Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Life Expectancy Decline for Under-educated Whites
Read on…: Life Expectancy Decline for Under-educated WhitesThe New York Times published a chart looking at the decline in life expectancy for under-educated whites, i.e. whites who have not finished high school. The life expectancies of blacks and Hispanics offer a stark contrast, for while starting at a lower base, their respective expectancies are increasing.
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How a Dead Panda Should Have Grown
Read on…: How a Dead Panda Should Have GrownEarlier this month a panda was born in Washington. The Post did a small infographic looking at how a panda cub grows over the course of its first year. I decided I would probably wait until sometime later this week to publish it. Except it died yesterday. So before the moment is gone, here’s a graphic from the Washington Post…
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The Enemy Amongst Us
Read on…: The Enemy Amongst UsPerhaps the greatest danger now facing NATO and US troops in Afghanistan is the age-old wolf in sheep’s clothing, the insurgent dressed in Afghan Army fatigues. As the graphic below shows, the number of fatalities has been increasing along with the number of attacks. The silver lining in the cloud (to mix metaphors) is that the average lethality of the…
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Timeline of the History of the World
Read on…: Timeline of the History of the WorldEvolution is a myth. Creationism is where it’s at. So thankfully we have this new timeline that takes into account the age of fossils, radiocarbon dating, and all that other science-y stuff. I’m just glad to know that the reason we won World War I was because we had the raptors on our side. The original graphic comes from the…
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Where to Live for the Highest Income
Read on…: Where to Live for the Highest IncomeSo perhaps the title is a bit of a non-sequitor, but the Washington Post released a table of the Top-100 counties by average income. As a Washington paper their focus was on that city’s suburbs, three counties of which are Numbers 1, 2, and 3. But I wanted to get a sense of where other counties were, including that of…
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Better, Safer Driving
Read on…: Better, Safer DrivingHannah Fairfield at the New York Times created a great infographic a few years ago that looked at the history of the price of gasoline and how many miles, on average, an American drove in a car per year. The piece told some rather interesting stories starting in the 1950s with the explosion of the suburb, interstate highways, and car…
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The Growth of the Non-payers of Federal Income Tax
Read on…: The Growth of the Non-payers of Federal Income TaxToday will be an unusual day in that it shall have two posts. This first post is following up on yesterday’s about the 47% of Americans who do not pay federal income tax. The Earned Income Tax Credit was created to incentivise people to work. A tax on your income, after all, does the opposite. Why make more money when…
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Spies
Read on…: SpiesThis infographic from the National Post is nearly a year old, however its look at global espionage in the wake of unrest in the Middle East is once again relevant. Credit for the piece goes to Jonathan Rivait and Richard Johnson.