Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Read on…: Where Syria Struck with Chemical Weapons
Friday night the US, UK, and France struck targets in Syria that play a role in the chemical weapons programme of the Bashir al-Assad regime. This is despite “eliminating” his chemical weapons several years ago. And so not surprisingly the media this past weekend covered Syria and the airstrikes. This print piece from the New York Times, however, looked backwards…
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Spring Has Arrived
Read on…: Spring Has ArrivedFor those of you in Philadelphia, you are probably glad for today’s (and Saturday’s) forecast: sunny and 25ºC. That means grilling, outdoor drinking, and if you fit this description from Indexed, well, mowing. Thankfully I live in a city where this is no such thing as lawn. What is lawn? Though let us not kid ourselves, temperatures fall back to…
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Picking at the Bones
Read on…: Picking at the BonesWe have all seen the slider that lets you see a pre- and post- or before and after of, usually, the same property, building, landscape, map, &c. Well a few days ago, the Denver Post took the same form and used it to show the before and after of cuts to the staffroom in just five years. What makes the…
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Finding Yourself on the Pennsylvania Turnpike
Read on…: Finding Yourself on the Pennsylvania TurnpikeI hope you all enjoyed your Easter holidays. Easter, wasn’t that two weekends ago you ask. Catholic/Protestant Easter, yes. This past weekend was Orthodox Easter. And since that is what my family celebrates, I was away on holiday this past weekend and only got back in town last night. But on the way out to the ancestral stomping grounds in…
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Knuckle Cracking
Read on…: Knuckle CrackingI used to work with a designer who was an expert knuckle cracker. So when I saw this article from the Guardian last week, I was hoping that it contained some kind of an illustration. Thankfully it did. What I like about the graphic is its simplicity. The illustration does not add a lot of extraneous details in the hands or fingers.…
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Pub Trivia Performance—the Long View
Read on…: Pub Trivia Performance—the Long ViewLast week my pub trivia team was debating whether our high score, although only good for second place—we lost by one point—was the highest. So this past weekend I scoured my sketchbooks for the last year and a half and reviewed our scores. Alas, the earliest appearances were tally-free. And I did not record them consistently until this past autumn,…
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Deaths in America
Read on…: Deaths in AmericaYesterday was murders in London and New York. Today, we have a nice article from FiveThirtyEight about deaths more broadly in America. If you recall, my point yesterday was that not all graphics need to be full column width. And this article takes that approach—some graphics are full width whereas others are not. This screenshot shows a nice line chart…
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London Beats New York
Read on…: London Beats New YorkIn murders. Not the best of news, no. But this past March London saw more murders than New York. But as I was reading the BBC article this weekend, I wondered why the graphic they chose to use received as much prominence in the article as it did. The chart as you can see occupied a full column width. But…
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Technical Data Visualisation
Read on…: Technical Data VisualisationI work with economists. And so I get to see working papers and other technical papers on a rather frequent basis. But I still have no way of verifying this premise. Though I most certainly believe in that dip… Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.