Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Read on…: Wars Are Bad, But Not as Bad as They Used To Be
War is bad for the population business—arguably good for business business. A year ago, the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies released a .pdf that looked at peace and conflict and their respective drivers. The designers clumsily pieced everything together so that the sum is less than the constituent parts. But, if you isolate each piece and look at it alone,…
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Ukraine Retreats from Debaltseve
Read on…: Ukraine Retreats from DebaltseveThis is a short piece—it is only really an inline map—but it illustrates fairly well why Ukraine’s loss of Debaltseve in eastern Ukraine last week is kind of a big deal. Basically, the now mostly abandoned city is a transport hub linking the two quasi capitals of the Novorossiya. Credit for the piece goes to Gene Thorp.
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Screw It
Read on…: Screw ItWe looked at some pretty disturbing things this week, from the whole anti-vaccination thing to lynchings. So today, screw it. Let’s look at screws. Thanks to xkcd we have an illustrated guide to the different type of screw heads. Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
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Presidents Day Popularity Contests
Read on…: Presidents Day Popularity ContestsYesterday was Presidents Day and I had the day off. So today’s post is a bit late, but it still works. Pew Research Centre pulled together data they had on presidential popularity from Eisenhower to Obama. The data point was job approval. Credit for the piece goes to the graphics department of the Pew Research Centre.
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Squaring Up London
Read on…: Squaring Up LondonChoropleths are not always a good idea. For example, look at election maps. Highly populated but geographically small cities appear as mere drops of ink on paper or pixels on a screen. Meanwhile, vast deserts appear gigantic empires. Nothing new there. But even within cities, these issues exist. London is one such city and one design studio has been working…
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Income Growth Gap
Read on…: Income Growth GapThe Recession was not great for the 99%. It was, however, good for the 1%. How good? Well as data put together by the Economic Policy Institute indicates—and as reported by the Washington Post—it was very good. In only 1 of 49 states did the 99% fare better than the 1%. One state’s data was unavailable. This scatter plot compares…
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Population Displacement in Ukraine
Read on…: Population Displacement in UkraineUkraine continues to suffer the effects of a Russian invasion. Though we won’t call it that. This piece from Radio Free Europe looks at the displaced persons in the country. Unfortunately, it is not quite the best example of what to do. The line chart looks at the cumulative number of displaced persons. But, a monthly growth or absolute number…