small multiples – Page 13

The 2014/5 Ebola Outbreak in Context

Spoiler alert, it’s big. Thankfully Scientific American has attempted to put the West African outbreak in the context of all other Ebola outbreaks. I think the one thing missing, rather the one thing I would have done differently, is to include some kind of background element to show the difference in scale. A giant circle behind the whole graphic. Or a giant diamond. Of course the designer may not have had the space to do that, because the scale difference is just that extreme.

Credit for the piece goes to Pitch Interactive for Scientific American.

Big Dollar Baseball Pitchers

For those knowing baseball, Max Scherzer has almost officially signed with the Washington Nationals for lots and lots of cold hard cash. Over $200 millions’ worth. But how do these big dollar contract pitchers compare over the years? Thankfully the Washington Post took a look at that for us.

A few of the $100 mn plus contract pitchers

Credit for the piece goes to Todd Lindeman.

Income Peak Map

Today’s post looks at peak income for the middle class. The Washington Post looked at peak median household income for each county in the United States. And for 81% of counties, that peak was over 15 years ago.

The really nice features of this piece are not actually the map, which is a standard choropleth map. Instead small multiples above the map breakdown the appearance of counties in each era bracket. And then to the right the user can compare a selected county against both the state and the United States. Overall, a very nice piece.

Credit for the piece Darla Cameron and Ted Mellnik.

How Different Temperature Profiles Make Different Precipitation Types

I apologise for the lack of posts over the last two weeks, but I was on holiday. Naturally, I have returned just in time for some snowstorms in the Midwest. But today’s piece comes from WGN and it explains how the type of winter precipitation that falls depends not solely on ground temperatures. Rather, temperature profiles in the upper atmosphere can make all the difference between rain, sleet, and snow.

How temperatures create different precipitation types

Credit for the piece goes to Steve Kahn and Jennifer Kohnke.

Calories and Consumption

National Geographic recently published a piece designed and built for them by Fathom Information Group. Content-wise, they looked at the historic consumption of food by several different countries. What do individual food groups contribute to the overall nutritional breakdown? For the piece this basically amounted to morphing donut charts. I get the reference, but do not care for the result.

Instead more interesting is the second main view of the piece: meat consumption. Using stacked line charts, National Geographic explores changes in consumption patterns over the last 50 years. Some countries change a bit, others not so much. But as always the best examples are called out with an explanation as to why the changes. Mexico, for example, has the story about slashes in government subsidies and economic problems as to a decline in pork consumption.

Clearly I still have issues with the data visualisation. I would much rather see the selected view isolate the selection off the common baseline. But a nice touch is the small multiples from the country selection mechanism appearing to the right.

Credit for the piece goes to Fathom Information Design.

The State of Gay Marriage in the States

I have been fairly out of the loop of the news the last few weeks, but I did at least catch one of the headlines: gay marriage in the States is more legal than ever. Between Supreme Court stays and Appeals Court rulings, gay marriage is now legal in more than 50% of the country—at least by number of states. The Wall Street Journal does a nice job in this static graphic showing just how far equality has come.

Credit for the piece goes to Randy Yelp.

Twitch.tv

Twitch.tv is a site where people can go to watch streaming video games. While it is not quite my thing, it is a thing for enough people that Amazon bought the site. The New York Times took a look at Twitch’s popularity.

Credit for the piece goes to Gregor Aisch and Tom Giratikanon.

Understanding Museum Pieces in French

Yesterday’s piece was from the Musée de la Civilisation à Québec and looked at a bilingual exhibit on Greek and Roman mythology. The museum, of course, had many other exhibits. Today I want to show an interesting bit that explained why the museum, a modern construction dating to the late 1980s, incorporated an 18th century house called Maison Estèbe.

Well, the museum had a series of graphics with text explaining why. But they were only in French. But by some smart use of graphics and some thought as to how show the progression of time, the reader can piece together a good bit of the story.

And of course to make it abundantly clear, the excavation of Québec’s foundations also revealed longboats along the old shoreline, which when placed in front of a quay like below, just make perfect sense.

Credit for the pieces goes to the graphics department of the Musée de la Civilisation à Québec.

The Spread of ISIS

ISIS is the main militant group threatening Iraq (and Syria) these days. The New York Times put together a nice graphic showing how in recent years the group has grown ever more violent by launching ever more attacks within Iraq. Of course, the other country of ISIS operations is Syria, where it has been involved in civil war for years now. This creates a battle-hardened group of fighters that is now, thanks to the fall of Mosul and Iraqi banks and military bases, well funded and well equipped.

Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times 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.)

Credit for the piece goes to David Yanofsky.