Author: Brendan Barry

  • Space Force Logo Pt. II

    Happy Friday, everyone. We’ve made it to the end of the week. Yesterday, I departed from the usual data visualisation discourse and delved into some branding/identity work. Spoilers, that’s a good part of my career as well. But I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how the armed forces branch could…

  • So Cutting Edge

    Space Force. Yep, that’s still a thing. I’ll spare you all the long history of Space Force, because we’ve all pointed and laughed at that enough. So much so there is a Netflix show about it. There was an old logo for Space Force, which basically was the logo for Starfleet Command. You know, the…

  • When Is an Opener Game in Baseball Really Just a Bullpen Game?

    Whenever someone not named Eovaldi or Perez starts a Red Sox game in 2020, that’s when. We all know the Red Sox are the worst team in the American League. They have only two starters, maybe sometimes a third. And then the last two days of the regular five-day rotation cycle, manager Ron Roenicke throws…

  • Sweet Summer Air of Subway Cars

    For those of my readers who live in a city where the subway or underground is a great means of getting around the city, you know you really miss that late Saturday night/early Sunday morning bouquet in the air. Though as this New York Times piece explains, sure it smells bad, but that air is…

  • Covid-19 Update: 9 August

    Weekend data means, usually, lower numbers than weekdays. And with the exception of Delaware that’s what we have today. Some drops, like Illinois, are more dramatic than others, like New Jersey. And so we look at the seven-day trend. And that tells a slightly different story. On the one hand we have states like Virginia…

  • Rating Scale

    This week is almost over and so instead of a graphic about unemployment numbers, let’s look at a piece from xkcd that provides us all with a new rating scale. Because, let’s be honest, we all at some point are going to need to rate 2020 come December. And while we still have almost five…

  • Flood Stages of the Schuylkill

    Hurricane Isaias ran up the East Coast of the United States then the Hudson River Valley before entering Canada. Before it left the US, however, it dumped some record-setting amounts of rain in Philadelphia and across the region. And in times of heavy rains, the lower-lying areas of the city (and suburbs like Upper Darby…

  • Big Bar Chart Better

    Today isn’t a Friday, but I want to take a quick look at something that made me laugh aloud—literally LOL—whilst simultaneously cringe. Not surprisingly it has to do with Trump and data/facts. This all stems from an interview Axios’ Jonathan Swan conducted with President Trump on 28 July and that was released yesterday. I haven’t…

  • Covid-19 Update

    As I mentioned last week, I am going to try using my blog here for the weekly update on the five states people have asked me to explore. And for the second week in a row, we are basically seeing numbers down compared to previous days. But given that numbers are generally lower on the…

  • Habitable Zones Around Masses of Light and Heat

    But those masses are campfires. It’s Friday, everyone, and we’ve made it to the end of the week. And with the successful launch of Perseverance yesterday, this post from xkcd made a lot of sense. For those that don’t enjoy astronomy, basically stars have habitable zones, or sometimes the Goldilocks zone, around the star where…