Category: Datagraphic

  • The Earth Is a Bit Bumpy

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    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    Last Friday I shared an xkcd post about the relative smoothness of the Earth. This week he posted an illustration but a slightly different scale. You can see more of Earth’s jagged edges. Gotta love the Star Trek reference. I’m betting he used the length of the Kelvin timeline Enterprise, which I personally dislike, as…

  • Viral Mutations

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    Brendan Barry
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    With Covid-19, one of the big challenges we face is the rapid mutations in the viral genetic code that have produced several beneficial—from the virus’ standpoint—adaptations. Several days ago the New York Times published a nice, illustrated piece that showed just what these mutations look like. Of course, these were not just nice illustrations of…

  • Biden’s Cabinet

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    Brendan Barry
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    Note: I wanted this to go up on Inauguration Day, but I had some server issues last week. And while I got everything back for Friday and Monday, I didn’t want to wait too long to post this. You’ll note at the end that I have questions about General Austin and whether he could be…

  • Covid-19 Update: 24 January

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week we saw some indications that the recent surge was beginning to ebb in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Illinois with the same in New Jersey, but to a slight degree less so. Only Virginia presented us with data that showed its surge continuing unabated. So this week we have some generally good news to look…

  • The Earth Is Actually Quite Smooth

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    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    At scale. Not quite as smooth as a billiards ball, as is often claimed. But still, with the majority of the Earth’s surface covered by water, the highest mountains of Everest and K2 make for mere fractions of differences in height relative to the Earth’s size. But that did not stop xkcd from making a…

  • Covid-19 Update: 18 January

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week we saw that in the weeks after Christmas, new cases and deaths rebounded in the five states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois. The question was how bad would things continue to get? Would these rebounds sustain themselves? A week later we can see a glimmer of good news in that…

  • Dove vs. Hawk

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    Brendan Barry
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    Earlier, I saw these two graphics floating around the Twitter. They each come from a major financial institution and attempt to place the voting (and non-voting members) of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on a spectrum of doves to hawks or slightly less dovish. The FOMC, part of the Federal Reserve system, sets interest…

  • 2020 Election Results…

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    Brendan Barry
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    Via xkcd. It’s Friday and we’ve made it all to the end of the week. A little while back xkcd posted about the 2020 US election, showing where the votes for both candidates are approximately located. This isn’t quite funny like I normally might post on a Friday, but it felt appropriate after this week…

  • Impeachment 2: The Insurrection

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    Brendan Barry
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    Like many Americans I closely followed the outcome of yesterday’s historic vote by the House of Representatives to impeach President Trump for his incitement of an insurrection at the US Capitol in a failed coup attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Words I still never thought I’d write describing an American election. So at the…

  • Trump’s White Wall

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    by

    Brendan Barry
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    I meant to publish this yesterday, but this piece also offers a reminder that the hardest part of a data-driven story is usually finding the data. I was unable to find a single source of data for all the numbers I needed by the time I switched on for work. And so this had to…