data visualisation – Page 80

There’s No Diversity in Baseball!

Well, okay, actually there is. But the cultural reference would have made even less sense if I omitted the negative. Anyway, in honour of the two baseball games I am seeing this week—last night’s and tonight’s Red Sox games—here comes this piece from Pew Research Center.

It’s a simple but fairly clear graphic. We are looking at the ethnic breakdown of baseball since 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier. My only qualm, as ever, with this stacked area chart is that while you can see the clear trend upward in white share, it is a bit more difficult to see the directions the other ethnicities are moving.

Credit for the piece goes to Pew Research Council.

Tax Day and Income Inequality

Tax Day for Americans seems like a great time to talk about income inequality. The article from which this chart comes talks about a recent book exploring the parallels of the 19th century’s inequality—as the article reminds us, the time of “Please, sir, may I have another?”—and the forecast for the 21st. Anyway, the graphic is a nice use of small multiples and highlights that despite the damage done to capital wealth by Great Depressions and two world wars, it is well on its way back to unequal levels.

Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.

Allergens of DC

Good news and bad news, folks. The good news is that this chart does not apply to people living in Chicago, Philadelphia, or elsewhere. Unless—here’s the bad news—you live in Washington, D.C. In that case, well, prepare to die. You know, if you have allergies. The Washington Post has a nice graphic that outlines the arrival and peak seasons for different pollen allergens.

Credit for the piece goes to Bonnie Berkowitz and Patterson Clark.

Understanding the Frequency of Events

Happy Friday. Credit for this goes to Randall Munroe, who helps you understand how often things happen.

Comparing Urban Statistics

Sometimes when you are considering moving, you want to look at some broad statistics on the area in which you want to move. In Boston, the Boston Globe has put together a neat little application that does just that. Type in two settlements in the metro area and then get a quick comparison of the two.

Credit for the piece goes to Catherine Cloutier, Andrew Tran, Russell Goldenberg, Corinne Winthrop.

Chicago’s Disappearing Middle Class

President Obama has made a big deal recently about income inequality. The story in short is that the rich in the country are getting rich; the poor are getting poorer; and the people in the middle are fewer in number. Here in Chicago, this has meant that over the last few decades, many of the former middle-class neighbourhoods have been gutted of, well, the middle class. Daniel Kay Hertz has created a series of maps to show just how drastic the change has been since 1970.

Credit for the piece goes to Daniel Kay Hertz.

Motorcycle Helmet Laws

Today’s piece does not involve any particularly crazy graphics or forms of data visualisation. Instead, the piece is a novel way of telling a story. People are increasingly familiar with what we might call here scrolling stories. Scroll down the page and suddenly you have glossy photos or high-definition videos. The New York Times, however, has taken this idea in a different direction for a story about motorcycle helmet laws.

Instead of glossy photos, we have clear and concise charts. Instead of lots of text blocks, we have just a few sentences. The story is told by the charts and the text offers the necessary context or background. Not all stories will have the data behind them to allow the story to be told—or shown—in such dramatic fashion. But, I can hope they do.

Credit for the piece goes to Alastair Dant and Hannah Fairfield.

Recent Military Expenditure

The Crimean situation has highlight how much not just Ukraine is not ready to fight Russia, but also how much less Western Europe is prepared to fight. This piece from the Washington Post examines actual defence expenditure and then defence expenditure as a share of GDP. While Europe has remained steady or in decline, Russia has been ramping up its defence spending since the beginning of the 21st century.

Credit for the pieces goes to Patterson Clark.

Spilling the Oil

A few weeks ago, Bloomberg Businessweek published a nice graphic that summarised the last 25 years of oil spills. I’m finally getting around to posting it. But what it does really well is show just how bad the Deepwater Horizon spill was compared to the other big name disaster: Exxon Valdez. Of particular note is the bar chart at the bottom right comparing the millions of gallons of oil spilled.

Credit for the piece goes to Evan Applegate.

Finding MH370

Today’s piece comes from USA Today via a colleague. The piece is part of a larger article about the increasingly all-but-certain crash of MH 370. In step-by-step fashion, it guides the user through several facets of the flight and the investigation as well as the human impact.

Credit for the piece goes to Frank Pompa, Janet Loehrke, Jeff Dionise, Anne R. Carey and Denny Gainer, Alejandro Gonzalez, and Kevin A. Kepple.