Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Read on…: Patrolling the US–Mexican Border
If you haven’t heard, we share a border with Mexico. And we patrol it. And the Washington Post published a graphic looking at the patrolling of the US–Mexican border. Credit for the piece goes to Anup Kaphle and Bill Webster.
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Oil Imports
Read on…: Oil ImportsOil, sweet oil. We Americans love the stuff. Like too much of anything, though, that can lead to some problems. This post isn’t about that. But rather it’s about a New York Times graphic on how even though we are learning to check our sweet tooth, we are importing more oil from the Middle East relative to other oil exporters,…
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Missions to Mars
Read on…: Missions to MarsCuriosity shall soon be exploring the surface of Mars seeking to understand the geological history of the planet. But in this infographic, see the cropping below, from the National Post we can see previous missions to Mars. We have not always been successful in operations in and around Mars, but our recent track record is much improved. Credit…
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Olympic Forecast Comparison
Read on…: Olympic Forecast ComparisonDuring my research for the Olympic medal projections, I came across a few sites that presented a few other projections because, quite frankly, 65 seemed rather high given that the UK won only 47 the year before. The chart below just compares how the other forecasts turned out in the end. Emily Williams from the Tusk School of Business, Price…
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When We’ll Forget…
Read on…: When We’ll Forget…From xkcd comes today’s graphic of choice. It’s a timeline. About when we’ll forget stuff. Although for me this is pretty much a useless concept. Because I’m generally unaware of cultural events when they happen today.
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Olympic Medal Ranking
Read on…: Olympic Medal RankingAs I wrote about last weekend, one can look at the Olympics rankings in a number of different ways. Even without weighting medal counts, one has to decide whether to rank countries by gold medals (as the IOC does) or by total medals (my personal preference). The New York Times looks at both in an interesting ranking chart. The piece…
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Olympic-sized Appetites
Read on…: Olympic-sized AppetitesThe Olympics bring out the best. Well, at least in athletics. In terms of infographics, not always so much. This piece from CNN is a fairly unorganised mess with lots of individual datapoints. It’s a shame to see this at CNN when so many other news outlets are doing quality graphic work for the Olympics.