Author: Brendan Barry

  • Biden’s English Ancestry

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    Brendan Barry
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    We all know Joe Biden as the Irish American president. And that’s no malarkey. But, go back far enough in your family tree and you may find some interesting ancestry and ethnic origins and that’s no different with Joe Biden. Keep in mind that our number of ancestors doubles every generation. You have four grandparents,…

  • Inflating Areas

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    Brendan Barry
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    One trend people have begun to follow lately is that of rising prices for consumer goods. If you have shopped recently for things, you may have noticed that you have been paying more than you were just a few weeks ago. We call this inflation. The Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) tracks this for a…

  • Covid Update: 13 June

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week I mentioned how the rate of decline in new cases had begun to fall significantly, largely due to two factors. The first is good, that we are reaching low levels of new cases overall, but the second is bad, that we see a large proportion of the population hesitant to receive their vaccines.…

  • Easing Back into Normalcy

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    Brendan Barry
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    Happy Friday, all. Apologies for the lack of posting yesterday, I wasn’t feeling well and sitting in front of my computer typing stuff up wasn’t happening. But now the weekend is nearly upon us and to get in the mood I wanted to share this great dot plot from xkcd. It captures something I’ve definitely…

  • Back to the Office, Back to Basics

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    Brendan Barry
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    Two weeks ago I posted about an article from the BBC that used graphics about which I was less than thrilled. Inconsistent use of axis lines, centring the graphic were two of the things that irked me. Two weeks hence, I do want to draw some positive attention to another article in the BBC. This…

  • Covid Update: 7 Jun

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    Brendan Barry
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    Technical difficulties yesterday. But I wanted to run the latest Covid numbers to start this week of posting, so we’re just going to use the Monday data, which is the lowest of the week since it captures the data reported by authorities on Sunday. That said, where are we? Last week we began to see…

  • Oh the Degrees You’ll Earn

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    Brendan Barry
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    This one from Indexed made me literally laugh out loud. Probably because I, like many of you, know all three types she describes. And after a week, we can probably all use a laugh before starting the weekend. Credit for the piece goes to Jessica Hagy.

  • This Is Not My Populous State

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    Brendan Barry
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    With the release of the 2020 US Census’ topline data, we can see which state populations increased and which few decreased. And in that we can sort, or resort, states by population. The Washington Post did this a few weeks ago with an interactive ranking chart in a nice online article. (I’d be curious what…

  • The Times Wore It Better

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    Brendan Barry
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    Two weeks ago I posted about the death toll in the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas. As it happened, later that morning when I opened the door, there was this graphic sitting above the fold on the front page of the New York Times. The piece sits prominently on the front page, but tones…

  • Covid Update: 31 May

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week I wrote about how new cases had maybe flattened a wee bit in their rapid drop from peaks earlier this year. But the good news is that even in where new cases declines may have slowed down, they continue to decline. We can see the tails at the right ends are all back…