Happy Friday, everybody.
Now go wash your eyes out.
Credit for the piece goes to Jewel Loree.
Hello. / Goodbye.
Tag: charting
Virginia Election Results
Last night was election night. Okay, maybe not the big midterm, but there were still a few interesting races. The one I want to look at it, however, is the gubernatorial race in Virginia. Maps are pretty much the default in big, statewide races like these and it is no surprise that the three screenshots here are use a map as an anchor component.
The Huffington Post uses a scatterplot to compare the margin of victory for Terry McAuliffe to that of Barack Obama in 2012. A technical flaw places the drop down menu atop the plot, unfortunately, but the component works to show differences in just one year.
Over at the New York Times, the Virginia results were given a nice overview. Here they used a text summary to explain the race in short. They used a small amount of space to show polling results over time. And then beneath the map they looked at recent elections across the state.
The Washington Post, which reports to the northern counties of Virginia, had a much simpler piece. They used solely a map to present the data.
Credit for the Huffington Post piece goes to Aaron Bycoffe, Jay Boice, and Hilary Fung.
Credit for the New York Times piece goes to the New York Times’ graphics department.
Credit for the Washington Post piece goes to the Washington Post’s graphics department.
Visualising the World Series
Last week the Boston Red Sox won the 2013 World Series. I did a wee bit of celebrating and so I did not have the chance to post today’s post until, well, today. A company called Statlas charted each game of the World Series. One of my coworkers pointed me in the direction of these visualisations, unfortuantely I missed out on most of them for the playoffs. Here, though, is when I started feeling a lot less nervous about Boston’s chances for winning Game 6.
There is a lot to see and look at in these games. And I will be curious to see where Statlas takes these—if they take them anywhere—for the 2014 season. Baseball is a game rich with statistics and data and teams and fans are increasingly using them to play and understand the play in the games. It’s about time somebody starts doing some valuable visualisations.
Credit for the piece goes to Statlas.
Mapping Public Health Data
Today’s piece maps and charts comes from the Illinois Department of Public Health. The piece combines maps and charting components to detail preventable hospitalisations and emergency room use in the state of Illinois.
Ordinarily I would prefer just one map, however, in this case the designers realised that a regional map—with its larger surface area—need not be as large as the county map. Some additional elements worth noting is the area devoted to the human explanation of the categories, which might otherwise be difficult to understand.
Credit for the piece goes to Axis Maps.
The Roma of Europe
The Roma, or the Gypsies, are a displaced population living throughout Europe. They have been in the news recently. In France, a family was deported to Kosovo after their asylum appeal was rejected after a few years. However, the deportation removed a girl from a French school and the outcry was sufficient that President Hollande intervened. The girl—but not her family—is being allowed to return to France to complete her education. Also last week, Greek police picked up a fair-skinned, blonde-haired, green-eyed girl from a Roma camp because she did not look like her family. They performed a genetic test and found she was of no relation and fear the child was kidnapped. A bit earlier than last week, the French interior minister said that most Roma were not capable of integrating into French society and that they should leave France. And so the New York Times put together a piece supporting an article about the Roma population in Europe that is worth a quick look if you want to better understand the Roma diaspora.
Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.
Baseball Payrolls
The World Series starts tomorrow night and for all but two teams, that means focusing on the upcoming 2014 roster. And rosters are often defined by payroll flexibility. A co-worker of mine forwarded along today’s interactive graphic that looks at team payrolls through stacked bar charts.
The design is certainly a bit clunky with heavy black outlines and garish colours. But the story told is clear, especially if you begin to look at different teams. Which teams have players locked up for the long-term and thereby have little flexibility?
The Red Sox, of course, sent most of that bar from 2011 to the Los Angeles Dodgers near the end of 2012. That allowed them to pick up the free agents like Mike Napoli, Johnny Gomes, Shane Victorino, and Koji Uehara. You know, the guys without whom the Red Sox would not have advanced to the World Series.
Credit for the piece goes to Phil Roth.
A Data-driven Web Application for Global Economic Statistics
In the interests of transparency and full disclosure, for my employer I design interactive web-based applications that display significant amounts of data on various countries and industries—along with other design things. So I am always curious to see how others handle similar types and quantities of data. This interactive application—I hesitate to call something like this an interactive infographic because of its scale and scope—comes from the Global Economic Dynamics project.
I commend the designers for opting not to use a map despite the nature of a dataset that focuses on countries. Especially in this application, where the full pattern of trade or migration would only be visible through multiple clicks to load maps of export/import markets of a particular country.
The user can add multiple countries, switch to a different dataset, change the year of the displayed data, currency, metrics, &c. There is quite a bit going on in this application and the controls are carefully placed in the margins of the piece.
And while I could probably write a lot more about this piece, I will end up the ability to share any insights made while using this application. Because what is the value of a kernel of knowledge if you cannot share it? Consequently, this piece offers a multitude of options. The usual social media options are present. You can also download a .png for use in a presentation, e.g. PowerPoint, or you can download the data. But fascinatingly, the application allows you to embed the piece into your own site.
Unfortunately, I cannot find any specific designers attached to the project. So credit goes to the Global Economic Dynamics project.
Name Dropping Brands
Happy Friday, everybody. Today’s post is a graphic from Vanity Fair that looks at the rapper Jay Z. (And for all those wondering, no, I have never intentionally listened to any of his music.) Specifically, this kind-of-stacked-bar-but-more-icon chart indicates how many times he name drops specific luxury brands in his albums.
You can also file this under the graphics to which I cannot relate. Although maybe, just maybe, I once had a pair of Nike trainers. So at least Jay Z and I have that in common.
Credit for the piece goes to Philip Rhie.
The New American Center
NBC News and Esquire magazine published results from their August survey of some 2000+ respondents that attempted to define the New American Center, i.e. the political persuasions of the majority of the country excepting the radical right and the loony left. For the purposes of Coffee Spoons, I am most interested in looking at the data visualisation and the infographics that result.
Both NBC News and Esquire visualised the results. While I could write two long blog posts looking at both of them, for today, it is more important to look more at the fundamental design difference between the two.
NBC News opted for a design direction emphasising data first. Perhaps because NBC is a news platform, their focus was on the clean communication of the data. Looking
On the other hand, Esquire opted for a more sensationalised direction. The same data points used for the screenshot above creates this graphic below. Not only is less data is contained, less context given, less subtlety and nuance captured, it also is just difficult to read. Is the 59% supposed to be the area of the cross filled in? Its length? Why is it three-dimensional? Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear? At first glance, I ignore the horizontal wings and focus solely on the vertical length of the main bar.
For a useful representation of data, I think NBC News clearly wins. But that both organisations used the same data to craft their separate results, this story on the New American Center is useful for comparing two different design directions and the results thereof.
No designers are specifically mentioned, at least not that I could find, so credit for each piece goes to its respective owner, i.e. NBC News or Esquire.
The Future of Data Visualisation
Happy Friday, everyone. According to xkcd, I am failing the future test. That is to say, by 2019, I will be unable to communicate data through infographics or create data visualisations.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.