Author: Brendan Barry

  • Speaking Freely About Free Speech

    Last week the Economist published an article looking at the attitudes of the young at university in the United States. The examination was sparked by the recent-ish waves of news about stifled speech on campuses. Thankfully, we have a long-running survey from those on the ground in our universities and it reveals some interesting facts. You…

  • What If Designers Ruled the World? Or At Least the Country

    Happy Friday, all. We made it. So today we enjoy an xkcd post about how graphic designers would change the country if they seized control. Though to be fair, if this graphic designer seized control of the country, he would not be interested in just adjusting state borders. He’d probably work on the margins and…

  • Whom the Tax Reforms Will Benefit Most

    Yesterday the New York Times published a piece looking at the potential impacts of the proposed tax reforms on Americans. Big caveat, not a lot has been detailed about what the reforms entail. Instead, much remains vague. But using the bits that are clear, the Tax Policy Centre has explored some possible impacts and the…

  • The Economic Impact of Hurricanes

    Yesterday Hurricane Ophelia hit Ireland and the United Kingdom. Yes, the two islands get hit with ferocious storms from time to time, but rarely do they enjoy the hurricanes like we do on the eastern seaboards of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Earlier this hurricane season the US had to deal with Harvey, Irma, and…

  • The Middle Income Trap?

    Last week I covered a lot of Red Sox data. And your feedback has been fantastic. I think you can look forward to more visualisation of sportsball data. But since this is not a sports blog, let us dive back into some other topics. Like today’s piece on economic growth. It comes from the Economist…

  • Whom to Root for in the Playoffs

    This week I covered a lot of Red Sox stuff. (And I received some great feedback from people, so maybe more baseball-related stats things will be forthcoming.) But, since it is Friday, I wanted to keep today late. So over breakfast I worked on a flowchart to help you choose whom to root for in…

  • Power Sapped

    Following on yesterday’s post about the Red Sox offence, I wanted to follow up and look into their power numbers. So here we have a smaller scale graphic. Nothing too fancy, but the data backs what my eyes saw all year. A definite power drain up and down the Red Sox lineup in 2017.

  • The Red Sox Offence in 2017

    Like I said yesterday, the Red Sox season is over. And the coverage on offseason needs began in the morning papers. But I wanted to follow up on the data from yesterday and delve a bit more deeply into the offence. Yes, we know it was roughly league average across the team. And we know…

  • A Brief Review of the Boston Red Sox Season

    Well the 2017 season ended yesterday afternoon for my Boston Red Sox as we lost 5–4 to the Houston Astros and they took Game 4 of the ALDS. So this morning we will surely see the critiques and hot takes on what to do to improve the team begin to make the internet rounds. But before…

  • Bump Stocks and Automatic Weapons

    Well news definitely happened whilst your author was on holiday. So today we look at an informative piece from the New York Times that compares the weapons fire from the Las Vegas shooting to that of Orlando and a fully automatic weapon. This piece makes good use of both audio and motion graphics to show…