It’s Friday. So what else could you want but cat videos?! On the internet?!
But seriously, that’s what I have for you today. But with a twist. The BBC and the Royal Veterinary College collaborated to document a day in the life of cats by attaching collars with micro-cameras and GPS trackers to several felines in one English village. Cats are selected by illustration at the top of the graphic. Their day’s walking path is traced out over the village while video clips of some of the more interesting parts of the day are available to watch.
A day in the life of Phoebe the cat
Credit for the piece goes to Steven Atherton, Chris Finch, Alex Ranken, Lucy Rodgers, Helene Sears, Marina Shchukina, and Noah Veltman.
Hong Kong—and to a similar extent Macau—is part of China, but at times not so much. Because of the long history of British control through their colony, the people of Hong Kong, Hongkongers, are accustomed to a more liberal, democratic, and perhaps Western lifestyle than those of mainland China. Since the British handover, a local university has been asking the inevitable question of “Are you Hongkonger or Chinese?”. This interactive piece from the South China Morning Post looks at how that answer has evolved over nearly 20 years.
Hongkonger identity
The piece presents a broad overview on the right with the specific survey results displayed larger on the left. Broadly speaking, the piece is successful. In particular, the decision to highlight the particular survey on the right brings that into focus without losing the context of the historical results. And providing a timeline beneath the larger stacked bar chart on the left offers a second means of choosing a survey of interest.
Yet I think the piece lacks two, perhaps three, elements that would improve the piece. First, sometimes I like to see the numbers for data visualisations. Adding a hover or mouseover state would help with that. Second, while the chart on the left includes a 50% line, I wonder if that would not also be helpful in the historical display on the right. Thirdly, and perhaps not too important for those not terribly interested in the data, the overall piece states the sample size for all surveys being within a range. People wanting more data on the survey responses might be interested in seeing the sample size per survey.
Credit for the piece goes to Simon Scarr and Joe Lo.
Corporate taxes are always a fun discussion point. Who pays too much? Too little? Not at all? In May, the New York Times published an interactive piece examining US companies and their effective tax rates from 2007 through 2012.
At its core, the piece is a bubble chart along one axis that plots the tax rate for the company, with the bubble sized proportionally to said company’s market capitalisation. Colours reinforce the tax rate plotting, but are not themselves necessary. I think they would have been better tied to something along the lines of industries or profit or sales growth.
Overall corporate tax rates
Of course that was when I saw the button for viewing the data by industry. The view of all companies is broken up into a series of charts about each particular industry. And of course, if you want information on a particular company, the smart search/filter is particularly useful.
Corporate tax rates by industry
Credit for the piece goes to Mike Bostock, Matthew Ericson, David Leonhardt, and Bill Marsh.
Today’s piece comes to me from my colleague Eileen. The Harvard Business Review published a report commissioned by Steelcase that looked at how different cultures prefer different office layouts, based upon different attitudes and traits exhibited by the people of different countries. That lead to three different types of spatial layouts.
But what is really nice is that the piece prompts you to start through an example or case study to see how the data works to shape the conclusion. You can of course skip to the data exploration mode, but that is not the default mode. But when you do arrive at the exploration area, you can click through different countries and see how their surveyed opinions plot against each other.
Cultural characteristics
And if you want to understand more about the different layouts presented for each group of countries, you can click on the layout to bring up more information. This panel of information provides context and explains just how the general traits shared by those geographies leads to the preferred office space layout.
Explaining a layout
Credit for the piece goes to Christine Congdon and Catherine Gall.
I am travelling abroad for two weeks. While I have a number of posts lined up, I doubt that I will be able to respond to anybody or post current and/or topical pieces. But at least you will have something. So to kick things off, this piece from the New York Times makes good use of a table. It simply marks which airlines charge fees for particular services or offerings.
Airline fees
Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.
Edward Snowden is still on the run; he is still in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport without a passport to enter Russia. But if ever succeeds in extricating himself from his current predicament, Snowden presumably will seek to land in a country without an extradition treaty with the United States.
So in this interactive piece, the Guardian explores which countries have such treaties. The list serves as an index to the actual treaty texts. Beneath the globe are samples of different texts that show how an extradition treaty is drafted. The last piece highlights three countries that are possible options, but also options that have extradition treaties in place.
Extradition Treaties with the United States
Credit for the piece goes to the Guardian US Interactive Team.
Earlier this year the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommended changes in the current blood alcohol limits to reduce youth drunk driving. The NTSB wants the limit dropped/increased from 0.08 to 0.05. Fun side note, technically, the NTSB needs to have the states enact this on their own accord because such limits are not federal power. Instead, the federal government uses the threat of witholding federal transport money as a means of urging states to comply.
Anyway, the New York Times took a look at the data on fatal crashes and blood alcohol in two heat charts. The first looks at the ages of drivers. The youth problem is self-evident.
Alcohol-related traffic fatalities by age
Toggling to time of day shows perhaps a more commonly thought pattern: drunk driving rises significantly after midnight.
Alcohol-related fatalities by time of day
In general I think the piece is very successful. In particular, the breakout or separation of the new limits shows in clear relief how important those three hundredths could be in lowering alcohol-related traffic fatalities. And as seems to be increasingly the case with at least the Times, the use of annotations makes the story told by the data far clearer.
Perhaps the only design quibble I have is the shape of the squares. The rounded corners create weird, little white gaps between cells. And especially in the darker fields, they distract me more so than small, thin borders otherwise would.
Credit for the piece goes to Alastair Dant, Hannah Fairfield, and Andrew W. Lehren.
The National Post published this fascinating infographic on the Canadian fur industry. Historically speaking, that industry is one of the most important to Canada being one of the primary reasons for Canada’s colonisation by France and later the United Kingdom (to a lesser extent). The graphic provides illustrations of the pelts to scale along with data on the volume and value of the trade in each type of fur. Then it maps the ranges for each of the animals with a matrix of small multiples.
Canadian Fur
While it may not be a mistake, I am curious about the two areas of polar bears in the northern United States. Methinks that the Rockies, while snowcapped, would be a bit warm for the bears.
Credit for the piece goes to Joe O’Connor, Andrew Barr, Mike Faille, and Richard Johnson.
The United Kingdom is one of eight, probably nine nuclear powers. (Israel has never confirmed that it has tested/operates nuclear weapons.) Unlike most countries, the UK only uses one delivery system to operate its weapons: submarines using Trident ballistic missiles.
A triad power is a country with all three delivery systems
The British Trident system became an issue in the coalition government. While it was supported by both the previous Labour government and the Conservatives, the programme had to be reviewed per the coalition agreement. The review has been completed and it will be made public. But to explain to the public how Trident works, the BBC created this graphic. It does a really good job of showing the reach of the British submarines from one location, but then showing why an adequate replacement would need at least three to four submarines.
The British Trident programme
Credit for the Trident graphic goes to the BBC. The table is my own work.
The periodic table of elements is perhaps one of the most important tables to have been created in science. But most of us are probably familiar with the rows and columns of boxes. But via my colleague Jonathan comes today’s post where we look at a 1940s version of the table. Unfortunately the original source does not identify the designer behind the piece, however it was published in Life magazine in 1949.
The fascinating bit is that the table is largely unchanged from that of today’s in its basic structure and organisation. Just instead of a broken row we get a continues oval. (Though I do not understand why hydrogen sits atop fluorine.) That and we have discovered/created a whole new host of elements, especially down near the end of the table.
