Examining How We Measure Our Lives

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

  • Fear not, this graphic makes about as much sense as the title. The concept is actually a worthwhile exploration of the variation in caffeine across cups of coffee from different cafes and coffee shops. But, this visualisation fails at showing it. Remember, pie charts show the piece amongst the whole. What is the whole in this case? A cup of…

    Read on…: Coffee Pie Charts

  • Today’s graphic comes from Thomson Reuters. It charts the success of 3D movies that have been released and how long those movies stayed in the theatres. Credit for the piece goes to S. Scarr, G. Cabrera, and K. Pong.

    Read on…: 3D Movie Success

  • Today’s post is a small interactive from the Wall Street Journal that allows the user to explore consumer spending not by category of spending, but rather the type of store in which they are spending, e.g. grocery retailers. Consumer spending is a fairly important measure of the US economy since so much of our economy depends upon it (I want…

    Read on…: Consumer Spending by Store Type

  • Driving can be dangerous. But perhaps most so in the developing world. The Pulitzer Center created this interactive map to allow users to explore just how dangerous driving can be. Little windows provide details on countries the user rolls over. This data looks at deaths per 100,000 people, killer/victims, and lastly a rating of law enforcement across several different issues.…

    Read on…: Road Kill

  • A few weeks ago the Washington Post published a graphic that explained how space weather can have significant impacts on Earth. This is more of an illustrated diagram and less of a data visualisation piece, but it still worth a read. Why? Because, if scientists are correct, the sun’s magnetic poles should soon finish a polarity reversal. And that creates…

    Read on…: Space Weather

  • I don’t often link to FlowingData because I figure that most of my audience is already looking there. But, sometimes, Nathan’s work is just that good. And sometimes the subject matter is just so fantastic that I have no other choice. (It doesn’t hurt that I was looking to do something like this over the weekend.) Last weekend, the BBC…

    Read on…: Doctor Who?

  • Earlier this summer I looked at a graphic by Thomson Reuters that compared life expectancy changes across the world from 1990 to 2011. Last month, the Washington Post published an interactive graphic that explores life expectancy (along with obesity and physical activity) across the United States from 1985 to 2010. What I really enjoy about the piece is that each…

    Read on…: US Life Expectancy

  • Today is the odd day where I don’t have an actual graphic to share, but rather one of those abstract theory wishy washy brainheady thinky things. It’s an article in Fast Co. that discusses an essay written by Kim Rees and Dino Citraro wherein they define the concept of digital poster. Think big, vertical, scrolly infographics.

    Read on…: Infographics and Digital Posters

  • Sometimes maps just do not carry the visual weight of the potential impact of climate change, specifically rising tides. Swathes of blue over city maps from high altitude are intellectual exercises. Who works where? Where do I live? But when you can begin to see familiar buildings and sites swallowed up by a modest rise in the sea level, the…

    Read on…: Boston’s Rising Tide

  • At lunch, I felt inspired enough to create a quick chart that looks at some urban population statistics. A caveat about the data, it comes from the Census Bureau’s tables on the top-100 cities. So until a city appeared on that list, I did not chart it. The exceptions are 2000 and 2010, where I pulled directly from those census…

    Read on…: Urban Population