Your humble author is away this week. But the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is still here. For now. The Guardian takes a look at the growing threat to the World Heritage site from the coal industry in Queensland, Australia. The author takes you through the narrative in a chapter format, using charts and maps to illustrate the points in the brief bit of text. A really nice job altogether.
Credit for the piece goes to Nick Evershed.
Beyond the fact that it isn’t a country? This week the White House hosted the US–Africa Summit. The Washington Post took the opportunity to quiz readers on their knowledge of African countries’ locations on a blank map. So this Friday, you get to take the quiz and post your results if you dare. A nice touch is that the map colours the countries by the number of guesses and then provides different colour outlines for your selection and the correct one—should you err.
I messed up Burundi—I always confuse it and Rwanda—and only got a 98%. /humblebrag
Credit for the piece goes to Kevin Schaul.
For years, the Big Mac Index from the Economist has been a standard of sorts for examining differences in currencies across the world. Well now we have an online, interactive version of the index.
Credit for the piece goes to the Economist’s graphics department.
Maybe? But thanks to Pew Research, you can see if we align politically. Today’s post comes via Pete, a coworker of mine, and it is basically a survey that works by asking you 23 political questions on topics from big/small government, immigration, climate change, gay rights, defence spending, &c. They crunch some numbers and spit you out on a results page, the image below a crop from the results for your humble author. (For better or worse revealing my political leanings.)
From a survey standpoint, I found it interesting the questions presented only binary responses. In general, I found that I never agreed with either statement entirely and was forced to choose the “closest” response. Since I never see myself on the conservative side of the spectrum, I was surprised to see my “type”, Young Outsiders, coloured with a tint of red. Regardless, I’m still thankful that according to Pew, I am still more in the centre than on the ends as it makes it a lot easier to compromise. I’ve heard that that is an adult thing to do.
By the way, if you want the results of the full survey upon which this quiz was based, you can check out that site here. It’s full of bar charts for those who like the data visualisation.
Credit for the piece goes to the Pew Research Center.
Today’s piece comes from the Washington Post and looks at the prevalence of smoking in the United States and its change over time.
Credit for the piece goes to Richard Johnson.
Today’s piece, the first not on Québec, is a small but poignant reminder of the disparity between the number of deaths in Gaza and in Israel during this most recent conflict. According to the article, as of 16 July there has been one death in Israel for 194 in Gaza. This small piece from the New York Times shows the geographic location of the attacks from both sides and tallies the number of strikes. And the number of dead.
Credit for the piece goes to Craig Allen, David Furst, Nilkanth Patel, Archie Tse, and Derek Watkins.
Today I’m enjoying some really good burgers. So via Fastco, today’s graphic looks at cattle, pig, and chicken populations across different regions of the world. In the United States, as you can see in the map here, that dark red spot in eastern Pennsylvania, that has to be Lancaster County.
Credit for the piece goes to International Livestock Research Institute.
As someone who likes cooler weather, climate change sucks. Because that generally means warmer weather. Yes, yes, I know it means equally good chances for extreme cold temperatures and in general more extreme weather, but mostly I hate hot weather. So a new report by Risky Business Project, a group led by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, Henry Paulson, and Tom Steyer, looks to quantify some of the impact.
But in short, nothing good is going to happen. And basically, I will never move to the South.
Credit for the piece goes to the graphics team behind Risky Business.
Here in Chicago this week is Bike Week and today Bike to Work Day. So today is a great day for some work from Buzzfeed that highlights the gender gap in cycling (at least in three US cities). To be fair, the data for the statement comes only from urban bike share programmes. But it does hint at a disparity all the same.
Credit for the piece goes to Jeremy Singer-Vine.
I loved the title of this piece from the Washington Post that I had to borrow it myself. Of course all credit goes to that particular copywriter. The Washington Post looked at counties and states where gun stores outnumbered museums and libraries. Thankfully my home county has more knowledge than guns. Sadly, the same cannot be said for large areas of the country.
And of note, while Pennsylvania is narrowly more gun than knowledge, the city of Philadelphia ranks second in terms of ratio of libraries/museums to gun stores at 16.93. Only New York City ranked higher.
Credit for the piece goes to Christopher Ingraham.
