Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Read on…: Venn Diagrams. Let’s Go Back to Grade School.
Last week Mitt Romney’s campaign released a series of infographic adverts. They were Venn Diagrams with messages attacking President Obama by highlighting what the Romney campaign called gaps between what the president has said he would do and what he has in fact done. The problem with these is that they are all wrong. Do not misunderstand me, the Romney…
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Higgs Boson. You Can Call It God.
Read on…: Higgs Boson. You Can Call It God.CERN may—or may not—have discovered a particle that may—or may not—be the Higgs Boson that would probably fill in a lot of the holes in our understanding of how the world may work at a sub-atomic level. That is a lot of ‘may’s. Understanding just what a Higgs Boson does is not quite so easy. In really simplified language, it explains…
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The Conservative Supreme Court
Read on…: The Conservative Supreme CourtFrom last week’s New York Times, a look at the Supreme Court by age and political leanings. They’ve gotten a lot more conservative.
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Voyager 1
Read on…: Voyager 1So my prediction of the health care law being thrown out did not come to pass. But what will pass is the space probe Voyager 1 out of the solar system in the very near future. (Don’t worry unlike Voyager, I will return—albeit to the original subject matter next week.) So from the National Post we have an infographic that…
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The Future of Those Without Health Insurance
Read on…: The Future of Those Without Health InsuranceAs the Supreme Court is likely to scrap the mandate provision of the health care law—without which sick people are left to pay higher premiums if they can get coverage at all—later today, the New York Times looks at the impact of removing the health care law changes the number of people without health insurance. Credit for the piece goes…
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Opening the Window
Read on…: Opening the WindowThe Washington Post brings us a look at the mess that is our Congressional representatives buying and selling stocks affected by the legislation they write, discuss, and upon which they vote. None of the charts in this piece are of themselves particularly complex—we are looking at a pie chart after all—but they do come together to tell a story of…wholly…
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Exoplanets
Read on…: ExoplanetsSometimes an infographic needs to put us in our place. Humanity is but one of many species on one of many planets in one solar system. Over at xkcd, we can see how only now are we beginning to expand our knowledge of how many other solar systems and planets there are (and that are just waiting to be discovered).…