Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Read on…: Baseball Is Back
Praise the (baseball) gods. The 2018 season starts today with I think every team playing—the Red Sox open down in St. Petersburg against the Rays. So today’s post is on the light side as I could not find the awesomest baseball graphic. But FiveThirtyEight did at least preview the season and ran some projections. Naturally, I disagree with their projections. But I…
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Circle This
Read on…: Circle ThisLast week I met a friend for drinks and part of our conversation was about how on a trip to east Asia, he flew from New York and then over the North Pole. The North Pole! I then explained it was cool, but not unique. Instead aircraft typically fly between destinations via great circles. Basically, the shortest distance between two…
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Tech Economies in the USA
Read on…: Tech Economies in the USAEarlier this March the Washington Post published a piece looking at the twenty finalist contenders for the second Amazon headquarters. Specifically it explored how the cities rank in metrics that speak to a city’s technology and innovation economy. That in and of itself, while incredibly fascinating, is not noteworthy in and of itself. Though I will say the article’s online title…
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All Hail the Nurses and Working People
Read on…: All Hail the Nurses and Working PeopleLet’s start this week with a quick hit on popularity and politics. It ties in nicely with the fact that my local congressman, a Republican, announced on Sunday he would not be seeking re-election in a very competitive district. This piece in particular comes from the Economist and in terms of form, it is fairly simple. A scatter plot tackling the…
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Visualisation Types
Read on…: Visualisation TypesI laughed aloud when I read this. So I am just going to leave it here. Happy Friday, all. Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
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Natural Decrease
Read on…: Natural DecreaseThe New York Times has posted a nice piece with an animated graphic. No, not that piece, I’ll probably cover that next week. This one looks at demographic changes in the United States, specifically in the population change at county levels. A number you arrive at by subtracting deaths from births and excluding migration. Basically what we are seeing is…
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Warmer Winters
Read on…: Warmer WintersPhiladelphia is expecting a little bit of snow today, 20 March. We should not be seeing too much accumulate if anything, but still, flakes will likely be in the air this evening. That made me think of this piece from just last week where the New York Times looked at the change in winter temperatures across the United States for…
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Russia Tomorrow
Read on…: Russia TomorrowIn news that surprises absolutely nobody, Russia “re-elected” Vladimir Putin as president for another six-year term. The Economist recently looked at what they termed the Puteens, a generation of Russians born starting in 1999 who have no memory of a Russia pre-Vladimir Putin. This piece features a set of interactive dot plots that capture survey results on a number of topics that…
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Basketball Tournament Locations
Read on…: Basketball Tournament LocationsMy apologies to those of you who are big fans of basketball. Since it is not really my sport of choice, I had no idea that March Madness started yesterday. Otherwise, I would have posted this earlier. FiveThirtyEight analysed the locations of basketball conferences’ tournaments relative to the geographic centres of said conferences. As it turns out many conferences do…