Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Read on…: Migration within the European Union
Today’s post comes via one of my coworkers. She sent me this graphic from Thomson Reuters that uses a Sankey diagram to show the movement of European Union citizens within the EU. As with my post yesterday, I feel this piece would benefit from even limited interactivity. Exploring individual countries or individual flows by touch […]
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Wealth and Education
Read on…: Wealth and EducationToday’s post looks at education across a set of 65 countries from a standardised test backed by the OECD, basically a group of wealthy countries. The test results found that some poor countries have surprisingly good education systems whereas some of the world’s wealthiest countries—here’s looking at you, United States—perform poorly. The Huffington Post created […]
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Don’t Worry, You’ll Be Long Dead…
Read on…: Don’t Worry, You’ll Be Long Dead……before any of this occurs. Courtesy of BBC Future and the New Year, welcome to the end of the world as we know it. (Sing it, Michael.) Credit for the piece goes to iibStudio.
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Washington’s New Ferris Wheel
Read on…: Washington’s New Ferris WheelThis past weekend I was having a discussion with some friends about the height of various Ferris wheels. Specifically we were wondering the height difference between the London Eye and the wheel at Chicago’s Navy Pier. Well, it turns out that Washington, D.C. is preparing to begin construction on its own wheel. Naturally, the Washington […]
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The Flying V
Read on…: The Flying VWe all know of the Flying V, the great hockey plan developed in the 1990s—wait, no, wrong one. I meant to talk about birds flying in formation. Because science is finally allowing us to understand the mechanisms of how and why birds fly in these tight, v-shaped formations. In a BBC article reporting on the most […]
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Canada vs. the United States
Read on…: Canada vs. the United StatesLast week I was asked what was the population of Canada. I first said 30 million. I then figured that was too small so I said more like 50–60 million. Turns out I was closer to being correct the first time. A Google search that cites the World Bank among its sources listed the population […]
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Deformed Tree Map
Read on…: Deformed Tree MapYesterday the BBC published an article about the success of the United Kingdom’s creative industry especially given the not-so-successful economy of the last few years. Unfortunately, the article included the tree map below. The problems are a few. First, a tree map is usually looking at two variables. One is encoded through the size of […]