Author: Brendan Barry

I am a graphic designer who focuses on information design. Most recently I worked for the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and prior to that I was Head of Design at Euromonitor International with my design team split between Chicago and London.

Gerrymandered Districts

Well last night was the debate and it was a doozy. But while I was looking for some graphics capturing the debate itself, I came upon an article over on the Washington Post about gerrymandering. For those that do not know, gerrymandering is when state-level politicians draw the maps for congressional districts to preserve or diminish support for various representatives. And Pennsylvania is one of those states with a lot of oddly shaped districts.

Comparing a gerrymandered Pennsylvania to a not-so-much option
Comparing a gerrymandered Pennsylvania to a not-so-much option

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

How Similar Are Pennsylvania and Ohio?

At least politically.

According to this piece from FiveThirtyEight, maybe not as much as they used to be. From a data visualisation standpoint, what stuck out at me was this plot of correlations of how similar various states are. Basically, the closer to the number 1, the more similar, the closer to 0, the less.

Turns out they're not so close
Turns out they’re not so close

I might question the value of placing the numbers within the squares—see what I did there?—because the colours could be used with a legend to indicate the range of similarity. But if this were an interactive piece, it certainly could be done to reveal the number on tap or mouseover.

Anyway, it was interesting to see that among swing states, Pennsylvania is least like Georgia but most like Minnesota. The former, certainly. The latter, who would have guessed, don’t ya know.

Credit for the piece goes to the FiveThirtyEight graphics department.

Hurricane Forecast Maps

In moving back to Philadelphia from Chicago, I have forsaken polar vortices for hurricanes and nor’easters. And this current weekend, it appears increasingly likely that the weather will be impacted by Hurricane Matthew, presently tearing its way through the Caribbean. So of course I am following projections and forecasts of just where this storm will be headed.

Thankfully Mashable has an article that attempts to explain just what the National Hurricane Center (NHC) means when it publishes its cone of uncertainty charts. Because, according to the article, it turns out most people do not entirely understand just what it means.

Clearly light sprinkles are forecast within the cone
Clearly light sprinkles are forecast within the cone

Credit for the piece goes to the National Hurricane Center.

Road to Victory

Among my recent life changes, I have moved back to Philadelphia from Chicago. That means Sundays the bars and streets are full of people wearing the jerseys of their favourite Eagles (American) football players. And apparently this year, they are off to a good start. FiveThirtyEight took a look at other 3-0 teams to compare the 2016 Eagles and examine their chances for the playoffs.

Comparing the Eagles offense and defence
Comparing the Eagles offense and defence

Credit for the piece goes to Chase Stuart.

Scoring Boston

Apologies for the long layoff, but life threw me a curveball or two. But in that time I did manage to go out to Boston and catch some of Big Papi’s last regular season games with the Red Sox at Fenway Park. Whilst there, I caught an advert for Boston’s new City Score, which updates the public on how city services are performing. Below is a screenshot from the site.

How is Boston faring
How is Boston faring

Not every datapoint needs to be visualised—sometimes a table does just fine. But, admittedly, what really drew me to the table was its design. For those of you unfamiliar with Fenway and the Red Sox, this table could fit in on the Green Monster with the same colours and type.

Credit for the piece goes to Boston’s design team.

Our Nearest Neighbour

Yesterday scientists announced the discovery of a likely rocky planet within the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, Sol’s (the Sun’s) nearest star. The New York Times covered the discovery with a piece full of nice explanatory graphics.

Now if we can only get onto the whole matter–anti-matter warp engine thing we could go explore the place.

Looking at the orbit of our newest neighbour
Looking at the orbit of our newest neighbour

Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.

Religiousness

Today’s post is about religion. One of the two things you are never supposed to talk about in good company. And since the other is politics and since I cover that here frequently, let’s just go all in, shall we?

FiveThirtyEight has an interesting piece about religious diversity and a corresponding lack of religiousness. From a graphics standpoint, the central piece is this chart below.

Diversity and religiousness compared
Diversity and religiousness compared

What I would love, however, is for the plot to be interactive. It would be great to let people check out their own individual home states and see how they compare to the everyone else.

Credit for the piece goes to the FiveThirtyEight graphics department.

UK Performance at the Olympics

The Olympics are over and Team GB did rather well, coming in second in the medals table with 27 gold medals, more than they won back in 2012 when they hosted the Olympics. (See my piece four years ago where a colleague of mine and I accurately predicted the UK’s total medal count.)

Consequently the BBC put together an article with several data-driven graphics exploring the performance and underpinnings of Team GB. This screenshot captures a ranking chart that generally works well.

How the Olympics rankings have changed over the years
How the Olympics rankings have changed over the years

However, the use of the numbers within the dots is redundant and distracting. A better decision would have been to label the lines and let the eye follow the movement of the lines. A good decision, however, was to label the grey lines for those countries entering and falling out of the Top-5.

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.

Pill Popping Power

But not likely. As this FiveThirtyEight piece explains, steroids are not likely the cause of the increased power exhibited this year by Major League Baseball. The article goes into a bit of detail, but this set of small multiples does a nice job comparing several other factors that could be at play.

How different factors increased power or not
How different factors increased power or not

What I like about the piece is how each line chart is centred on the year where the factor came into play. And then to the right and left are ten years before and after. Maybe a little bit more could have been done to highlight the differing years—I admit that I missed that at first—but the concept itself is solid.

Credit for the piece goes to the FiveThirtyEight graphics department.