Tag: information design

  • Reducing Postal Sort Capacity

    For my non-American audience, the United States uses a federal system under which its constituent states retain the responsibility for organising and executing elections. And so we have 50 different electoral systems. A select few use the United States Post Office (USPS) to distribute blank ballots to voters and collect them when completed. Five states…

  • Is Covid-19 Surging in New Zealand?

    Yesterday, President Trump claimed that Covid-19 was “surging” in New Zealand, a country widely lauded as having successfully contained and suppressed their outbreak. That has allowed Wellington to reopen large swathes of their economy without incident. Until this surge. And by surge we mean something like 30 cases in 3 days. So, let’s compare that…

  • Covid-19 Update: 16 August

    So here are the charts from the last week of Covid data in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois. When we compare last week’s update to today’s, we can see that Pennsylvania did indeed bottom out and is back on the rise and the same can probably be said for Delaware. Although a fair…

  • When Is an Opener Game in Baseball Really Just a Bullpen Game?

    Whenever someone not named Eovaldi or Perez starts a Red Sox game in 2020, that’s when. We all know the Red Sox are the worst team in the American League. They have only two starters, maybe sometimes a third. And then the last two days of the regular five-day rotation cycle, manager Ron Roenicke throws…

  • Sweet Summer Air of Subway Cars

    For those of my readers who live in a city where the subway or underground is a great means of getting around the city, you know you really miss that late Saturday night/early Sunday morning bouquet in the air. Though as this New York Times piece explains, sure it smells bad, but that air is…

  • Covid-19 Update: 9 August

    Weekend data means, usually, lower numbers than weekdays. And with the exception of Delaware that’s what we have today. Some drops, like Illinois, are more dramatic than others, like New Jersey. And so we look at the seven-day trend. And that tells a slightly different story. On the one hand we have states like Virginia…

  • Rating Scale

    This week is almost over and so instead of a graphic about unemployment numbers, let’s look at a piece from xkcd that provides us all with a new rating scale. Because, let’s be honest, we all at some point are going to need to rate 2020 come December. And while we still have almost five…

  • Flood Stages of the Schuylkill

    Hurricane Isaias ran up the East Coast of the United States then the Hudson River Valley before entering Canada. Before it left the US, however, it dumped some record-setting amounts of rain in Philadelphia and across the region. And in times of heavy rains, the lower-lying areas of the city (and suburbs like Upper Darby…

  • The Covid Recession’s Continuing Impact on Youth

    Earlier this week, some of the work work my team does was published. We produced a one-page summary of a far larger and more comprehensive (relative to the scope of the summary) survey of consumers during the Covid Recession. I will spare you the details of recreating existing templates from scratch and the design decisions…

  • Big Bar Chart Better

    Today isn’t a Friday, but I want to take a quick look at something that made me laugh aloud—literally LOL—whilst simultaneously cringe. Not surprisingly it has to do with Trump and data/facts. This all stems from an interview Axios’ Jonathan Swan conducted with President Trump on 28 July and that was released yesterday. I haven’t…