Wall Street Journal – Page 4

Hudson River Tunnels

Readers of this blog know that I am a fan of rail travel. And in particular, how the rail system on the East Coast is brilliant when compared to anywhere else in the States. Unfortunately, the railway system on the East Coast is also old and in need of serious capital investment. The tunnels linking New York and New Jersey beneath the Hudson River are a prime example. But a few years ago, Governor Christie of New Jersey killed Amtrak’s plans to build new tunnels to provide a backup to the existing infrastructure and increase overall capacity. The Wall Street Journal takes a look at Amtrak’s new plan to cross the Hudson. Let’s hope this venture is a bit more successful.

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

The Link Between Work and Transit

The Wall Street Journal recently published an interesting article about the link between work and access to transit. They included a graphic that looked at the link between the two.

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

Whence do US Retail Sales Come?

Today’s piece comes from the Wall Street Journal. It looks at US retail and foodservice spending through different types of stores.

I take issue with a few things, firstly the tree map. Because it’s not really a tree map. Another thing I am not keen on is the comparison feature in the piece. The user can select up to three types of stores to compare. And while the result works in the line chart—three lines—the bar chart devolves into a near useless component. There is no easy way to compare the actual lengths of the individual bars short of mousing over and scribbling down each individual datapoint. In the particular case here, I likely would have changed from bars to line. Because that way I can compare the actual magnitude of each store type.

Credit for the piece goes to Dan Hill.

Chinese Nuclear Submarine Navy

This weekend the Wall Street Journal published an article that combined my interest in data visualisation with my interest in naval ships. The article looks at the growth of the Chinese nuclear submarine programme. And alongside the article are maps, charts, illustrations, and a narrated video that support the written word.

Credit for the piece goes to Alberto Cervantes and the Wall Street Journal’s graphics department.

Hitting a Baseball

Tonight is Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. For those of you who do not follow baseball, this is the semi-finals for the national championship called the World Series. Anyway, hitting a baseball is hard because you have so little reaction time. The Wall Street Journal has an article about how some baseball teams are beginning to experiment with neuroscience. The idea is to better train hitters to recognise pitches earlier, in essence, giving them said reaction time. The article is accompanied by an illustration showing just how little time there is to hit a pitch.

Credit for the piece goes to Mike Sudal.

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.

Cancelling the Mistral

In a piece of big news about Ukraine yesterday, the French government announced that it was halting the completion of the sale of two Mistral warships to Russia. The first such ship, the Sevastopol (yes, named after said city in Crimea), was due to be delivered in just over a month’s time. The two ships (the other named Vladivostok) would have given Russia the ability to launch amphibious invasions. The reason why this action was not taken earlier? Jobs. The construction of the two ships in French shipyards are a boon to the French economy. But after the recent “incursion” of Russian troops into Donetsk and Luhansk, Paris ultimately reconsidered the deal.

The Wall Street journal provides the graphic illustrating just how potent one of the ships would be.

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

Where the Rebels are in Eastern Ukraine

Today’s piece is far from ground-breaking or even complex. Friday, the Wall Street Journal published this map to supplement an article about the unilateral ceasefire declared by President Poroshenko in Ukraine. The map highlights the areas effectively controlled by the rebels, the most important the unsecured border. Of course this is just a map as stated by Kiev, the reality on the ground might be different. Regardless, it is the first map I have seen that has actually tried to demarcate the territory actually under control rather than claimed.

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

Diving an Upside Down Ferry Wreck

To get a better understanding of the difficulties facing the divers working on the wreck of the Sewol, the Wall Street Journal published this illustration.

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

Acquiring Technology via Purchases

Last week Facebook acquired a company specialising in virtual reality. The Wall Street Post put together a timeline of technology company acquisitions over the last several years. Each line is a different company and sizes of dots represent the value of the different purchases.

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