Author: Brendan Barry

  • Mars or Bust…Wait a Minute…

    We already got to Mars. At the end of a week of maps and map-related things. Here’s a map of Mars. Well, sort of. It’s more of a map of Mars as explored by Curiosity. (Remember that guy?) It’s an interactive piece from the New York Times that charts out just where the rover has…

  • More Internet, More Facebook

    Mark Zuckerberg wants to get more people on the internet. And why not, it’s not like his company, a small entity you may not have heard of called Facebook, has anything to do with the internet. So this map by the Washington Post looks at what proportions of the world’s countries are using the internet.…

  • Is it Getting Warmer in Here?

    Yes, yes it is. This map from the Washington Post looks at global temperature change since 1901. The article it supports is about how scientists are now all but certain mankind is responsible for global warming. Personally I prefer the term climate change because global warming sounds as if everything warms and as this map shows,…

  • Say What?

    This map comes from the Washington Post and it uses the American Community Survey to explore languages spoken by Americans at home other than English. I got stuck (in a good way) on the seemingly random counties of German speakers. After I poked around a bit, I found one where almost 50% of the county…

  • Bloomberg’s New York

    For those of you who read this blog and are not from New York, Mayor Bloomberg is done later this year; he is not running for reelection. So now is the time for retrospective and plaudits for the long-serving mayor. The New York Times published a piece this weekend examining how all of Bloomberg’s changes…

  • Coffee Pie Charts

    Fear not, this graphic makes about as much sense as the title. The concept is actually a worthwhile exploration of the variation in caffeine across cups of coffee from different cafes and coffee shops. But, this visualisation fails at showing it. Remember, pie charts show the piece amongst the whole. What is the whole in…

  • 3D Movie Success

    Today’s graphic comes from Thomson Reuters. It charts the success of 3D movies that have been released and how long those movies stayed in the theatres. Credit for the piece goes to S. Scarr, G. Cabrera, and K. Pong.

  • Consumer Spending by Store Type

    Today’s post is a small interactive from the Wall Street Journal that allows the user to explore consumer spending not by category of spending, but rather the type of store in which they are spending, e.g. grocery retailers. Consumer spending is a fairly important measure of the US economy since so much of our economy…

  • Road Kill

    Driving can be dangerous. But perhaps most so in the developing world. The Pulitzer Center created this interactive map to allow users to explore just how dangerous driving can be. Little windows provide details on countries the user rolls over. This data looks at deaths per 100,000 people, killer/victims, and lastly a rating of law…

  • Space Weather

    A few weeks ago the Washington Post published a graphic that explained how space weather can have significant impacts on Earth. This is more of an illustrated diagram and less of a data visualisation piece, but it still worth a read. Why? Because, if scientists are correct, the sun’s magnetic poles should soon finish a…