Tag: critique

  • Regions of German Nationalism

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    The Economist has an interesting piece looking at the areas of support for the far-right AfD German political party, arguably a neo-fascist nationalist party. It turns out that The piece does a great job of setting the case through the demographics map at the top of the piece. It shows how the two areas where…

  • Angry Birds? Bad Birds

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Baseball is almost upon us. And oh boy do the Baltimore Orioles look bad. How bad? Historically bad. FiveThirtyEight went so far as to chart the expected WAR, wins above replacement, of each position of all teams since 1973. And the expected Orioles lineup looks remarkably bad. What is nice about this graphic is the…

  • Why the Faces?

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Stepping away from both the Brexit drama and the aircraft drama of the week, let’s look at US political drama. Specifically, the Democratic field and some of the early support for candidates and assumed-to-be candidates. This piece comes from an article about the bases of various candidates. From a data visualisation perspective it uses a…

  • Similar Airspeed Patterns

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Yesterday we looked at the isolation of the US and Canada in keeping the Boeing 737 Max aircraft in the air. Later that day, both countries grounded those aircraft. Today in the print edition of the New York Times the front page used significant space to chart the vertical speed of the two crashed aircraft.…

  • Is Bryce Harper Another Ryan Howard?

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    No. Definitely not. But, the position of this article by FiveThirtyEight is that the Phillies, the Philadelphia baseball team that just made the largest guaranteed contract in North American sports, may have purchased the rights to somebody who is a few years past his prime. The author tracked the performance of similar baseball players over…

  • The Bill Barr Bifurcation

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    So today’s piece is not a revolutionary piece of information design, but it is fascinating. For two or so years now, we have all heard about the Robert Mueller investigation into potential contacts between the Trump campaign, early administration, and the administration of Russian president Vladimir Putin. To be clear, thus far, this has been…

  • Individualistic Immigrants

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    As many of you know, genealogy and family history is a topic that interests me greatly. This past weekend I spent quite a bit of time trying to sort through a puzzle—though I am not yet finished. It centred on identifying the correct lineages of a family living in a remote part of western Pennsylvania.…

  • Are Baseball’s Big Contracts Worth It?

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    On Tuesday the San Diego Padres signed Manny Machado to a guaranteed contract worth $300 million over the next ten years—though he can opt out after five years. Machado was one of two big free agents on the market, the other being Bryce Harper. One question out there is whether or not these big contracts…

  • Be Like Mike?

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Back in 2012 the New York Times ran what is a classic data visualisation piece on Mariano Rivera. It tracked the number of saves the legendary Yankees closer had over his career and showed just how ridiculous that number was—and how quickly he had attained it. Last week, the Washington Post ran a piece that did something…

  • Where is the North Pole?

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    We have two North Poles. The most commonly known is the geographic north pole that sits at the top of the world. We also have the magnetic north pole, which is where your compass points when you are lost in the woods. But, the magnetic north pole is not static and in fact moves. (In…