What Does Your Name Mean? (Country-level Edition)

Shoutout to my very good friend Jonathan Fairman for passing this one along.

Browsing the internets, I often find these little adverts saying something about “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Your Name” or “10 Things Your Name Says About You”. They grab my attention because, as you all know, genealogy is kind of a thing that I do and I am curious where lots of names in my family come from.

But where do countries names originate? We all probably know America comes from Amerigo Vespucci. But how about Mexico? Thankfully Quartz put together a piece exploring country name origins. And it turns out that most can be grouped into four different types. Being named after a man, like America, well you guessed it, that’s one of the four.

Tribal names are another…
Tribal names are another…

Credit for the piece goes to Thu-Huong Ha.

The Meaning of Macron and Le Pen.

Well there you have it. Macron and Le Pen are moving on to round two of the French presidential election. Now, I have two things I want to address regarding the election. Today’s post looks at the meaning of the result and tomorrow’s will be about how that result was displayed.

Quartz did a really nice job outlining the likeliest outcomes, where the candidates stand, and then the initial polling for a round two head-to-head. And they did it all in one graphic.

What do the outcomes mean?
What do the outcomes mean?

I might not like the style of the icons—a a dollar sign emoji for a country that uses the Euro?—but the concept works well. But the best part is the brief synopsis to the right that describes the meaning of that particular outcome.

Credit for the piece goes to the Quartz graphics department.

Sailing Through Southeast Asian Waters

Today the US sent a guided missile destroyer through what China claims—but few recognise as—its sovereign territory, twelve nautical miles off the coast of semi-artificial islands. This piece from Quartz illustrates just some of the overlapping claims of the Spratley Islands. In the end, nothing happened to the destroyer as China did not counter it with ships or aircraft.

Who owns what now?
Who owns what now?

Credit for the piece goes to the Quartz graphics team.

Atlas

Today’s blog post is not so much about a single piece of content, but rather a site of content. Today we look at Atlas, a new chart site from Quartz that at launch is designed to showcase chart-only content from Quartz. They state the later goal is for curated content from contributors. The charts are all made from Quartz’s in-house chartbuilder tool, an open-source platform they use to build the charts you see in a lot of their articles. And now all over Atlas.

Below the fold, the charts begin
Below the fold, the charts begin

The other nice thing about Atlas is its focus on extensibility, i.e. how you the audience can reuse the content. You can share it, you can download the data, you can link to it. You just probably shouldn’t call it your own. At launch, nothing looks too fancy. But, as a nice reminder folks, the fancier your charts get, the more likely it is that they will be harder to read and understand.

Credit for the piece or site goes to Quartz.

Fashion and Instagram

I am an admittedly new user of the social network Instagram. But, for those unaware, it is basically an easy way of sharing visual content, e.g. photographs and videos. So from that you can see how it is a natural medium for the fashion industry. Well a little while ago Quartz looked at how the social network works for the fashion industry on Instagram. Quartz guides you through the piece in nine steps, but allows you to search for specific accounts.

The fashion network on Instagram
The fashion network on Instagram

Credit for the piece goes to David Yanofsky and Jenni Avins.

When is Hummus Not Hummus?

The subject matter of this one interested me. I am new to hummus. Well, sort of. I never ate it before moving to Chicago. But when I did, I understood it to be essentially a dip made from chick peas. According to an article from Quartz, It turns out that’s what most Americans believe. Even if they’re not necessarily buying it. Literally (sort of). Because some popular brands contain no chick peas. (Disclosure: I work for the company that provided some of the market sizing data used in the piece.)

Kind of needs chickpeas.
Kind of needs chickpeas.

Credit for the piece goes to David Yanofsky.

Satellites

Naturally we have talked a lot about Rosetta and Philae the last few weeks. While Philae has exhausted its battery supply, Rosetta continues to orbit Comet 67P as that satellite’s own satellite. But what about Earth? What about our satellites? Thankfully the folks over at Quartz mapped that out for us in this great graphic. It portrays all the known functioning satellites in Earth’s orbit, their range, and launch weight.

Earth's satellites
Earth’s satellites

You can switch which variable colour encodes, e.g. country or age. And then by clicking on a satellite you can see its orbit height—this can also be animated. And for a neat little bit, the grey circle with the dotted line represents the International Space Station. The dot its launch weight, the dotted line its current weight. The one I have selected is the X-37B unmanned space plane operated by the US Air Force.

Credit for the piece goes to David Yanofsky and Tim Fernholz.

Linguistics Are…Um…Fun?

So today is Friday and that means it is time for some…um…lighter than usual content. Consequently we have a map from Quartz looking at the preferred use of um or uh.

Mapping the preference for Um or Uh
Mapping the preference for Um or Uh

Credit for the piece goes to the Quartz graphics department.

The Decline of the Boeing 747

This weekend I flew to and from Philadelphia—that is when my flights were not delayed. So I decided to select an aircraft-related graphic for today’s piece, originally from Quartz. It looks at the phasing out of the iconic Boeing 747. (And as for me, well I was on a 737-900 and a CRJ-700—neither as iconic as the 747.)

Death spiral of the 747?
Death spiral of the 747?

Credit for the piece goes to David Yanofsky.