Happy Friday, everyone. Here’s a plot from xkcd.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Scary Names
Category: Infographic
Queue for the British Throne
So apparently a baby was born in London…as was another who is likely to become the future King of the Great Britain and Northern Ireland (not of England). But the British love their queues and so this infant will have to wait in line just like everyone else (in the royal line of succession). The Economist visualised just how long these waits have been for English and British monarch vis-a-vis their time spent on the throne.
Credit for the piece goes to R.L.W. and G.D.
The Internet Under the Sea
Recently the Washington Post published an infographic that explored the cable network that connects the different continents and brings to each the internet. In short, where North America once dominated as an international hub it now is on the decline.
The piece tells an interesting story supported by good data that is clearly presented. Clear and informative titles prompt the reader along the piece while good chart forms show just what is happening to internet bandwidth and continental differences. And from a design perspective, this is all done with what appears to be two colours: a dark green and its shades/tints, and black. Overall, a solid piece.
Credit for the piece goes to Todd Lindeman.
Delivery Delays
Today’s graphic looks at the backlog of aircraft delivery, i.e. the manufacturing of civilian aircraft. Why? Because Boeing is attempting to increase production of its 787 Dreamliner. And this weekend I arrived in Chicago from Warsaw via a 787.
This is a really nice piece from Thomson Reuters that looks at the manufacturing lines for both Boeing and Airbus and how many planes have yet to be delivered. The annotations really help to explain some of the stories behind some of the aircraft and their delayed deliveries.
Credit for the piece goes to Simon Scarr and Christian Inton.
Charting and Mapping Income Mobility
After two weeks out of the country, I come back and find early this morning (thanks, jet lag) an interactive article published by the New York Times on income mobility. What does that mean? From a medium side, a long narrative interspersed with charts and graphics with which the user can interact to uncover specific data about specific elements in the dataset. From a content side, income mobility means the movement of an individual from one group of money earned to another, e.g. a poor person becoming a millionaire. The piece is fantastic and you should take the time to go read and interact with it.
For some time now I have harped on about the need to annotate and contextualise datasets. Too often, large datasets paralyse people; their eyes glaze over and they simply gaze at a graphic without seeing the data, the story, the information. Little notes and blurbs of text can help people synthesise what they see with what they read with what they know to gain better understanding. But in this piece, by combining a lengthy article—very well written although that is not the focus of this post—with powerful interactive maps and graphics, the New York Times has created a powerful piece that states and then proves the point of the article. And while doing all of that, by making the datasets explorable, the Times also allows you to find your own stories.
Lastly, in the credits section at the end you will see this piece required the input of eight individuals (though I know not in what particular capacities). Clearly, for the Times this is not about to become a regular type of infographic/datavis/journalism piece. But when will skill sets be democratised or dispersed enough that smaller teams can create similar scale projects? That will be interesting to see. However, the Times certainly leads the States if not the world in some of the best information design pieces and undoubtedly this will push other publishers of similar content in this direction.
Credit for the piece goes to Mike Bostock, Shan Carter, Amanda Cox, Matthew Ericson, Josh Keller, Alicia Parlapiano, Kevin Quealy, and Josh Williams.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-income-ladder-location-matters.html?smid=pl-share
Chicago Covered in Ice
I should be returning to Chicago this weekend. And if I were returning 21,000 years ago, that would be I would have been returning to a massive ice sheet covering the city. Would have been way worse in Montreal, though.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Analysing and Using a Network Diagram
This network diagram from the New York Times looks at a community of doctors with respect to a prescription oncology drug. Colour is used to denote types of doctors while size denotes the volume of prescriptions for any oncology drug. Admittedly, I am not keen of the bubble effect placed on the circles. Those effects and the heavy black outlines for the circles distract a bit, but not excessively so.
What really makes this graphic, as is making so many of the Times’ graphics, is the annotation and explanation of the presented data. The user can readily see how some doctors are connected, but understanding the shapes and patterns of those connections is not as clear. But then the Times furthers that by explaining how the marketers of this oncology drug would use this data.
Credit for this piece goes to the New York Times graphics team.
Pakistan’s Troubles
Pakistan has had a rough go of it of late. This map from the New York Times narrates, annotates, and illustrates just some of those problems.
Credit for the piece goes to Timothy Wallace and Sergio Peçanha.
The Carpatho-Rusyns of Slovakia
If all is going according to plan, I should be somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains at this point, specifically in the Presov region of Slovakia. So as a reminder of just what that means, here is a (recycled) piece I created this time last year about the Carpatho-Rusyns (sometimes known as Ruthenians) living in Slovakia. Click the image to go to the full infographic.
Credit goes to me for the piece, but to the statistics office of Slovakia for the data.
Senate Facebook
Partisanship in Washington has only grown worse over time. So how better to track that than through Facebook-like network analysis diagrams?
If you look at senators who voted with other senators at least 50% of the time and at least 75% of the time, and compare those numbers to numbers over a decade ago, you can see there is a lot less bipartisanship in 2013.
Compare 2013…
to 2001.
Sad but fascinating.
Credit for the piece goes to Chris Wilson.