Coffee Spoons – Page 47 – Examining How We Measure Our Lives

Water, Water Everywhere Nor Any Drop to Drink Part II

Yesterday we looked at the New York Times coverage of some water stress climate data and how some US cities fit within the context of the world’s largest cities. Well today we look at how the Washington Post covered the same data set. This time, however, they took a more domestic-centred approach and focused on the US, but at the state level.

Still no reason to move to the Southwest

Both pieces start with a map to anchor the piece. However, whereas the Times began with a world map, the Post uses a map of the United States. And instead of highlighting particular cities, it labels states mentioned in the following article.

Interestingly, whereas the Times piece showed areas of No Data, including sections of the desert southwest, here the Post appears to be labelling those areas as “arid area”. We also see two different approaches to handling the data display and the bin ranges. Whereas the Times used a continuous gradient the Post opts for a discrete gradient, with sharply defined edges from one bin to the next. Of course, a close examination of the Times map shows how they used a continuous gradient in the legend, but a discrete application. The discrete application makes it far easier to compare areas directly. Gradients are, by definition, harder to distinguish between relatively close areas.

The next biggest distinguishing characteristic is that the Post’s approach is not interactive. Instead, we have only static graphics. But more importantly, the Post opts for a state-level approach. The second graphic looks at the water stress level, but then plots it against daily per capita water use.

My question is from the data side. Whence does the water use data come? It is not exactly specified. Nor does the graphic provide any axis limits for either the x- or the y-axis. What this graphic did make me curious about, however, was the cause of the high water consumption. How much consumption is due to water-intensive agricultural purposes? That might be a better use of the colour dimension of the graphic than tying it to the water stress levels.

The third graphic looks at the international dimension of the dataset, which is where the Times started.

Here we have an interesting use of area to size population. In the second graphic, each state is sized by population. Here, we have countries sized by population as well. Except, the note at the bottom of the graphic notes that neither China nor India are sized to scale. And that make sense since both countries have over a billion people. But, if the graphic is trying to use size in the one dimension, it should be consistent and make China and India enormous. If anything, it would show the scale of the problem of being high stress countries with enormous populations.

I also like how in this graphic, while it is static in nature, breaks each country into a regional classification based upon the continent where the country is located.

Overall this, like the Times piece, is a solid graphic with a few little flaws. But the fascinating bit is how the same dataset can create two stories with two different foci. One with an international flavour like that of the Times, and one of a domestic flavour like this of the Post.

Credit for the piece goes to Bonnie Berkowitz and Adrian Blanco.

Water, Water Everywhere Nor Any Drop to Drink

Most of Earth’s surface is covered by water. But, as any of you who have swallowed seawater can attest, it is not exactly drinkable. Instead, mankind evolved to drink freshwater. And as some new data suggests, that might not be as plentiful in the future because some areas are already under extreme stress. Yesterday the New York Times published an article looking at the findings.

More reasons for me not to move to the desert southwest

The piece leads with a large map showing the degree of water stress across the globe. It uses a fairly standard yellow to red spectrum, but note the division of the labels. The High range dwarfs that of the Low, but instead of continuing on, the Extremely High range then shrinks. Unfortunately, the article does not go into the methodology behind that decision and it makes me wonder why the difference in bin sizes.

Of course, any big map makes one wonder about their own local condition. How stressed is Philadelphia, for example? Thankfully, the designers kept that in mind and created an interactive dot plot that marks where each large city falls according to the established bins.

At this scale, it is difficult to find a particular city. I would have liked a quick text search ability to find Philadelphia. Instead, I had to open the source code and search the text there for Philadelphia. But more curiously, I am not certain the graphic shows what the subheading says.

To understand what a third of major urban areas is, we would need to know the total number of said cities. If we knew that, a small number adjacent to the categorisation could be used to create a quick sum. Or a separate graphic showing the breakdown strictly by number of cities could also work. Because seeing where each city falls is both interesting and valuable, especially given how the shown cities are mentioned in the text—it just doesn’t fit the subheading.

But, for those of you from Chicago, I included my former home as a different screenshot. Though I didn’t need to search the source code, because I just happened across it scrolling through the article.

