The International Arms Trade

One of the possible set of sanctions against Russia by the United States and European Union would impact the country’s defence industries. This chart by the Economist shows how that might not have the most impact. Most of Russia’s arms exports go to China, India, and Algeria. None of whom are the United States or European Union.

International arms trade
International arms trade

Clearly I don’t love the pie charts. I would much rather have seen segmentation within the bars. Or a full-on Sankey diagram. But, the story is still worth telling.

Credit for the piece goes to R.L.W. and L.P.

Racing for Revenue

As the Winter Olympics continue, the Economist looks at a different kind of race. The race between companies reaching a certain amount of revenue—along with the net profit from said revenue. How long does it take a company to reach $1 million in revenue? When all companies have reached the same amount of revenue, what percentage is net profit? It’s a neat little interactive. Thankfully you can skip the race and get straight to the results, a nice design feature.

Race to $1 million
Race to $1 million

Credit for the piece goes to R.J., G.S. and K.N.C.

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.

Women central bankers
Women central bankers

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

Mapping Nuclear Reactors

Today’s piece is a map from the Economist. It looks at the state of nuclear energy across the world. Slovakia caught my eye because when I recently traveled across that country I glimpsed from my train the massive complex near (I think) Trnava. Apparently those are also some of the youngest reactors out there.

Map of reactors
Map of reactors

Credit for the piece goes to O.M. and L.P.

Mapping Hepatitis vs HIV

I don’t often write about maps, especially of the choropleth kind. In many cases I choose not to because so many of the maps are one-dimensional: how fast is x growing across the world; which is predominant across the world, y or z? So I was pleasantly surprised by the Economist yesterday when they published this interactive map on the scourges of hepatitis and HIV.

Hepatitis vs HIV
Hepatitis vs HIV

Quickly put, the map is a success. It shows a clear geographic pattern; the developed/Western world along with the Middle East and Asia have a larger problem in hepatitis than HIV whereas Africa and Latin America are dealing moreso with HIV. (Admittedly, the fact that 117 out of 187 countries are dealing more with hepatitis is lost because so many of the countries are small in area.) But, the really nice bit about the map is not just the colour by virus, but the tint by comparative ratio. The darker the colour, the stronger the one virus over the other.

Lastly, from a data perspective, I just wonder if the ratios could not be adjusted for population, or deaths as a percentage of the national population? I would be curious to see if that would yield interesting results.

Credit for the piece goes to C.H., R.L.W., J.S., and D.H.

Queue for the British Throne

So apparently a baby was born in London…as was another who is likely to become the future King of the Great Britain and Northern Ireland (not of England). But the British love their queues and so this infant will have to wait in line just like everyone else (in the royal line of succession). The Economist visualised just how long these waits have been for English and British monarch vis-a-vis their time spent on the throne.

The Queue for the British throne
The Queue for the British throne

Credit for the piece goes to R.L.W. and G.D.

More Effective Cartograms

The other day I posted an example of a good cartogram, actually a pair of good ones from the New York Times. Today, I wanted to share another good example. The Economist created this cartogram, map of Great Britain’s constituencies. What is perhaps most effective in this chart, even more so than in the Times’, is its use of a “traditional” map form for comparison. You quickly get a sense of how large rural Britain’s constituencies are compared to those of London.

Mapping Britain
Mapping Britain

Credit for the piece goes to the Economist.

National Pi Day

Yesterday was National Pi Day. That’s Pi as in 3.14…not as in pie pie. Unless you celebrated Pi Day with pie. In which case, way to go, you. Me, I’m more traditional. I celebrated Pi Day with talk of pie charts. But at the Wonkblog over at the Washington Post, Sarah Kliff posted about several really impressive pie charts.

My favourite was the actual advertising done by the Economist back in Philly a few years ago. Their advert was printed atop a pizza pie box. It’s the double-whammy of Pi Day: pie charts atop a pizza pie.

The image below comes from a different site about the Economist ad campaign, found here, but the link goes to the celebration of pi with pie.

Pizza Pie Pie Chart for Pi Day
Pizza Pie Pie Chart for Pi Day

Thanks to my co-worker Eileen for passing on the tip.

The Realms of GAFA

The Economist often does clear, concise graphics to accompany their articles. And from to time they also do more interactive works  that allow a more in-depth exploration of data. And then sometimes they do awesome maps like this. The realms of GAFA.

Realms of GAFA
Realms of GAFA

Credit for the piece goes to David Parkins

Mexico: the Land of Many Countries (or Comparisons Thereto)

On Thanksgiving, the Economist published an interactive map that looked at Mexico across three metrics: murders, murder rates, and population. Mexico is one of the more populated countries in the world, but it is also one of the most dangerous. In the middle of the previous decade, the Mexican government began to crack down on the drug cartels. But the cartels have violently resisted. Very violently.

The map is nothing new. It labels different Mexican states by comparing their statistics to those of countries across the world. For example, the state of Chihuahua in northern Mexico, one of the “fronts” of this new drug war, has a population of 3.41 million people. The total number of murders so far this year is 2,350. That is only six murders fewer than in the entire country of the Ukraine. Did I mention the population of the Ukraine is over 45 million. More than ten times the size of Chihuahua. And the comparisons go on, though as the map clearly points out the distribution is not uniform.

Murder rates in Mexico
Murder rates in Mexico

In terms of interactivity, a nice little feature is the filtering of the map by the legend at the bottom. Hover over one of the bars and only those areas appear coloured in the map.