Impeaching Rousseff

Who is Rousseff? She is the president of Brazil and both she and her government are currently mired in a corruption scandal. Yesterday a parliamentary committee voted in favour of proceeding with impeachment, the first step in a lengthy process. What is that process? Thankfully, we have a BBC graphic to explain it all.

Brazil's impeachment process
Brazil’s impeachment process

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.

Design and Data Visualisation

Today’s piece features a critique of the data visualisation world from Christopher Ingraham at the Washington Post. It centres on the difference between these two maps. The one on the left is Ingraham’s and the one on the right from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Spot the difference
Spot the difference

I do not want to spoil or ruin the article for you—it’s a short read after all. But the crux of the argument, which I believe extends beyond maps, is that despite the proliferation of tools to visualise data, one still needs to understand the principles behind it to create meaningful work. Anybody can put words to paper—look at this blog after all—but the truly great writers have the education and the experience to move and motivate people. And the same holds true for designers of data visualisation. And designers even more broadly.

If I have to add one design critique to Ingraham’s work, I would also add that design decisions like colours and map type also play a role in creating legible pieces. The grey lines in the Pew map versus the white lines in the Post’s make it difficult to read the colours in the smaller, eastern counties of the United States.

Credit for the Washington Post piece goes to Christopher Ingraham.

Credit for the Pew Charitable Trusts piece goes to Pew’s graphics department.

What Comprises Planet Nine

Well, to start, we don’t really know for sure. We also don’t really know Planet Nine exists for sure. But, you plug its existence into mathematical models and it explains some of the quirks we see in the Kuiper Belt, the cloud of dust and ice at the outer reaches of the Solar System. A team of intrigued Swiss scientists then created a model exploring the range of characteristics Planet Nine might exhibit. The BBC published an article that featured an image of the interior characteristics of the plent.

The possible interior of the possible Planet Nine
The possible interior of the possible Planet Nine

Credit for the graphic goes to Christoph Mordasini and Esther Linder.

Analysing the World’s Flags

Flags are cool. And I will openly admit I may have designed several of my own over the years. So thanks to my good friend for pointing me in the direction of this project from ferdio that breaks down flags across the world. If you are at all curious about how many flags use particular colours, shapes, sizes, you need not go any further.

The representative flag of the world
The representative flag of the world

Credit for the piece goes to ferdio.

Nova Beats the Buzzer

As you may know, while I presently live in Chicago, I hail from Philadelphia. I grew up there and most of my best mates did too. And some of them attended a small school called Villanova. And as you may know, their men’s basketball programme just won the national championship in dramatic fashion. So today’s post shares with you a graphic from the Wall Street Journal that explains how Villanova won the game in the final few seconds.

The final shot won it all
The final shot won it all

Credit for the piece goes to the Wall Street Journal graphics department.

Striking the Balance Between Airline Prices and Service

Yesterday I took a look at the Alaskan Airlines and Virgin America merger. Part of the disappointment on the internets centres around the service and experience delivered by Virgin. I mean who doesn’t like mood lighting, right? Well the Economist took a look at international airlines by both price and service. And if we use Virgin Atlantic as the best proxy for Virgin America, you can see why people prefer it over American carriers.

Price vs. service
Price vs. service

Credit for the piece goes to James Tozer.

Merging Alaska Airlines and Virgin America

Alaska Airlines and Virgin America made some news the past few days when they announced Alaska would purchase Virgin America for $2.6 billion. I mapped out the flight routes of the two carriers to see where they overlapped. You can see the results in my piece for the blog today below.

A brief look at the merger of Alaska Airlines and Virgin America
A brief look at the merger of Alaska Airlines and Virgin America

Credit for the work is mine, except the underlying map, which I sourced from Brigham Young University Geography Department.

China’s New Islands

Okay, so the title might be a bit hyperbolic, but the point that China has spent the last few years expanding minor reefs into major military installations still stands. This New York Times piece is a few months old at this point, but through a combination of maps, photography, and diagrams, it illustrates what has been going on in the South China Sea.

Fiery Cross Reef
Fiery Cross Reef

The screenshot above is of the first still in a short time lapse video introducing the article If you do not have the time to read the entirety of the piece, just watch the video. A lot can happen in one year.

Credit for the piece goes to Derek Watkins.

The Cherry Blossoms Are Coming

It’s cherry blossom time in Washington. So the Washington Post has a nice piece—appropriately coloured—looking at where the different varietals are within and near the Tidal Basin.

Where the cherry trees are
Where the cherry trees are

Credit for the piece goes to Emily Chow and Dakota Fine.

The Franco–Belgian Terror Network

The terror attacks in Paris and Brussels were bad. But even worse? The two attacks exposed a network of IS terrorists living within the Schengen Area. Are there cells or even other networks? One way of uncovering them would be to examine the links between the known terrorists and see if additional nodes appear at the network’s fringes. Given Friday’s piece from the New York times examining the links between the known terrorists, investigators in Europe are likely doing just that.

Looking at the terrorists' network
Looking at the terrorists’ network

Credit for the piece goes to Larry Buchanan, Haeyoun Park, Sarah Almukhtar, Josh Keller, Sergio Peçanha, and Tim Wallace.