29 baseball teams—ignoring the Dodgers— and looked at their chances in the upcoming years. The article continues using the chart to explain which teams fall where.

Baseball windows
Baseball windows

And for the designers, note the type choice for “Nope”.

Credit for the piece goes to Grant Brisbee.

The Swiss and Immigration

Last week, the Swiss people narrowly rejected the principle of freedom of movement. This principles serves as one of the foundations of the European Union. And while Switzerland does not belong to the EU, its economy benefits from access to the single market via that freedom of movement principle. That may be an oversimplification perhaps, but it provides some context to the consternation in Europe over the Swiss people rejecting the principle.

This graphic is not particularly complex. It is a choropleth of the vote results. However, it does show that the vote was not unanimous. Rather it was contained to the cantons (analogous to states in the US) more rural in character, i.e. less urban places like Geneva.

Swiss immigration vote results
Swiss immigration vote results

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.

Explaining What is Going on in Ukraine

Not “the Ukraine” as it is (admittedly) fun to do in pop-culture references to Seinfeld. This comes from the Washington Post and the article tries to show that the protests in Kiev are not necessarily a vast majority against the government. Certainly the opposition is strong, but there is also a very strong pro-government movement. Why? Because in the broadest of senses, Ukraine is where the West, i.e. the European Union, meets the East, i.e. Russia.

A divided Ukraine
A divided Ukraine

Credit for putting this all together goes to Max Fisher. Credit for each of the original graphics is to their respective designers whom I cannot identify.

Racing for Revenue

As the Winter Olympics continue, the Economist looks at a different kind of race. The race between companies reaching a certain amount of revenue—along with the net profit from said revenue. How long does it take a company to reach $1 million in revenue? When all companies have reached the same amount of revenue, what percentage is net profit? It’s a neat little interactive. Thankfully you can skip the race and get straight to the results, a nice design feature.

Race to $1 million
Race to $1 million

Credit for the piece goes to R.J., G.S. and K.N.C.