bar chart – Page 27 – Coffee Spoons

American Football Videogames

This week we have been looking at baseball (and Leonard Nimoy’s Star Trek). Today, we are going to turn to a sport I know nothing about: American football video games. Okay, so video games are not really a sport, but they are based on a sport. The reason I bring it up? FiveThirtyEIght has a really nice two-article story on how the Madden game franchise uses ratings to build characters for the game.

The above graphic is an interactive part of the story that lets you compare yourself to the real sports people, as estimated by the video game company. The second article in the story then builds upon that by using a reporter as a basis to test/understand the ratings.

And pay attention to the sidebar content. It’s actually worth heeding for once.

Credit for the piece goes to Reuben Fischer-Baum.

Baseball Is (Almost) Back

As the title says, baseball is almost back. Red Sox spring training games begin as the Red Sox take on Northeastern today. The off-season is perhaps the hardest part of the year for a fan, because unless you take super interest in trades, there is no baseball. But what about on Twitter? Well, today’s piece is an article from Fangraphs that looks at team-by-team off-season Twitter use.

Personally, I am not really a fan of the graphic. As a static image, it does not allow me to easily compare the different retweets or favourites. But, in the aggregate, you can see that the Seattle Mariners are perhaps the most active Twitter account.

Credit for the piece goes to Sean Dolinar.

Military Hardware

Earlier this week we looked at Ukraine’s loss of Debaltseve. Today we look at a piece from the Economist that compares the military hardware of the United States, Russia, and China. These are the mere datapoints on quantity, not quality. But it still illustrates fairly well why we should not fight a land war in Asia.

Credit for the piece goes to the Economist’s Data Team.

The American Shopping Mall

This past weekend Al-Shabab, the Al Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia, threatened shopping malls in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. This threat carries a certain amount of weight given the deadly attack Al-Shabab launched against the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya a few years ago.

So what to look at today? Well, a few weeks back a colleague sent me a link to a Bloomberg article about the American shopping mall. The article examines the makeup of stores, the people shopping, and the regionalisation in the food court(s). On a personal note, I was glad to see that King of Prussia received a mention.

Auntie Anne's in KoP? I'd rather Philly Pretzel Factory — Auntie Anne’s in KoP? I’d rather Philly Pretzel Factory

Credit for the piece goes to Dorothy Gambrell and Patrick Clark.

Lynchings

Let’s follow up yesterday’s good news story about measles with lynchings. The New York Times mapped and charted historical lynchings from 1877 to 1950 across 12 states in the South.

Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.

The Measles Outbreak

People, science is your friend. Vaccinations are not only for the benefit of yourself, but for others. Anyway, let us take a look at the measles outbreak through some graphics produced by the New York Times. It started in Disneyland. Because we had eliminated the disease about 15 years ago. Science, people.

Where the outbreak had spread as of 6 February

Credit for the piece goes to Jonathan Corum, Josh Keller, Haeyoun Park, and Archie Tse.

The Urban Future

Today’s selection is a little old—dating from July of last year—but is still a nice example of an inline graphic supporting the premise of its accompanying article. The New York Times looks at what was then data published by the United Nations on urban growth out to 2030. The article talks about the growth of megacities in lower income countries and those in the tropical regions. So smack in the middle of the article are two stacked bar charts breaking down urban populations into those two categories.

Personally I would have preferred a series of line charts to better compare the growth—the lack of a common baseline makes it very difficult to compare segments of the bars. But below the stacked bar charts we have a nice table. Those are always good to see. They organise information clearly and make it quick to find what is relevant.

Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.

Stop the Music

I get that a lot of you like Christmas. That’s great. But for those of not terribly attached to it for more than the days off work, listening to music can switch from being relaxing to aggravating right quick. Thankfully we have FiveThirtyEight to examine just how ridiculous this all-Christmas-all-the-time trend has become.

The combined plays of two Christmas songs

Credit for the piece goes to Walt Hickey.

Hit-and-Run Cycling Accidents in Los Angeles

Today’s piece comes via a colleague. It is an article about hit-and-run cycling accidents in and around Los Angeles. The data visualisation in the article is not entirely complex—we are talking only about line charts and bar charts—but they support the arguments and statements in the article. And in that sense they are doing their job.

Locations of hit-and-run accidents in and around LA

Credit for the piece goes to Armand Emamdjomeh, Laura J. Nelson, and Joseph Serna.

White (Immigrant) People

This is an old map that saw the light of day a while back. Featured on Vox, the map supports the notion that some white people are whiter than other white people. The map explores immigrant populations. Using a map for spatial arrangement of integrated components, the data looks at immigrants’ ethnic origins, their workforce breakdown, and their recent growth.

A look at PA, my ancestors are in that data set

Credit for the piece goes to FS Howell. (I presume.)