Married Men

Sorry for not writing the last few weeks, but I was on a much needed holiday. But I’m back now. And first things first, one of my good mates got engaged whilst I was back in Philadelphia. And so in honour of that we have today’s piece.

Married men
Married men

As the graphic might hint, it’s about marriage. The piece dates from September of last year—2015 and I think I will have to get used to that for a few weeks—and looks at the demographics of marriage mostly in the United States. The chart above in particular looks at men that are married at every age by year, i.e. how many men aged 30 were married in 1960 versus 2013.

Credit for the piece goes to Mona Chalabi.

Trump’s Poll Ratings

The news this morning carried the latest polling data out of Iowa for the Republicans. And in that state, Ted Cruz now polls above Donald Trump. And so I wanted to share this post from the Economist last week that looks at how Trump rises every time he says something ridiculous. Could it just be that we should expect even more ridiculous this week?

Trump rises the lower he goes
Trump rises the lower he goes

Credit for the piece goes to the Economist’s Data Team.

Syria’s Refugees

We go from one crisis to another, as we go back to Syria. This piece from Bloomberg is very nicely designed and is almost entirely in black and white. We often think that because computer, everything needs to be in a rainbow of shiny, shiny colours. But here we have places where the designers smartly used patterns and smart labelling to avoid the need for colour.

A fantastic black and white map
A fantastic black and white map

Credit for the piece goes to Cindy Hoffman, Dave Merrill, Chris Nosenzo, Mira Rojanasakul, and Blacki Migliozzi.

Climate Change in Charts

So yesterday we reimagined a less-than-stellar BBC chart. Today, we look at a good chart from the BBC about climate change, timed to coincide with the start of the Paris climate talks. This comes from an article with six charts related to climate change, but it is the best in my mind.

The trend…not so good.
The trend…not so good.

Nothing but nice design here with the use of colour to highlight the top ten hottest and coldest years over the last 225+ years. But it really comes alive when animated and tells the story how those coldest years occurred at the beginning of the set and the hottest are among the most recent years.

Credit for the piece goes to Emily Maguire,  Tom Nurse, Steven Connor, and Punit Shah.

Making Sense of the Syrian Civil War

Well, I mean trying to is this piece by the Washington Post. Included are several diagrams at key phases of the conflict that attempt to show how the various parties interacted with each other.

Look at all the actors on stage…
Look at all the actors on stage…

Ultimately the key takeaway is that Syria is a mess and it is not getting any better. So let’s just add some more lines in there, am I right?

Credit for the piece goes to Denise Lu and Gene Thorp.

Job Gains

You should all know by now I am sucker for small multiples. So it should come as no surprise to you that I liked this piece from Friday from the Wall Street Journal. It looks at payroll and wage growth across various sectors in the American economy. And what I really like is that they took a space at the beginning to explain how to read the charts.

Mining, not so good
Mining, not so good

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

Trump Leads the Pack

The day after the Canadian elections, let’s turn our gaze back upon the states via this Washington Post piece. How are the Republicans doing in their primaries?

It's all about the hair
It’s all about the hair

Yep, still the land of I can’t quite believe it.

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

The History and Future of Data Visualisation

From time to time in my job I hear the desire or want for more different types of charts. But in this piece by Nick Brown over on Medium, we can see that there are really only a few key forms and some are already terrible—here’s looking at you, pie charts. How new are some of these forms? Turns out most are not that new—or very new depending on your history/timeline perspective. Brown illustrated that timeline by hand.

A timeline of chart forms
A timeline of chart forms

Worth the read is his thoughts on what is new for data visualisation and what might be next. No spoilers.

Credit for the piece goes to Nick Brown.

Unhappy Millennials

I attended a dinner on Monday where the topic of Millennials arose. While most of the evening is not germane to this post, I did recall Wait But Why’s piece on why Millennials are unhappy on the way back to my flat. So here you go, a look at the Millennials and why we are unhappy. Bonus: we have unicorns and rainbows.

What GYPSYs expect
What GYPSYs expect

Credit for the piece goes to Tim Urban.

Expensive Wines Taste the Best…

But not for the reasons you might think. This video from Vox looks at the notion that expensive wines taste better. And it turns out they do. Sort of. In terms of the design of the piece, it uses some nice charts and motion graphics to make its point. Plus, it includes snippets from Sideways, notably: “I’m not drinking any fucking Merlot.” Classic.

Wine ratings
Wine ratings

Credit for the piece goes to Joss Fong, Anand Katakam, Joe Posner, and the Vox.com staff.