It helps having Lake Michigan right there

Credit for the piece goes to Somini Sengupta and Weiyi Cai.

United in Gun Control

Today’s piece is nothing more than a line chart. But in the aftermath of this past weekend’s gun violence—and the inability of this country to enact gun control legislation to try and reduce instances like them—the Economist published a piece looking at public polling on gun control legislation. Perhaps surprisingly, the data shows people are broadly in favour of more restrictive gun laws, including the outlawing of military-style, semi-automatic weapons.

These trendlines are heading in the right direction

In this graphic, we have a line chart. However the import parts to note are the dots, which is when the survey was conducted. The lines, in this sense, can be seen as a bit misleading. For example, consider that from late 2013 through late 2015 the AP–NORC Centre conducted no surveys. It is entirely possible that support for stricter laws fell, or spiked, but then fell back to the near 60% register it held in 2015.

On the other hand, given the gaps in the dataset, lines would be useful to guide the reader across the graphic. So I can see the need for some visual aid.

Regardless, support for stricter gun laws is higher than your author believed it to be.

Credit for the piece goes to the Economist graphics department.

What’s the Warning Today?

The weather here in Philadelphia has been fairly intense this summer. But, as August begins and summer begins to wane, even the meteorologists will need a holiday. Thankfully, xkcd has us covered on meteorology’s plan to provide coverage on their holiday.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

The Trilemma Remains for Boris

This is a repost of sorts, but it is important. Now prime minister, Boris Johnson had an opportunity to seek a more reasonable approach to Brexit. Unfortunately, he is drawing even harder red lines than his predecessor, Theresa May. And that brings us back to my Brexit trilemma graphic from back in March.

Essentially, Johnson wants three things that are mutually—or whatever the word is for three, maybe tri-mutually—semi-exclusive. In other words, of the three red lines, the United Kingdom can only have two, because those two then make the third impossible.

Doing the same thing but expecting results…pick two already, Boris.

I made the first version of this back in March. Sad it still applies.

Credit for the piece goes to me.

Quantifying Part of the Opioid Crisis

Two weeks ago the Washington Post published a fascinating article detailing the prescription painkiller market in the United States. The Drug Enforcement Administration made the database available to the public and the Post created graphics to explore the top-line data. But the Post then went further and provided a tool allowing users to explore the data for their own home counties.

The top line data visualisation is what you would expect: choropleth maps showing the prescription and death rates. This article is a great example of when maps tell stories. Here you can clearly see that the heaviest hit areas of the crisis were Appalachia. Though that is not to say other states were not ravaged by the crisis.

There are some clear geographic patterns to see here

For me, however, the true gem in this piece is the tool allowing you the user to find information on your county. Because the data is granular down to county-level information on things like pill shipments from manufacturer to distributor, we can see which pharmacies were receiving the most pills. And, crucially, which manufacturers were flooding the markets. For this screenshot I looked at Philadelphia, though I only moved here in 2016, well after the date range for this data set.

You can clearly see, however, the designers chose simple bar charts to show the top-five. I don’t know if the exact numbers are helpful next to the bars. Visually, it becomes a quick mess of greys, blacks, and burgundies. A quieter approach may have allowed the bars to really shine while leaving the numbers, seemingly down to the tens, for tables. I also cannot figure out why, typographically, the pharmacies are listed in all capitals.

But the because I lived in Chicago for most of the crisis, here is the screenshot for Cook County. Of course, for those not from Chicago, it should be pointed out that Chicago is only a portion of Cook County, there are other small towns there. And some of Chicago is within DuPage County. But, still, this is pretty close.

In an unrelated note, the bar charts here do a nice job of showing the market concentration or market power of particular companies. Compare the dominance of Walgreens as a distributor in Cook County compared to McKesson in Philadelphia. Though that same chart also shows how corporate structures can obscure information. I was never far from a big Walgreens sign in Chicago, but I have never seen a McKesson Corporation logo flying outside a pharmacy here in Philadelphia.

