Tag: information design

  • The Disappearing Polish S

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    Brendan Barry
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    Today’s piece is not a chart, nor is it some complicated piece of data visualisation. Instead, we are looking at a piece from Medium that attempts to explain the disappearing Polish S. Basically, it is a roundabout way of saying that it is very difficult to type in foreign languages on American keyboards because of…

  • Chipotle and Calories

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    Brendan Barry
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    In my office, Chipotle is a popular fast-casual lunch choice. I am not sure, however, whether people would want to see today’s piece, an article from the New York Times about the nutritional value of a Chipotle meal. The piece makes good use of a few bar charts and nice photographs and table to explain…

  • A Year on Pluto

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week, NASA’s Dawn probe entered orbit above Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt. But later this summer, the New Horizons spacecraft is set to race past Pluto, formerly a planet but now a dwarf planet. New Horizons launched in 2006 and will have taken nine years to reach Pluto. But how long…

  • American Football Videogames

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    Brendan Barry
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    This week we have been looking at baseball (and Leonard Nimoy’s Star Trek). Today, we are going to turn to a sport I know nothing about: American football video games. Okay, so video games are not really a sport, but they are based on a sport. The reason I bring it up? FiveThirtyEIght has a…

  • Where to Catch Foul Balls

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    As we established yesterday, baseball is rumbling back to life with Spring Training. That means it is time to start buying tickets for games. But if, like me, you have never caught a foul ball or home run, you may want to sit in a location where you can optimise your chances. Where is that?…

  • Baseball Is (Almost) Back

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    Brendan Barry
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    As the title says, baseball is almost back. Red Sox spring training games begin as the Red Sox take on Northeastern today. The off-season is perhaps the hardest part of the year for a fan, because unless you take super interest in trades, there is no baseball. But what about on Twitter? Well, today’s piece…

  • He’s dead, Jim.

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    Brendan Barry
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    For those of you living beneath a Taurusan boulder, Leonard Nimoy died last week. He is perhaps best known—at least to me—for his role of Spock in Star Trek. Clearly your author is too young to have ever watched Star Trek during its original run. Instead, I belong to the next generation of Star Trek…

  • Understanding Genealogy

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    I came upon this piece a little while ago and realised that it in some ways paralleled my own interest in genealogy. Basically the story comes down to realising that you probably only know a mere fraction of the stories behind all the people who led up to you. To put in another context: “you’re…

  • Military Hardware

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    Brendan Barry
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    Earlier this week we looked at Ukraine’s loss of Debaltseve. Today we look at a piece from the Economist that compares the military hardware of the United States, Russia, and China. These are the mere datapoints on quantity, not quality. But it still illustrates fairly well why we should not fight a land war in…

  • Wars Are Bad, But Not as Bad as They Used To Be

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    Brendan Barry
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    War is bad for the population business—arguably good for business business. A year ago, the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies released a .pdf that looked at peace and conflict and their respective drivers. The designers clumsily pieced everything together so that the sum is less than the constituent parts. But, if you isolate each piece…