We enter our second week of the government shutdown. Of course, blame for the shutdown falls largely upon a small number of conservative Republican members of the House, bolstered by Senator Cruz (R-TX) and his allies in the Senate. But we already know that there are a number of moderate Republicans who want to pass a clean budget resolution. So one way of looking at this new conservative faction is as a new minor party in a coalition government with Ted Cruz as Party Leader.
The idea is not mine. Ryan Lizza first wrote about the “Suicide Caucus”, a topic that Philip Bump expanded upon several days later. However, as a thought experiment, I was curious to see what would happen if this third party, a Conservative Party, would look in data visualisation terms. So here’s a quick stab at America’s newest third party.
The Washington Post put together this infographic looking at paydays for federal employees who will still be working during the shutdown, e.g. military service personnel. Of course, if the shutdown drags on, the paychecks for those still working would be delayed.
Paying essential personnel
Credit for the piece goes to Lisa Rein and Todd Lindeman.
This interactive map from the Washington Post is one part of a long-form piece that looks at NASA and the improbable tasks facing the agency. Specifically the piece looks at how NASA wants to get to Mars, but how difficult that is and how an also difficult asteroid mission is as a backup plan.
Funding the improbable
Really fantastic is about all I can say.
Credit for the piece goes to Joel Achenbach, Alberto Cuadra, Kennedy Elliott, Rebecca Rolfe, and Ricky Carioti.
Some say bribes grease the wheels of business. But if that is the case, where are the greasiest wheels? This interactive piece from the BBC showcases an interesting story. It maps who has paid bribes and the value thereof. Then it looks at corruption in the different sectors of the country and which is perceived to be the most corrupt.
A look at bribery
Aesthetically this is not the finest piece. Some of the most interesting countries to view are in Africa and Southeast Asia, i.e. geographies near the equator. Unfortunately the designers here chose a map projection that emphasises Siberia and Arctic Canada at the expense of those very countries. Also, where did Greenland go? I know that the ice is melting, but I don’t think it’s melted that quickly. Furthermore, if the user clicks the “List” option, he or she is presented only with a list of geographies. None of them are selectable nor do they encode data. So why is the list there?
In short, the interface is a bit clunky and strangely designed. Line lengths are too long and it looks ugly. But, there are two interesting things going on here worth noting. First the legend here actually does not just show the range for the choropleth, but it also encodes the number of countries that fall within that range.
Second, by clicking on a particular bin for the legend, the map filters for the selection. I think that from a design perspective, a lighter grey and a lighter stroke outline would have made the filtering a bit more prominent, but the idea is interesting. Unfortunately, I found no way of easily returning to an all-bin view of the map.
A piece for the BBC that misses a few, but also hits a few.
Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics team.
Today’s post comes from the Washington Post. It is a single interactive graphic, a map, that supports a long-form article about foreclosures in Washington.
DC foreclosure map
Credit for the piece’s graphics goes to Ted Mellnik, Emily Chow, and Laura Stanton.
So my wine palate is neither as refined nor sophisticated as it was before I moved to Chicago. (Oh hi, whisky.) However, wineries are springing up all over the country—and not just in California. This interactive graphic from the New York Times details the country, mapping out wineries up top and then exploring the growth in several key states near the bottom. In particular, note the chart for the number of wineries in California that runs down the right-hand side.
Map of US wineries
Credit for the piece goes to Kevin Schaul, Tim Wallace, and Adrienne Carter.
Joshua Katz from North Carolina State University has created an interactive version of the dialect survey maps first perhaps popularised several years ago. Katz has also created an interactive map that looks at a city’s dialect and maps its areas of similarity and difference. An interesting extension of the original survey data, however, is the ability to take the survey yourself and see where your dialect fits. There are two versions, a 25-question survey and a 140-question survey.
The screenshot below is my result from the 25-question version. And it fits me fairly well since I spent most of my years in the suburbs of Philadelphia but every summer in South Jersey (and quite a bit of time in Allentown). Click the map to take the quiz for yourself. Feel free to reply and share your results.
Clearly I am Philadelphia raised
From the technical side, for those wondering, this is a piece that is done in Shiny, the interactive version of R.
I was catching up on some news tonight and I came upon an unhelpful graphic that was supposed to be helping me understand the whip count (who is voting yes or no) for authorising the use of force in Syria. Below is the original graphic from Think Progress.
The whip count as of 15.30 on 3 September
I struggled, however, to directly compare the yes and no votes. While I certainly understand that the splits within both parties are a fascinating subplot to the greater issue of will we bomb Syria, the traditional congressional arc visualisation is not helpful here. So using the same numbers, I simply plotted what is essentially a stacked bar chart. In truly heretical, i.e. independent, fashion I mixed the two parties together and placed them at either ends of the chart. The first to reach 50% wins. (If I were updating this live of course.)
My visualisation of the whip count…
Credit for the original goes to Igor Volsky and Judd Legum.
Admittedly I am a one-sport kind of guy; baseball is my thing. But I am at least aware that as Labour Day demarcates the border between summer and fall, it simultaneously signifies the beginning of the seasonal transition from baseball to football. (Though I am still pulling to see the Red Sox in October.)
This graphic comes from the New York Times from an article looking at the sports network ESPN. Specifically, the article focuses on the network’s strategy of working with smaller schools desiring national attention to fill in open spaces on their weekly broadcast calendar. In short, weekday nights are not big nights for college football; usually people watch their alma maters on Saturday. But, if your school is willing to make schedule adjustments, ESPN is apparently willing to throw you some money. This interactive bar chart looks at whether your alma mater (or in my case the only university I attended that had sports—yay art school) has begun to play weekday games.
Weekday football by conference and compared to Penn State
Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.
Today’s interactive piece comes from Axis Philly and it looks at the total amount of rainfall in Philadelphia (1990–2013) to find both which months and what time of day receive the most rainfall.
When it rains…
As it turns out, evenings in the summer months receive the most rainfall. And since 1990, the most rain has fallen between 19.00 and 20.00 in July. A nice complementary piece would have been a small graphic showing total distribution of rain over the months, without segregating the data into hourly chunks. But again, that would have been a nice complement to the piece as it is far from necessary.
Credit for the piece goes to Jeff Frankl, Casey Thomas, and Julia Bergman.
