Category: My Work

  • Olympic Forecast Comparison

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    Brendan Barry
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    During my research for the Olympic medal projections, I came across a few sites that presented a few other projections because, quite frankly, 65 seemed rather high given that the UK won only 47 the year before. The chart below just compares how the other forecasts turned out in the end. Emily Williams from the…

  • How the UK Got to the 65 Medals We Correctly Predicted

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    Brendan Barry
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    So the Olympics are over. But before they began, I and some co-workers made a prediction about how the United Kingdom and their Team GB would perform. We predicted 65 medals. How did the United Kingdom fare? They won 65 medals. This is a follow-up infographic about what made the United Kingdom a winner at…

  • Olympic Performance vs Economic Performance

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    Brendan Barry
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    The Olympics are now fully underway and we can begin to see some patterns about who is doing well and who is, well, not. This infographic has a lot more to say about who had been doing well up through 2008. That is important because that was the last year before the fiscal/financial crisis brought…

  • Does a High Average BMI Impact a Country’s Chance at the Olympics?

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    Brendan Barry
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    It turns out not so much. A comparison of the 2008 data for average BMI (coarsely how fat a person is) for countries across their economic productivity (GDP per capita) and total medals won shows that a country’s health culture does not greatly impact said country’s Olympic chances. This is another from my work series…

  • 2012 Olympics: What Makes a Winner (and Will the UK Be One)?

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    Brendan Barry
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    The Olympics are coming, the Olympics are coming. (As if you didn’t know.) In a rare moment of seeing my work outside of my company’s paywall, I can post a few infographics I have created for the 2012 Summer Games in London. The series looks at a few different non-Olympic variables like GDP per capita…

  • Rusyns of Slovakia

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    Brendan Barry
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    The Slovakian government has published the results from its 2011 census. The census looked at many things, including nationality and language. This should allow the government in Bratislava to better fund and support the ethnic minorities in Slovakia. Of course, some of my ancestors were one of the small ethnic minorities in Slovakia. Ergo, I…

  • Venn Diagrams. Let’s Go Back to Grade School.

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week Mitt Romney’s campaign released a series of infographic adverts. They were Venn Diagrams with messages attacking President Obama by highlighting what the Romney campaign called gaps between what the president has said he would do and what he has in fact done. The problem with these is that they are all wrong. Do…

  • Crossing the Detroit River (Panic in Detroit)

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    Brendan Barry
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    The National Post’s business section, branded separately as the Financial Post, posted a comment about a proposed bridge that would span the Detroit River and add a third major crossing to the Detroit–Windsor area. The comment used a graphic to explain one of the key points of the story, that early 21st century traffic projections…

  • Consumer Eating Habits

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    Brendan Barry
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    I generally refrain from posting links to my professional work. Normally because I’d have to be the first to criticise it and tear it apart. But also because a lot of it is confidential and behind the paywall—it’s like the Iron Curtain meets the Great Wall but really a lot less interesting. Yet from time…

  • Examining Growth in the G-20

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    Brendan Barry
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    On Sunday the New York Times featured a small graphic highlighting the disparity in growth rates across the G-20 if broken into the ‘core’ G-8 and then what one might call the emerging markets of the G-11. The charts are small yet compelling in telling the story of how the two different groups are performing.…