We all know of the Flying V, the great hockey plan developed in the 1990s—wait, no, wrong one. I meant to talk about birds flying in formation. Because science is finally allowing us to understand the mechanisms of how and why birds fly in these tight, v-shaped formations. In a BBC article reporting on the most recent findings, the graphics team included a diagram showing just how formation flying works.
Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.
Last week I was asked what was the population of Canada. I first said 30 million. I then figured that was too small so I said more like 50–60 million. Turns out I was closer to being correct the first time. A Google search that cites the World Bank among its sources listed the population as nearer to 35 million. But what does that mean?
Over at I Love Charts, the United States was broken down into units shaped by the size of the population of Canada. Roughly, the United States = 10 Canadas.
Credit for the piece goes to an unknown individual. If discovered, I would appreciate being informed.
Airlines want to make flights as profitable as possible. And that largely entails cramming as many people into those hollow cylinders called aircraft fuselages as possible. This is despite advice from Airbus, one of the world’s largest aircraft manufacturers to set a minimum seat width standard greater than US airlines are investigating. Thomson Reuters does a nice job illustrating the changes in this graphic.
Credit for the piece goes to the Thomson Reuters graphics staff.
A lot of people have been talking about Bridgegate, a scandal in New Jersey wherein the governor’s office allegedly abused its power to negatively impact the residents of Fort Lee, New Jersey. What actually happened for a few days this past fall? The Washington Post uses aerial photography and illustration to diagram the normal traffic flow and the flow during the traffic “study”.
Credit for the piece goes to the Washington Post graphics department.
Today’s piece comes from this past weekend. The New York Times looked at how states fell on various politically sensitive issues, e.g. abortion and same-sex marriage, depending upon the political control of the executive and legislative functions of each state. In other words, which states have passed legislation to regulate abortion or same-sex marriage? States controlled by Democrats, or states controlled by Republicans?
I am not terribly keen on the clustered bubbles. Showing the population of each state could be handled better by different chart forms. But to a certain extent in this piece, the population figures are secondary to the aggregate of people living in blue or red states. And in that case, while you cannot easily visualise the number of people living in the aggregates, you can at least get a feel for which group is home to more people.
Credit for the piece goes to Haeyoun Park, Jeremy Ashkenas, and Mike Bostock.
This weekend we will have yet more football. My preferred team, the Philadelphia Eagles, is of course now out of contention. But more than likely, the coach’s job is secure for at least another year. As we have already seen, however, that cannot be said for other coaches. So the Washington Post looked at ownership’s role in the success of their respective team by the hiring and firing of coaches.
Credit for the piece goes to Bonnie Berkowitz, Darla Cameron, Dan Keating, and Rick Maese.
Okay, we have all watched enough science fiction to know that there is not one future, but multiple futures. All options existing as if taken in parallel universes. Today’s post is not about a specific graphic, but rather a short article in the New York Times examining data visualisation. Through the work of Eric Rodenbeck of Stamen Design, it looks at how we may need to change our current vocabulary, if you will. Naturally the article offers a counterpoint nearer the end about how older forms are still useful.
Where do you fall?
If you live in the United States, you probably have heard the term polar vortex by now. People have been using the term to describe the bitterly cold temperatures affecting the eastern two-thirds of the country. But the term polar vortex is a meteorological term that means a specific phenomenon. In other words, it’s more than a hashtag along the lines of snowmageddon. The Washington Post explains what the polar vortex is.
My caveat for this piece is that from my understanding, it’s not entirely correct. Or perhaps not detailed enough. In brief, we turn to the National Weather Service out of New York for a more technically correct, but more poorly designed graphic.
Poor type, poor colours, poor hierarchy. Those are abundantly clear, but the important part is that the NWS wants to correct many of the popular misconceptions. Somewhere between the well-intended but less-than-entirely-clear Post piece and the accurate-but-also-unclear National Weather Service piece is an opportunity to explain the concept to the public.
Credit for the Washington Post piece goes to Bonnie Berkowitz, Richard Johnson, Katie Park, and Gene Thorp.
Credit for the National Weather Service goes to the graphics team at the National Weather Service of New York.
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?
Credit for the piece goes to Jason Karaian and Ritchie King.
Most of us have likely seen the wind map by Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg. However, this new wind map takes the idea and makes it a bit more useful. It offers the user the opportunity to look at winds at different levels of the atmosphere. Or you can look at different projections. Some projections show wind patterns better than others. You can also see wind across the world, not just the United States.
Credit for the piece goes to Cameron Beccario.
