Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Read on…: Wealth and Education
Today’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 this graphic to plot the…
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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 Post covered the story with…
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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 recent findings, the graphics team…
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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 as nearer to 35 million.…
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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 the block and the other…
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Squeezing You Into Your Airline Seat
Read on…: Squeezing You Into Your Airline SeatAirlines want to make flights as profitable as possible. And that largely entails cramming as many people into those hollow cylinders called aircraft fuselages as possible. This is despite advice from Airbus, one of the world’s largest aircraft manufacturers to set a minimum seat width standard greater than US airlines are investigating. Thomson Reuters does a nice job illustrating the…