Examining How We Measure Our Lives

Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation

  • Among my recent life changes, I have moved back to Philadelphia from Chicago. That means Sundays the bars and streets are full of people wearing the jerseys of their favourite Eagles (American) football players. And apparently this year, they are off to a good start. FiveThirtyEight took a look at other 3-0 teams to compare the 2016 Eagles and examine…

    Read on…: Road to Victory

  • Apologies for the long layoff, but life threw me a curveball or two. But in that time I did manage to go out to Boston and catch some of Big Papi’s last regular season games with the Red Sox at Fenway Park. Whilst there, I caught an advert for Boston’s new City Score, which updates the public on how city…

    Read on…: Scoring Boston

  • Yesterday scientists announced the discovery of a likely rocky planet within the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, Sol’s (the Sun’s) nearest star. The New York Times covered the discovery with a piece full of nice explanatory graphics. Now if we can only get onto the whole matter–anti-matter warp engine thing we could go explore the place. Credit for the piece…

    Read on…: Our Nearest Neighbour

  • Today’s post is about religion. One of the two things you are never supposed to talk about in good company. And since the other is politics and since I cover that here frequently, let’s just go all in, shall we? FiveThirtyEight has an interesting piece about religious diversity and a corresponding lack of religiousness. From a graphics standpoint, the central…

    Read on…: Religiousness

  • The Olympics are over and Team GB did rather well, coming in second in the medals table with 27 gold medals, more than they won back in 2012 when they hosted the Olympics. (See my piece four years ago where a colleague of mine and I accurately predicted the UK’s total medal count.) Consequently the BBC put together an article…

    Read on…: UK Performance at the Olympics

  • But not likely. As this FiveThirtyEight piece explains, steroids are not likely the cause of the increased power exhibited this year by Major League Baseball. The article goes into a bit of detail, but this set of small multiples does a nice job comparing several other factors that could be at play. What I like about the piece is how…

    Read on…: Pill Popping Power

  • One of the things I like about Chicago’s WGN network is its weather blog. They often include infographic-like content to explain weather trends or stories. But as someone working in the same field of data visualisation and information design, I sometimes find myself truly confused. That happened with this piece last Friday. The map in the upper-right in particular caught…

    Read on…: Raining Maps Monday

  • As I stated earlier this week, I spent the first half of the week in Wisconsin research my family history. And I really will try to get to it next week. But, beyond the vital records and recorded stories, I am also intrigued by how our ethnic histories break down genetically. That gets us to today’s post from xkcd. Credit for…

    Read on…: Genetic Ancestry Results

  • Today’s post features a simple set of graphics on the BBC, however the creators were actually the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. The background? The increasingly tense geopolitical situation in the South China Sea, where China claims numerous islands and reefs claimed by other countries—and to a smaller extent other countries make similar such claims. Just a few weeks back, the Hague…

    Read on…: Airplanes in Hangars

  • Apologies for the lack of posts the last two days. I visited Wisconsin to trace some of the courthouse records of the Spellacys. And while I will try to return to them later next week, today we go to China. During my recent holidays, the media made much ado about a new straddling bus in China. Except that it’s not that…

    Read on…: China’s Straddling Bus