Tag: data visualisation

  • Brexit and Ireland

    This week I really wanted to hold off on commenting about Brexit graphics until things settled down—admittedly thinking Remain would win. Now that Thursday has arrived, I think we can all agree that settling down is not happening and the UK really is leaving the EU. As an Irish American, I grew up with frequent commentary…

  • How We Die

    It’s Friday, so what better and more uplifting way is there to enter the weekend than looking at the most distinctive ways people die in the United States. The piece comes from Bloomberg. Credit for the piece goes to Danielle Burger.

  • Coverage of the Orlando Shootings

    Last Monday I stated that I would attempt a longer piece on the graphics explaining the shootings in Orlando. Since I do not have access to the print versions, I am examining only the digital versions here. Go grab a cup of tea, because this is certainly one of my longer pieces. One of the most common…

  • Philadelphia’s Obesity Problem

    Last week Philadelphia became the first large US city to introduce a soda tax. (Berkeley introduced one a few years ago, but is 1/10 the size of Philly.) The Guardian has a really nice write-up on how the tax was sold not on health benefits, but of civic benefits to the education system. But the…

  • Predicting the Electoral College

    Well the Democratic DC primaries were last Tuesday and Hillary Clinton won. So now we start looking ahead towards the July conventions and then the November elections. Consequently, if a day is an eternity in politics we have many lifespans to witness before November. But that does not mean we cannot start playing around with…

  • Contextual Scatter Plots

    I know I mentioned that I would review the coverage of the Orlando shootings this week in more depth than I did on Monday. But, allow me an interruption for a nice little piece that I wanted to get to last week. If anything, it’s far less serious. My apologies for my focus of late…

  • Not All Charts Are Necessary Part 2

    Monday I examined a chart from the BBC that in my mind needlessly added confusing visual components to what could have been a straight table. So here we take a look at some other options that could have been used to tell the same story. The first is the straight forward table approach. Here I…

  • Tables of Insight

    Yesterday I opined about how simple tables can convey meaningful information without the aid of unnecessary chart elements. And while we will get back to that post, I did want to take a moment to share an older piece from the New York Times I recalled and that has been updated since Orlando. The piece…

  • Not All Charts Are Necessary

    I will be trying to do a longer piece on the data visualisations surrounding the shootings in Orlando later this week. But for starters, a simple point through this piece from the BBC—not that they are the only culprits of this. Not all data-driven stories need visualisations. Sometimes a nicely typeset table will do the…

  • Independent Candidates

    Well, the election battleground has been set: Trump vs. Clinton. (Yes, I know the District of Columbia has yet to vote.) For those unhappy with the choices presented, the question of “what about a third party candidate?” arises. (Yes, I know there is both a Libertarian Party and Green Party already.) Months ago, FiveThirtyEight looked…