Lastly, the neat thing about this tool is that the user can opt to download an image of the top-five chart. I am not sure how useful that bit is. But as a designer, I do like having that functionality available. This is for Pennsylvania as a whole.

Credit for the piece goes to Armand Emamdjomeh, Kevin Schaul, Jake Crump and Chris Alcantara.

It’s Boris Time, Baby

Today Boris Johnson begins his premiership as the next prime minister of the United Kingdom. He might not be popular with the wide body of the British population, but he is quite popular with the Conservative base.

The Economist looked at how Boris polled on several traits, e.g. being more honest than most politicians, compared to his prime minister predecessors before they entered office. And despite being broadly unpopular outside the Tories, he still polls better than most of his predecessors.

Boris rates higher than many previous prime ministers before they came to power

Design wise, it’s a straight-forward use of small multiples and bar charts. I find the use of the light blue bar a nice device to highlight Boris’ position amongst his peers.

But now we see where Boris goes, most importantly on Brexit.

Credit for the piece goes to the Economist graphics department.

Baby, It’ Hot Outside Pt 2

Yesterday we looked at Billy Penn’s graphics about the cooler stations and I mentioned a few ways the graphic could be improved. So last night I created a graphic where I explored the limited scope of the data, but also showing how low the temperatures were, relative to the air temperature outside, using weather data from the National Weather Service, admittedly from Philadelphia International Airport, not quite Centre City, which I would expect to be warmer due to the urban heat bubble effect.

I'd be curious to see data for North Philly — I’d be curious to see data for North Philly

I opted to exclude the Patco Line since the original dataset did not include it either. However a section of it does run through Centre City and could be relevant.

Credit for the piece goes to me, though the data is all from Billy Penn and the National Weather Service.

Baby, It’s Hot Outside

Those of you living on the East Coast, specifically the Mid-Atlantic, know that presently the weather is quite warm outside. As in levels of dangerous heat and humidity. Personally, your author has not left his flat in a few days now because it is so bad.

Alas, not everyone has access to air conditioning in his or her abode. Consequently, they need to look to public spaces with air conditioning. Usually that means libraries or public buildings. But here in Philadelphia, have people considered the subway?

Billy Penn investigated the temperatures in Philadelphia’s subsurface stations along the Broad Street and Market–Frankford Lines—Philadelphia’s third and oft-forgot line, the Patco, was untested. What they found is that temperatures in the stations were significantly below the temperatures above ground. The Market–Frankford stations, for example, were less than 100ºF.

Of course that misses the 2nd Street station in Old City, but otherwise picks up all the Market–Frankford stations situated underground.

Then there is the Broad Street Line.

Here, I do have a question about why the line wasn’t investigated from north to south. It ran only as far north as Girard, stopping well short of north Philadelphia neighbourhoods, and then as far south as Snyder, missing both Oregon and Pattison (sorry, corporately branded AT&T) stations. The robustness of the dataset is a bit worrying.

The colours here too mean nothing. Instead blue is used for the blue-coloured Market–Frankford line and orange for the orange-coloured Broad Street line. (The Patco line would have been red.) Here was a missed opportunity to encode temperature data along the route.

Finally, if the sidewalk temperatures were measured at each station, I would want to see that data alongside and perhaps run some comparisons.

This is an interesting story, but some more exploration and visualisation of the data could have taken it to the next level.

Credit for the piece goes to Danya Henninger.

The Sartorial Trump

Happy Friday, all. We made it to the end of the week. Though if you are like me, i.e. living on the East Coast, welcome to Hell. As in so hot and humid.

So last month President Trump visited the United Kingdom on a state visit. He drew attention to himself not just because of his rhetoric, but also for his fashion choices. Consequently, the Washington Post published a piece about those fashion choices from the perspective of a professional tailor.

The overall piece is well worth a read if you find presidential fashion fascinating. But how does it qualify for Coffeespoons? A .gif that shows how Trump would look in a properly tailored suit.

Since this is a screenshot, you miss the full impact. The piece is an animation of an existing photo and how that then morphs into this for comparison’s sake.

I really enjoy the animated .gif when it works for data visualisation and story-telling.

Credit for the piece goes to Ezra Paul.