Examining How We Measure Our Lives

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

  • Racism is a long-standing problem for humanity. But in the wake of the Donald Sterling scandal in the NBA, the New York Times put together a graphic looking at white attitudes towards blacks in the United States. The data reveals that while racist views are down from highs decades past, there is still a substantial amount. From a design standpoint,…

    Read on…: White Racism in America

  • Last Friday, we looked at how one individual defined the state of Florida. Today, we look at how FiveThirtyEight attempted to get lots of people to define the Midwest. Personally, as someone from Philadelphia I tend to side with the author of the article, Walter Hickey. He writes he’s “from New York, and [he] generally consider[s] anything west of Philadelphia…

    Read on…: Defining the Midwest

  • Time for some sports. Okay, I’m admittedly thinking of it because company softball started up again. And for some reason, the teams have a horrible habit of horrendous injuries. So what better way to commemorate (a week late, whatever) the start of the season than a nice illustration of Tommy John surgery. For those of you unfamiliar with it, in…

    Read on…: Tommy John Surgery

  • In the votes held this past weekend, the separatists in Donestk and Luhansk claim they received a mandate for independent states. However, according to polls conducted by Pew a few weeks back, most of Ukraine, with the notable exception of Crimea, wants to remain united as a single country. In fairness, this poll was conducted after Russia annexed Crimea but…

    Read on…: Ukrainian Unity

  • I am pretty much a sucker for small multiples. And so today I present a good one from the Washington Post. The story starts looking at the broad, national scope of the issue. And from there it breaks home ownership down by state. Credit for the piece goes to the Washington Post’s graphics department.

    Read on…: Home Ownership

  • One of the main arguments used by Vladimir Putin to support any possible intervention in Ukraine is the suppression of the rights of Russian language speakers. The Economist wisely decided to wholeheartedly endorse the underlying principle of Putin’s logic and redrew the world map accordingly. You should read the article. Credit for the piece goes to the Economist’s graphics department.

    Read on…: Linguistic Empires

  • One of the most pressing questions of the times was answered last week. Is Florida the South? Cue the Tampa Bay Times. Credit for the piece goes to Ben Montgomery.

    Read on…: Is Florida the South?

  • Today’s post comes via a co-worker. LinkedIn’s R&D lab published a tool to map your LinkedIn connections. You login to your account and then receive a social network of map. Mine, seen below, clearly shows three different and generally not inter-connected networks. The orange represents my current employer; the blue is my university network; the green and pink are high…

    Read on…: Mapping Your LinkedIn Connections

  • Today we dive into state-level politics north of Chicago, in the state of Wisconsin. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an in-depth article looking at the political divide in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. While one could publish an article of that nature with just lots and lots of words, the Journal Sentinel chose to use maps and charts to support their…

    Read on…: Wisconsin Politics

  • This past weekend was some good Red Sox baseball. Okay, so we only won two of three from Oakland, but that second game was fantastic. John Lester dominated. Last fall I mentioned a studio called Statlas that was visualising the World Series. They continue to update and tweak their product and so it was great to see Lester’s performance documented.…

    Read on…: John Lester Dominates