Author: Brendan Barry
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Trains, Planes, and Automobiles: A Comparison (Kind of)
Travelling by plane can often be a hassle because getting from the airport to the destination is not always easy. Suffice it to say your humble author has—on a few occasions—been almost stranded at Philadelphia International because of no way to get where I was going. A lot of that comes down to poor public…
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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. Credit for the piece goes to…
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Boko Haram Attacks
For those of you don’t know, there is an Islamist group operating in northeastern Nigeria. And they have been for a few years now. But recently they devastated a town and killed somewhere between 150 and 2000 people. Now they have taken to kidnapping Cameroonians, who live across the border, but whose government has been…
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All the Goats
Today is Friday. And that means it is time for the seriousness. So here you go, folks. Goats. All the goats. The US Agricultural Census recorded all the goats as of 2012. And so people can map that out. Thankfully the Washington Post did it for me. Credit for the piece goes to the Washington Post…
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Setting the Presidential Primary Field
The last week or two have seen some interesting announcement regarding Republican potential presidential candidates. Seems pretty early no? Well, FiveThirtyEight looked at the timing of the announcements and found that it’s quite normal to be announcing this early. The data was summarised in this great dot plot/box chart. Credit for the piece goes to…
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Five Ring Circus
Today’s piece comes from Five Thirty Eight and it looks at the increasingly crowded Republican field for 2016. Credit for the piece goes to Nate Silver.
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The Perception vs Reality of Islam in Europe
Last week’s terror attacks in Paris highlight the tension in Europe between secular Europe and those believing in Islamist values. The Economist looked at some of the available data and noted the gap between Europe’s perception of Islam and its reality. A quick figure called out for France, French respondents thought 31% of the French…
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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…
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Periodic Table of Non-elements
Science is great. But science is also a process and scientific progress goes boink. Some of the mis-steps in chemistry have been erroneous elements. Thankfully the Boston Globe built a small periodic table of non-elements with short anecdotes about the selected few. Credit for the piece goes to Mary Virginia Orna and Marco Fontani.
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Temperatures in New York City in 2014
Today’s piece is an attempt by Alex Bresler to update a chart originally made by the New York Times over ten years ago. Credit for the piece goes to Alex Bresler.