Author: Brendan Barry

  • The Asian Arms Race

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    Brendan Barry
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    In case you missed it, two weeks ago President Duterte of the Philippines had some interesting things to say regarding the relationship between the Philippines and the United States. “America has lost” and “separation from the U.S.” were among the two big lines he spoke to a Chinese audience. But the Philippines are an important part…

  • Tracking Polls One Week Out

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    Brendan Barry
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    Well the election is next Tuesday, and last Friday and this past weekend was…interesting. So one(ish) week to go, and we are going to turn to a few posts that use data visualisation and graphics to explore topics related to the election. Today we start with the latest tracking polls, released on Friday. The piece…

  • Putting Things in Perspective

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    Brendan Barry
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    Congratulations, you made it to Friday. So let’s try to put that in perspective. And by that, I mean things like mines and Death Stars. Thanks to my good friend Jonathan Fairman for sharing with me this post on Core77 that uses the power of Kevin Wisbith’s Photoshop skills to compare the sizes of things.…

  • Early Voting So Far

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    Brendan Barry
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    70+ million people watched the debate last week. But, 2.5 million people have already voted. Me? Well in Pennsylvania there is no early voting, so you queue up on Election Day. But that also means I will have had the full election season to brush up on candidates for president and all the other offices.…

  • Moving on Mosul

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    Brendan Barry
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    If you didn’t already know, the Iraqi Army and Kurdish forces are moving on Mosul, a city in northern Iraq overrun by ISIS back in 2014. The New York Times has illustrated a satellite image of the Mosul area to show how the forces are progressing in their assault on the city. Credit for the…

  • Tying Up Time Warner and AT&T

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    Brendan Barry
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    AT&T is attempting to merge with Time Warner in order to have more/better control of a content pipeline. But as this Wall Street Journal article points out, the concept of tie-ups between media and telecoms is not exactly new. Especially since the breakup of the old Bell Telephone company. Credit for the piece goes to…

  • Baselines Are Important

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week the Washington Post published a fascinating article on the data visualisation work of the Donald Trump media campaign. In my last job I frequently harped on the importance of displaying the baseline and/or setting the baseline to zero. When you fail to do so you distort the data. But maybe that is the point…

  • When America Votes by Goat

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week Twitter went a wee bit crazy when Donald Trump’s son posted an image about how the Republican nominee had gained ground. Except that it turns out the image was from FiveThirtyEight and looked only at a demographic split by gender—it was what the map would look if only men voted. Suffice it to…

  • Pardon the Interruptions

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    Brendan Barry
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    Well that does it for the three presidential debates. Didn’t they seem very presidential with all those interruptions and interjections? Thankfully after the debate, FiveThirtyEight put together a quick graphic highlighting the total number of each per candidate per debate. Credit for the piece goes to the FiveThirtyEight graphics department.

  • New Neighbours

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    Brendan Barry
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    Among the many, many stories that broke during my month-long radio silence, I got fairly excited about the discovery of a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. And not just any planet, but a likely rocky planet within the star’s habitable zone. Put that all together and there is the possibility that the planet could host life…