Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Read on…: 2020 Election Results…
Via xkcd. It’s Friday and we’ve made it all to the end of the week. A little while back xkcd posted about the 2020 US election, showing where the votes for both candidates are approximately located. This isn’t quite funny like I normally might post on a Friday, but it felt appropriate after this week we had with the impeachment.…
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Impeachment 2: The Insurrection
Read on…: Impeachment 2: The InsurrectionLike many Americans I closely followed the outcome of yesterday’s historic vote by the House of Representatives to impeach President Trump for his incitement of an insurrection at the US Capitol in a failed coup attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Words I still never thought I’d write describing an American election. So at the end of the vote, I…
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Needle Time
Read on…: Needle TimeYesterday was maybe the last election day for the 2020 US General Election. (There are still a few US House seats yet to be called, most notably a contested race in upstate New York.) These were a pair of runoff elections in Georgia for the state’s two US Senate seats (one for a full, six-year term, the other to finish…
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Difficult Descendancy Charts
Read on…: Difficult Descendancy ChartsThe holiday break is over as your author has burned up all his remaining time for 2020 and so now we’re back to work. And that means attempting to return to a more frequent and regular posting schedule for Coffeespoons. I wanted to start with the death of Diego Maradona, a legendary Argentinian footballer. He died in December of a…
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But What About New Zealand?
Read on…: But What About New Zealand?It’s time for another Friday just for fun posting. I once worked with a guy who could draw a map of the United States or the world on a whiteboard incredibly accurately. He then left it in the break room for the office to try and label correctly. This is kind of that, but in reverse, from xkcd. Good luck.…
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Vaccinate Me, Baby, One More Time
Read on…: Vaccinate Me, Baby, One More TimeWith the rollout of the first vaccination programme in the United Kingdom, the BBC had a helpful comparison table stating the differences between the four primary options. It’s a small piece, but as I often say, we don’t necessarily need large and complex graphics. Since there are only four vaccines to compare and only a handful of metrics, a table…
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Warmer, Wetter Winters in the UK
Read on…: Warmer, Wetter Winters in the UKI remember hearing and reading stories as a child about the Thames in London freezing over and hosting winter festivals. Of course most of that happened during what we call the Little Ice Age, a period of below average temperatures during the 15th through the early 19th century. But those days are over. The UK’s Meteorological Office, or the Met…