information design – Page 65

Adding to the British Line of Succession

When I woke up this morning, the BBC was reporting that the Duchess of Cambridge was in labour. Clearly by the time I sat down to write today’s blog post, she gave birth to the child, a boy. And so now we have this graphic from the BBC showing how the new child fits into the line of succession to the British throne.

In all likelihood, the BBC had this graphic prepared well in advance. And once the child’s name is announced, it can be rapidly updated to include that additional information.

An interesting quirk I wanted to point out was the graphic’s use of orange. The graphic clearly shows how purple is used for the line of succession (and the dotted lines for divorce). But, what about the two orange circles, one for Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and the other Prince Harry? Interestingly, those two are both in the line of succession as well, just not directly.

For example, Harry becomes monarch only if William and his children all die without heirs. But we all sort of knew that. Philip, on the other hand, is a few hundred down on the list, but is himself also eligible. Though the odds of that happening are so remote it’s a wonder it was put on the graphic. But still a neat little piece of trivia.

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.

Franklin’s Certainties

This week was tax week for my American readers—hopefully you all filed or received an extension. And with it comes to my mind the quote by that guy who did a lot of stuff in and for Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin. Nothing in life is certain, he said, but for death and taxes.

Enter Indexed, who had this great Venn diagram on Tax Day.

Credit for the piece goes to Jessica Hagy.

New York Is Still Beating London

So two weeks ago I posted about the graphics in a BBC article about how London has surpassed New York in terms of murders, due to a spate of stabbings in the British capital. Well, somehow I missed this: an article from the Economist that rebuts that point. And it does it brilliantly.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

I think everybody who works with data knows that adage. Now, I am not using it to say that the BBC—or the numerous other media outlets that ran the story—lied. Just that it is easy to change the story based on the data, how it is presented, or which subsets of the data are selected.

The Economist’s article points out that the surpassing of New York is a short term data point, a worrying short term trend, definitely, but they then look at the data. They select two timeframes and look at them side-by-side.

It's all about what data you show, choose to highlight, and then how you show it. — It’s all about what data you show, choose to highlight, and then how you show it.

And that is what I love about this piece. It shows the long-term context of New York having a far-higher medium-term history of murder (some 28 years of data is shown). When I was growing up in the 90s, murders in New York—and to be fair almost all large American cities—was just something that was a known fact. During that time, London hovered below 200 or so, compared to the 2000+ in early 90s New York.

But then they also show the short term, which does point to a steady rise in London murders. But, the data could also show a one-time dip in the murders in New York. But they also show that the total number of deaths is still higher in New York than London, despite the three months of data.

Murder is not good. But these graphics are a good example of how selecting different time series for the same data set, and then showing which parts of the data to show. The earlier BBC piece, and my revision of it, did not show the total deaths. Nor did either piece show the longer timeline of data.

Credit for the piece goes to the Economist graphics department.

Boston Marathon Times

Yesterday was Patriots’ Day, celebrated in Massachusetts and Maine—and in my research for this post, apparently now in Connecticut as of this year and Wisconsin of all places—with the date used as that of the famous Boston Marathon. Since I live in none of those states, I know it only because to my knowledge it is the only day we get morning baseball. As the Red Sox play in the morning with the Marathon runners passing through the neighbourhood mid-game-ish.

But yesterday was some wet weather along the East Coast and whilst the Red Sox game was postponed to May—no longer a morning game—the Marathon went on. One has to wonder, however, if those conditions affected the race—they almost certainly did—because this year’s winning times were the slowest in years. Thankfully FiveThirtyEight captured it in this graphic.

Yeah, I definitely couldn't do that… — Yeah, I definitely couldn’t do that…

It makes nice use of colour to highlight the origin of the various runners and then highlights yesterday’s two winners: an American woman and a Japanese man. Those two nations have not won in a couple of years.

Overall a solid little piece that makes me sad I have to wait until 2019 for another chance at morning baseball.

Credit for the piece goes to the FiveThirtyEight graphics department.

Spring Has Arrived

For those of you in Philadelphia, you are probably glad for today’s (and Saturday’s) forecast: sunny and 25ºC. That means grilling, outdoor drinking, and if you fit this description from Indexed, well, mowing.

Thankfully I live in a city where this is no such thing as lawn. What is lawn?

Though let us not kid ourselves, temperatures fall back to my personal preference by Tuesday.

Credit for the piece goes to Jessica Hagy.

