data visualisation – Page 81

Smoking in the US

Today’s piece comes from the New York Times. It fits within a broader article about smoking in the United States. The map is a choropleth that compares the smoking rate across counties and states in 1996 and 2012. However, as the article talks about how difficult it has been to decrease the smoking rates among the poor, I wonder if even just a third map would be useful. This map could have shown the actual decline, perhaps in percentage points, of counties between 1996 and 2012. Or another related graphic could have tried to correlate income and said change.

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

Income vs. Life Expectancy

Today’s post comes via the New York Times. It’s a simple concept, but shown clearly in this collection of scatter plots. Growth in income for many counties has meant a growth in life expectancy. Unfortunately, not all counties are prospering and so the gap between rich and poor, and therefore the long-lived and shorter-lived, has grown.

Perhaps the only criticism I have about this piece is that for the highlighting of Fairfax County, Virginia and McDowell Country, West Virginia, an additional component could have summarised the growing gap between the two. For example, a bar chart along the axes of each could measure the growth in income disparity and the growth in life expectancy disparity.

Credit for the piece goes to Alicia Parlapiano.

Jade Rabbit

In December, China landed a rover named Jade Rabbit on the Moon. The South China Morning Post created a nice infographic to explain the lunar landing and place it in the context of other missions to the Moon.

Credit for the piece goes to Adolfo Arranz.

One Proposal to Simplify the Tax Code

Republican congressman Dave Camp, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee (basically responsible for the tax code), wants to simplify the tax code. This nice graphic by the Washington Post basically sums up the changes.

Credit for the piece goes to the Washington Post graphics department.

Mobile Data Visualisation

Today’s post is not news-related for a change. (Don’t worry, I’ll likely get back to that next week.) Instead, we have a new collection of mobile data visualisations curated by Sebastian Sadowski. You can choose to see either smartphone or tablet visualisations and then filter by visual form.

Credit for the site goes to Sebastian Sadowski, to the various works to the various designers.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Ukraine has dominated the news much of the last few weeks. But the new 24/7 international news story is the missing aircraft (at least as of my writing this) that was Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. There are presently two nice graphics I have seen attempting to explain the story. The first, a cropping of which is below, is from the Washington Post.

The second piece, again another cropping, is from the South China Morning Post.

South China Morning Post's graphic — South China Morning Post’s graphic

Credit for the Washington Post piece goes to Gene Thorp, Alberto Cuadra, Laris Karklis, and Richard Johnson.

Credit for the South China Morning Post piece goes to the South China Morning Post graphics department.

Answering Some More Questions About Ukraine

So Ukraine is even more of a mess and in less than a week’s time, the Crimean people will vote in a referendum on whether they want to remain a part of Ukraine or rejoin Russia. This graphic of mine is an attempt to answer some questions—though hardly all I wanted—about Ukraine, Crimea, and about what the Russians have been doing. (To be fair, the Russians still don’t admit that the troops and soldiers are theirs. But really, I mean come on, we all know they are.)

Bad Film February

Did you go to the cinema in February? Well, according to some research done by Slate, what you watched probably sucked. I’m just glad I never went last month. Maybe March will be a little bit better.

Credit for the piece goes to Chris Kirk and Kim Thompson.

Economically Isolating Russia

The West hesitates to use military force to push Russian troops out of Crimea. Likely with good reason as any such campaign would be neither cheap nor bloodless in addition to running the risk of spreading beyond the borders of Ukraine. So that leaves diplomatic and economic isolation. Diplomatic isolation is already underway—the G8 conference to be hosted in Sochi this summer is all but dead. But economic isolation is still being discussed.

The United States is generally in favour, but Europe—namely Germany—has been more cautious. But as my graphic shows, without Europe a sanctions regime would be largely toothless since half of Russia’s exports go to Europe. Except that Russia is also responsible for a significant proportion of Europe’s imported natural gas and sanctions on Russia could cause an interruption in that fuel to Western Europe. Naturally, most of that natural gas is, of course, transported through pipelines running across Ukraine.

Household Income Inequality

The Washington Post published this dot plot graphic to explore inequality in household income across numerous American cities.

The chart, as most dot plots do, does a good job of showing where several distinct points within a set fall within the entire range of data. Or to put it into other words, where do the poorest, the richest, and the most middlest households in Philadelphia fall within all Philadelphia households? The data is interesting because you will begin to uncover some significant outliers. For example, by quick glance, the 50th percentile in both Detroit and Cleveland earn less than the 20th percentile in San Jose.

Credit for the piece goes to the Washington Post graphics department.