Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Read on…: Game of Thrones Ratings
No spoilers here, so don’t worry. But Game of Thrones ended last night. And I might be in the minority in that I like the overall ending and direction of the plot. But, I will agree that it would have been better…executed (just a Ned Stark reference) if at least the final two series were full, 10-episode series. As it…
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Golden Buttered Popcorn
Read on…: Golden Buttered PopcornWe are in the midst of basketball playoffs right now. And one of the teams participating is the Golden State Warriors. They are pretty good at this whole basketball thing. One of the reasons is their star player Steph Curry. And it turns out that he is an enormous fan of popcorn. So much so that despite the widespread focus…
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Abortion by State
Read on…: Abortion by StateIn case you did not hear, earlier this week Alabama banned all abortions. And for once, we do not have to add the usual caveat of “except in cases of rape or incest”. In Alabama, even in cases of rape and incest, women will not have the option of having an abortion. And in Georgia, legislators are debating a bill…
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Pennsylvania’s Population Shifts
Read on…: Pennsylvania’s Population ShiftsLast month the US Census Bureau published their first batch of 2018 population estimates for states and counties. Pennsylvania is one of those states that is growing, but rather slowly. It will likely lose out to southern and western states in the 2020 census after which House seats will be reapportioned and electoral college votes subtracted. From 2018 to 2010,…
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Natural Disasters
Read on…: Natural DisastersToday’s piece is another piece set against a black background. Today we look at one on natural disasters, created by both weather and geography/geology alike. The Washington Post mapped a number of different disaster types: flooding, temperature, fire, lightning, earthquakes, &c. and plotted them geographically. Pretty clear patterns emerge pretty quickly. I was torn between which screenshots to share, but…
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Missing Planets
Read on…: Missing PlanetsIn science news, we turn to graphics about planets and things. Specifically we are talking about exoplanets, i.e. planets that exist outside our solar system. Keep in mind that we have only been able to detect exoplanets since the 1990s. Prior to then, how rare was our system with all our planets? It could have been very rare. Now we…
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Disc Space
Read on…: Disc SpaceOne of my current projects is consolidating and organising all my genealogy files spread across multiple devices and drives into one central location. So I’ve been spending quite a bit of time looking at file sizes and things. And that is why this piece from xkcd made me laugh. Happy Friday, all. Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
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Trump-won Counties Are Winning
Read on…: Trump-won Counties Are WinningYesterday we looked at how China and the European Union are planning their tariff/trade war retaliation to target Trump voters. Today let’s take a look at how those voters are doing as this article from Bloom does. The article is not terribly complicated. We have four choropleth maps at the county level. Two of the maps isolate Trump-won counties and the other two…
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Trade War Retaliation
Read on…: Trade War RetaliationAbout a week and a half ago the Economist published an article about the retaliatory actions of the European Union and China against the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. Of course last week we had a theme of sorts with lineages and ancestry. So this week, back to the fun stuff. What makes today’s piece particularly relevant is that…