News Deserts

Yesterday we looked at the shrinking Denver Post. Today we have a graphic from a related story via Politico. The article explores the idea that President Trump performs better in what the article terms “news deserts”, those counties with a very low level of newspaper circulation. (The article explains the methodology in detail.) This piece we are looking at here shows how those counties performed against the circulation rate and their 2016 presidential election result.

Overall, the work is solid. But I probably would have done a few things differently. First, the orange overlay falls in the middle of one column of dots. Do those dots then fall inside or outside the categorisation of news desert?

Secondly, the dots. If this were perhaps a scatter plot comparing the variables of circulation rates and, perhaps, election vote results as a percent, dots would be perfect. Here, however, they create this slightly distracting pattern in the the main area of counties. When the dots are stacked neatly and apart from other columns, as they are more often on the right, the dots are fine. But in the packed space on the left, not as much.

As I was reading through the article I had a couple of questions. For example, couldn’t the lack of newspapers be reflective of the urban–rural split or the education split, both of which can be seen in the same election results. Thankfully the article does spend time going through those points as well. It is a bit lengthy of a read—with a few other perfectly fine graphics—but well worth it.

Credit for the graphics goes to Jeremy C.F. Lin.

Picking at the Bones

We have all seen the slider that lets you see a pre- and post- or before and after of, usually, the same property, building, landscape, map, &c. Well a few days ago, the Denver Post took the same form and used it to show the before and after of cuts to the staffroom in just five years.

What makes the photo so telling is that in the editorial describing the photo, the paper is successful. But the hedge fund managers of the paper continue to demand cuts to the overhead. And in the journalism environment that often leads to cuts in coverage or quality, and sometimes both. And for the leading—and only large circulation—paper of Denver, that is bad news, pardon the pun, for the community.

What makes the situation worse is that allegedly the cuts are due to poor business investments by the hedge fund, Alden Global Capital, in areas not at all related to the news industry.

Credit for the piece goes to the Denver Post graphics department.

Finding Yourself on the Pennsylvania Turnpike

I hope you all enjoyed your Easter holidays. Easter, wasn’t that two weekends ago you ask. Catholic/Protestant Easter, yes. This past weekend was Orthodox Easter. And since that is what my family celebrates, I was away on holiday this past weekend and only got back in town last night. But on the way out to the ancestral stomping grounds in western Pennsylvania, I realised that the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission put a little bit of thought into the signage at their more modern service plazas.

The outside is basically what you expect, the symbol of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the name of the plaza. But if you look closer, the name of the plaza, in this case the Lawn plaza outside of Lawn, Pennsylvania, is set not just on a blue sign, but a cropping of a blue map of the commonwealth.

The yellow lines represent the Pennsylvania Turnpike and, with right being east, the Northeast Extension. The red star represents your current location along the turnpike system. Is this going to tell you how many miles until your next exit? No. I had to go inside and find out how many miles to Bedford, PA on a larger display map. But, this provides a wonderful low-fidelity display. After all, I roughly know where I am headed on the turnpike, and I know whence I came. So I can see that I am a little under half-way to my destination.

Credit for the piece goes to the designers of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.

Knuckle Cracking

I used to work with a designer who was an expert knuckle cracker. So when I saw this article from the Guardian last week, I was hoping that it contained some kind of an illustration. Thankfully it did.

What I like about the graphic is its simplicity. The illustration does not add a lot of extraneous details in the hands or fingers. Instead it focuses on a three-step zoom into the joint between the fingers and the hands, showing how the bones connect and just what happens.

So Happy Friday, all. Just relax, lean back, and—made you want to crack those knuckles, didn’t I ?

Credit for the piece goes to the Guardian graphics department.

Deaths in America

Yesterday was murders in London and New York. Today, we have a nice article from FiveThirtyEight about deaths more broadly in America. If you recall, my point yesterday was that not all graphics need to be full column width. And this article takes that approach—some graphics are full width whereas others are not.

This screenshot shows a nice line chart that, while the graphic sits in the full column, the actual chart is only about half the width of the graphic. I think the only thing that does not sit well with me is the alignment of the chart below the header. I probably would align the two as it creates an odd spacing to the left of the chart. But I applaud the restraint from making the line charts full width, as it would mask the vertical change in the data set.

The screenshot is of the graphic's full width, note the lines only go a little over half the width. — The screenshot is of the graphic’s full width, note the lines only go a little over half the width.

Meanwhile, the article’s maps all sit in the full column. But my favourite graphic of the whole set sits at the very end of the piece. It examines respiratory deaths in a tabular format. But it makes a fantastic use of sparklines to show the trend leading towards the final number in the row.

Credit for the piece goes to Ella Koeze and Anna Maria Barry-Jester.