demographics – Page 16 – Coffee Spoons

The New American Center

NBC News and Esquire magazine published results from their August survey of some 2000+ respondents that attempted to define the New American Center, i.e. the political persuasions of the majority of the country excepting the radical right and the loony left. For the purposes of Coffee Spoons, I am most interested in looking at the data visualisation and the infographics that result.

Both NBC News and Esquire visualised the results. While I could write two long blog posts looking at both of them, for today, it is more important to look more at the fundamental design difference between the two.

NBC News opted for a design direction emphasising data first. Perhaps because NBC is a news platform, their focus was on the clean communication of the data. Looking

On the other hand, Esquire opted for a more sensationalised direction. The same data points used for the screenshot above creates this graphic below. Not only is less data is contained, less context given, less subtlety and nuance captured, it also is just difficult to read. Is the 59% supposed to be the area of the cross filled in? Its length? Why is it three-dimensional? Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear? At first glance, I ignore the horizontal wings and focus solely on the vertical length of the main bar.

For a useful representation of data, I think NBC News clearly wins. But that both organisations used the same data to craft their separate results, this story on the New American Center is useful for comparing two different design directions and the results thereof.

No designers are specifically mentioned, at least not that I could find, so credit for each piece goes to its respective owner, i.e. NBC News or Esquire.

How British is Great Britain?

Well, you will have to click through to the article for that data visualisation. But, I will provide you with the choropleth map of national identities. That is, how English do citizens in English authorities consider themselves? Scottish in Scotland? Welsh in Wales?

Strengths of national identities in Great Britain

Credit for the piece goes to Mark Easton.

Where Medicaid is Not Expanding is Where it is Needed Most

Last summer, the Supreme Court ruled that most of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was constitutional. The one exception, however, was the plan to force states to expand their Medicaid coverage. Medicaid is the government plan tasked with helping to provide health insurance to the poor. But between the poverty level and the income level for subsidies for the new state exchanges, there is a gap. That gap was supposed to be covered by the state expansion of Medicaid.

Because the states are not being forced to expand their coverage, there now exists state-by-state gaps in health insurance coverage. This excellent interactive graphic from the New York Times looks at the poverty and insurance coverage segregated into those states that are and are not expanding their coverage. A good number of those states with high rates of poor and uninsured are Republican, deep-South states. If you’re really clever, you’ll compare this map to my map from earlier this week about the Conservative Party. Notice any overlaps?

Credit for the piece Robert Gebeloff, Haeyoun Park, Matthew Bloch, and Matthew Ericson.

The Conservative Party of America

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.

Zaatari Refugee Camp for Displaced Syrians

The Syrian crisis is pushing people out of Syria. Unfortunately, most of the refugees are fleeing to places not wholly equipped or supplied to handle such large numbers. In this interactive piece of journalism, the BBC explores the difficulties in just one camp, Zaatari in the desert of Jordan.

My favourite element is this interactive map. It uses four satellite photographs taken at a few months interval and compares the growth of the camp; the growth is striking. The piece contains a diagrammatic view of the camp, identifying key areas, e.g. education areas, as well as a comparison to a new refugee camp named Azraq to host the overflow population. Fortunately, that camp is being designed with the lessons learned from Zaatari.

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics team.

Foreclosing on Homes in Washington, DC

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.

Credit for the piece’s graphics goes to Ted Mellnik, Emily Chow, and Laura Stanton.

My/Your Dialect

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.

From the technical side, for those wondering, this is a piece that is done in Shiny, the interactive version of R.

Credit for the piece goes to Joshua Katz.

But Can You Do the Gerrymander?

It’s Friday. And that means you will likely be contorting on the dance floor this weekend. But if you tried to bend to conform to any of these congressional districts, you would likely break your back. Gerrymandering is an old practice that basically allows state governments to decide what area (and therefore populations) belong to which congressional district. If you carve up your opposition well enough, you can consolidate them into far fewer districts than they might otherwise win. Pennsylvania is just one such example of an unbalanced state. This interactive infographic game from Slate forces you to solve the jigsaw puzzle of congressional districts.

Credit for the piece goes to Chris Kirk.

Women Bankers

…and not just any bankers but central bankers (the ones who establish policies at a national level), are rather under represented as this graphic from the Economist details. It is a nice use of small multiples with bar charts over time. Each bar is a 0–50% of the total membership of a central bank board and the share that is dark represents the number of women. Clearly for the countries selected not a single one has had a board of more than 50% women. Sweden and South Africa are the only two countries shown that have had 50% participation from women central bankers—though Norway and Denmark (for a period of time) have been consistently close.

Credit for the piece goes to C.W., P.A.W., L.P., and P.K.

More Internet, More Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg wants to get more people on the internet. And why not, it’s not like his company, a small entity you may not have heard of called Facebook, has anything to do with the internet. So this map by the Washington Post looks at what proportions of the world’s countries are using the internet.

Credit for the piece goes to Darla Cameron.