From xkcd comes the chart explaining just what of file extension you can trust. Neither the .gif nor the magic .jpeg rate rather highly.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Can You Believe the .GIF?
Category: Infographic
Tracking You While You Text
Today’s post comes from the Washington Post, which looks at further revelations about the NSA surveillance programme. Specifically, the Post details how the NSA tracks Americans by what is called co-traveler analytics. The piece does a really nice job of explaining how the tracking works through illustrative examples.
Credit for the piece goes to the Washington Post graphics department.
The Long and Winding Cotton Production Path
Today’s piece is straightforward, but I felt very good at detailing its story. The Wall Street Journal mapped out the path cotton takes on its way from the fields to the denim in your jeans.
Credit for the piece goes to the Wall Street Journal graphics department.
The Next Cold War?
The New York Times has a nice piece about the Arctic, which is increasingly fought over by the nations north of the Arctic Circle. Maps like these are always opportunities I enjoy to see the world in an infographic that is not a standard projection, e.g. Mercator or Robinson. The slight change in fill or opacity also serves to highlight the focus of the piece on the area north of the Arctic Circle while areas even more distant slowly fade to white.
Credit for the piece goes to Baden Copeland and Derek Watkins.
Television Ownership
Another from xkcd, this time on television ownership. If you are among those trending towards the embarrassed. Well, it’s Christmas season. So get ready to go buy one.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Cancelling the Cincinnati Streetcar Project
So Cincinnati was going to have a streetcar. Now it won’t because the recently elected mayor, John Cranley, campaigned on killing the streetcar. I won’t get into the whys and the why nots mostly because I’m not from Cincinnati and others can do it better. Suffice it to say that costs and budget battles played a part. Yesterday the city council opted to pause the project. This will likely suspend federal grant payments, meaning contractors don’t get paid, which means the city faces lawsuits for being in breach of contract, which potentially means the city spends almost as much money cancelling the project as they would completing it.
Ordinarily I would post something from a local newspaper or media outlet covering the story. But today I have the pleasure of sharing some work that my former professor made. His infographic explores the fiscal details of the streetcar project and how much Cincinnati owes if they opt to cancel it in the end.
Credit for the piece goes to Giacomo Ciminello. You can download the original here. And you can visit his site here.
Let There be Planets
Earlier this week xkcd looked at the planets near Earth (within 60 light years) within their respective star system’s habitable zone. Turns out there are quite a few.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
College Football Conference History
Your author graduated from art school. That means my college sports consisted of…a fencing team. And dancers. And some of them were cheerleaders for the Eagles I heard. Does that count? I did, however, attend Penn State for a year. So in this interactive graphic from the New York Times that tracks conference membership for various college football teams, I clicked Penn State.
Colour is effective in this piece. The use of purple to highlight key stories off the grey background becomes even more important when they are offset from the selected schools in orange. If you cannot find your particular line of interest, a drop-down menu makes for an easy selection.
Bonus points—not shown here—for using spark lines in the introductory paragraph. A solid piece overall.
Credit for the piece goes to Mike Bostock, Shan Carter, and Kevin Quealy.
Speeding on Chicago’s Tollways
The Illinois Tollways will be raising speed limits starting 1 January. Part of that process includes researching current driving habits and patterns. This graphic by the Chicago Tribune looks at some of the results. While the map part is necessary to show the routes themselves and the limits on those routes, the more interesting part is the dot plot below.
Credit for the piece goes to the Chicago Tribune’s graphic department.
Travelling in Space and Time
Following last week’s post about Doctor Who comes another because, since this is the last post of the week, you might as well enjoy it. This interactive graphic from the BBC looks at the Doctor travelling across time. And while you might dismiss it as being silly fun, pay close attention to the layering of timelines and the information provided in each line, i.e. click on one. Additionally, the bottom panel contains some broader context. Overall, this is a very smart piece.
Credit for the piece goes to iibStudio and the BBC graphics department.