How British is Great Britain?

Well, you will have to click through to the article for that data visualisation. But, I will provide you with the choropleth map of national identities. That is, how English do citizens in English authorities consider themselves? Scottish in Scotland? Welsh in Wales?

Strengths of national identities in Great Britain
Strengths of national identities in Great Britain

Credit for the piece goes to Mark Easton.

Where Medicaid is Not Expanding is Where it is Needed Most

Last summer, the Supreme Court ruled that most of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was constitutional. The one exception, however, was the plan to force states to expand their Medicaid coverage. Medicaid is the government plan tasked with helping to provide health insurance to the poor. But between the poverty level and the income level for subsidies for the new state exchanges, there is a gap. That gap was supposed to be covered by the state expansion of Medicaid.

Because the states are not being forced to expand their coverage, there now exists state-by-state gaps in health insurance coverage. This excellent interactive graphic from the New York Times looks at the poverty and insurance coverage segregated into those states that are and are not expanding their coverage. A good number of those states with high rates of poor and uninsured are Republican, deep-South states. If you’re really clever, you’ll compare this map to my map from earlier this week about the Conservative Party. Notice any overlaps?

States not expanding Medicaid
States not expanding Medicaid

Credit for the piece Robert Gebeloff, Haeyoun Park, Matthew Bloch, and Matthew Ericson.

The Conservative Party of America

We enter our second week of the government shutdown. Of course, blame for the shutdown falls largely upon a small number of conservative Republican members of the House, bolstered by Senator Cruz (R-TX) and his allies in the Senate. But we already know that there are a number of moderate Republicans who want to pass a clean budget resolution. So one way of looking at this new conservative faction is as a new minor party in a coalition government with Ted Cruz as Party Leader.

The idea is not mine. Ryan Lizza first wrote about the “Suicide Caucus”, a topic that Philip Bump expanded upon several days later. However, as a thought experiment, I was curious to see what would happen if this third party, a Conservative Party, would look in data visualisation terms. So here’s a quick stab at America’s newest third party.

The Conservative Party of America

The Wars of Tom Clancy’s Universe(s)

Tom Clancy died this week. Among other novels, he authored the Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, and Patriot Games—those three were made into movies. So you may very well have heard of the man. Over at Business Insider, they mapped out the Clancy world by colouring those countries against which the United States has gone to war.

The Clancy Wars
The Clancy Wars

Credit for the piece goes to Walter Hickey.

Zaatari Refugee Camp for Displaced Syrians

The Syrian crisis is pushing people out of Syria. Unfortunately, most of the refugees are fleeing to places not wholly equipped or supplied to handle such large numbers. In this interactive piece of journalism, the BBC explores the difficulties in just one camp, Zaatari in the desert of Jordan.

My favourite element is this interactive map. It uses four satellite photographs taken at a few months interval and compares the growth of the camp; the growth is striking. The piece contains a diagrammatic view of the camp, identifying key areas, e.g. education areas, as well as a comparison to a new refugee camp named Azraq to host the overflow population. Fortunately, that camp is being designed with the lessons learned from Zaatari.

Zaatari Camp in November 2012
Zaatari Camp in November 2012

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics team.

Funding the Improbable

This interactive map from the Washington Post is one part of a long-form piece that looks at NASA and the improbable tasks facing the agency. Specifically the piece looks at how NASA wants to get to Mars, but how difficult that is and how an also difficult asteroid mission is as a backup plan.

Funding the improbable
Funding the improbable

Really fantastic is about all I can say.

Credit for the piece goes to Joel Achenbach, Alberto Cuadra, Kennedy Elliott, Rebecca Rolfe, and Ricky Carioti.

Protests Around the World

Today’s post features an animated map by a doctoral candidate at Penn State. It plots out month-by-month protests across the world. It moves a bit fast and could perhaps make use out of some guided navigation, e.g. focusing the user’s attention on specific areas at specific times, but is still an interesting view of the world.

Protests in time and space
Protests in time and space

Credit for the piece goes to John Beieler.

How Cruise Missiles Would Strike Syria

While we are waiting for Russian help to destroy Syrian stockpiles of chemical weapons, we know that the Pentagon is still ready to strike (most likely with cruise missiles) various targets of the Syrian regime. This graphic from the Wall Street Journal explores some of the options. The interesting bit is the range of Syria’s anti-ship missiles. Because for those of you who do not recall the Israel–Lebanon war of 2006, Hezbollah (known to be aiding the Syrian regime) surprised some by scoring a hit on an Israeli warship with a less-advanced missile than in the Syrian arsenal.

Pentagon plans
Pentagon plans

This is only one of several different graphics from that page. Different graphics look at elements of the conflict, including the refugees, timeline of the regime’s actions, &c.

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

Paying a Bribe

Some say bribes grease the wheels of business. But if that is the case, where are the greasiest wheels? This interactive piece from the BBC showcases an interesting story. It maps who has paid bribes and the value thereof. Then it looks at corruption in the different sectors of the country and which is perceived to be the most corrupt.

A look at bribery
A look at bribery

Aesthetically this is not the finest piece. Some of the most interesting countries to view are in Africa and Southeast Asia, i.e. geographies near the equator. Unfortunately the designers here chose a map projection that emphasises Siberia and Arctic Canada at the expense of those very countries. Also, where did Greenland go? I know that the ice is melting, but I don’t think it’s melted that quickly. Furthermore, if the user clicks the “List” option, he or she is presented only with a list of geographies. None of them are selectable nor do they encode data. So why is the list there?

In short, the interface is a bit clunky and strangely designed. Line lengths are too long and it looks ugly. But, there are two interesting things going on here worth noting. First the legend here actually does not just show the range for the choropleth, but it also encodes the number of countries that fall within that range.  

Second, by clicking on a particular bin for the legend, the map filters for the selection. I think that from a design perspective, a lighter grey and a lighter stroke outline would have made the filtering a bit more prominent, but the idea is interesting. Unfortunately, I found no way of easily returning to an all-bin view of the map.

A piece for the BBC that misses a few, but also hits a few.

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics team.

Foreclosing on Homes in Washington, DC

Today’s post comes from the Washington Post. It is a single interactive graphic, a map, that supports a long-form article about foreclosures in Washington.

DC foreclosure map
DC foreclosure map

Credit for the piece’s graphics goes to Ted Mellnik, Emily Chow, and Laura Stanton.