Tag: critique

  • Dry Heat Is Only Part of California’s Problem

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    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Wildfires continue to burn across in California. One, the Camp Fire in northern California near Chico, has already claimed 77 lives. But why has this fire been so deadly? FiveThirtyEight explained some of the causes in an article that features a number of charts and graphics. The screenshot below features a scatter plot looking at…

  • Pulling Gene-ies Out of Bottles

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    I don’t always get to share more illustrative diagrams that explain things, but that’s what we have today from the Economist. It illustrated the concept of a gene drive by which a gene modified in one chromosome then modifies the remaining chromosome to insert itself there. Consequently it stands an almost 100% chance of being…

  • The Midterms Are Not Over

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Your author is back after a few days out sick and then the Armistice Day holiday. But guess what? The elections are not yet all over. Instead, there are a handful of races to call. Below is a screenshot from a FiveThirtyEight article tracking those races still too close to call. Why are there races?…

  • Election Day

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    The 2018 midterm elections are finally here. Thankfully for political nerds like myself, the New York Times homepage had a link to a guide of when what polls close (as early as 18.00 Eastern). It makes use of small multiples to show when states close and then afterwards which states have closed and which remain…

  • Congressional District Population Density

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Tomorrow is Election Day here in the United States and this morning I wanted to look at a piece I’ve had in mind on doing from City Lab. I held off because it looks at the election and what better time to do it than right before the election. Specifically, the article looks at the…

  • Midterm Challengers

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    My initial plan for today was that I was not going to run anything light-hearted and focus instead on next week’s elections. But I still love xkcd so I checked that out and…well, here we go. At the broadest view, much is unintelligible on the map. But, you can see a lot of blue, or…

  • Where People Vote

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Voting is not compulsory in the United States. Consequently a big part of the strategy for winning is increasing your voters’ turnout and decreasing that of your opponent. In other words, demotivate your opponent’s supporters whilst simultaneously motivating your own base. But what does that baseline turnout map look like? Well, thankfully the Washington Post created…

  • Pages of Polls and Forecasts

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    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    We are now one week away from the midterm elections here in the United States. Surprisingly, we are going to be looking at election-y things over the course of the next week or so. But before we delve into that, I wanted to focus on the homepage for FiveThirtyEight, the below screenshot is from my…

  • The New Longest Flight

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    You might recall that back in March I wrote about the use of spherical maps to show great circles. This helps illustrate the actual routes that aircraft take in flight. (Yes, actual flight plans deviate based on routes, weather, traffic, &c.) At the time I wrote about how there was a soon-to-be Singapore–New York route.…

  • Europe is More than the Big States

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    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    First, I want to start with a housekeeping note. Your author will be travelling for work and then a short autumn holiday. And so while I may be able to sneak a post or two in, I generally would not expect anything until next Friday, 12 October. But let’s end this string of posts with…