Author: Brendan Barry

  • The Periodic Table

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week the Economist published a fascinating read that uses one of the fundamental information design pieces there is. The piece talks about the history of organising within the field of chemistry and the most well-known…elements in it: the elements. I am, of course, referring to the Periodic Table. The piece starts actually in revolutionary…

  • What About the Magic JPEG

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    Brendan Barry
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    We made it to the end of the week, everybody. And that’s saying something. Part of my jobs over the last several years has been to work with context experts and help them tell their stories. Sometimes I have to do it through charts and graphics. When that happens,  I often need data files to…

  • The Stunted Growth of North Korea

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    Brendan Barry
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    This piece from the BBC is a few years old, but it provides some interesting nuggets about North Korea. Unsurprisingly it appeared on my radar because of the coverage of the Trump–Kim summit in Vietnam. The article says it is nine charts that tell you all you need to know about North Korea. Now, I…

  • Where’s All the Oil Going?

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    Brendan Barry
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    Hint: not China. Today’s piece is a nice little graphic from the Economist about the oil and natural gas industry in the United States. We have a bar chart that does a great job showing just how precipitous the decline in Chinese purchases of oil and liquid natural gas has been. Why the drop off?…

  • The Bill Barr Bifurcation

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    Brendan Barry
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    So today’s piece is not a revolutionary piece of information design, but it is fascinating. For two or so years now, we have all heard about the Robert Mueller investigation into potential contacts between the Trump campaign, early administration, and the administration of Russian president Vladimir Putin. To be clear, thus far, this has been…

  • Individualistic Immigrants

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    Brendan Barry
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    As many of you know, genealogy and family history is a topic that interests me greatly. This past weekend I spent quite a bit of time trying to sort through a puzzle—though I am not yet finished. It centred on identifying the correct lineages of a family living in a remote part of western Pennsylvania.…

  • Are Baseball’s Big Contracts Worth It?

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    Brendan Barry
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    On Tuesday the San Diego Padres signed Manny Machado to a guaranteed contract worth $300 million over the next ten years—though he can opt out after five years. Machado was one of two big free agents on the market, the other being Bryce Harper. One question out there is whether or not these big contracts…

  • Trump Keeps Attacking the Special Counsel

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    Brendan Barry
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    Yesterday the New York Times published a fascinating piece looking at the data on how often President Trump has gone after the Special Counsel’s investigation. (Spoiler: over 1100 times.) It makes use of a number of curvy line charts showing the peaks of mentions of topics and people, e.g. Jeff Sessions. But my favourite element…

  • Be Like Mike?

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    Brendan Barry
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    Back in 2012 the New York Times ran what is a classic data visualisation piece on Mariano Rivera. It tracked the number of saves the legendary Yankees closer had over his career and showed just how ridiculous that number was—and how quickly he had attained it. Last week, the Washington Post ran a piece that did something…

  • Opportunity Lost

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last summer NASA’s Martian exploration rover Opportunity went dark as its solar panels, needed to power the golf-cart sized explorer, were covered in dust from a planet-wide dust storm. Everyone hoped that over the following months the light Martian winds and dust devils would wipe clean the dust from the solar panels and the rover…