Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Living on the Minimum Wage
Read on…: Living on the Minimum WageLast week the New York Times published a nice interactive about the minimum wage and just how difficult it is to live on it. (We will for now spare the charts that show how the actual purchasing power has declined over the years.) First you pick your state because not every state pays the same […]
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Sarin Nerve Gas
Read on…: Sarin Nerve GasThis is an older piece from the fall, but with the talks going on about Syria this felt an appropriate time an infographic about sarin gas poisoning. Credit for the piece goes to Jonathon Rivait, Mike Faille, and Richard Johnson.
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Speed Skating
Read on…: Speed SkatingToday’s post comes from a co-worker and looks at the increase of speed in speed skating in the Winter Olympics since 1924. It does a nice job of showing the increase in the speed. Because to a degree, the increase has not been linear. Instead, it really only increased in two spurts and recently has […]
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Mapping Economic Mobility
Read on…: Mapping Economic MobilityThis piece from the Washington Post examines the idea of economic mobility. That is, what is the likelihood that children born and raised in an impoverished family will surpass their parents’ standard of living. Credit for the piece goes to Darla Cameron and Ted Mellnik.
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Sochi and the Caucasus
Read on…: Sochi and the CaucasusThe Olympics opened in Sochi this past weekend. Many of us may well be familiar with photographs of urinals without piping, or unfinished hotel rooms, or many other infrastructure problems, but there is a bigger issue facing Sochi. It exists on what the New York Times terms the edge of a war zone. Their overall […]
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Drawing the World
Read on…: Drawing the WorldThe inability of people to understand geography beyond their own borders is not new. But today’s post uses that to create a new map—albeit from a limited sample. The creator of this map merged 30 different, hand-drawn maps into one to reveal the world as imagined by his sample. Credit for the piece goes to […]
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Depicting Radiation
Read on…: Depicting RadiationToday’s post is more about a means of illustrating radiation, less about quantifying it. Unfortunately the article is in German and I speak none of it. But, the context is that of the Fukushima Disaster. Make sure you click through to see the illustrations in action. Credit (I think) goes to Interactive Things and Neue […]