information design – Page 70

Gerrymandering Pennsylvania Followup

Remember how last week I wrote about gerrymandering in Pennsylvania? It was as the State Supreme Court was about to hear a case involving the partisan redistricting in 2011, widely perceived as one of the most egregious examples of gerrymandering in the nation. Well yesterday afternoon the State Supreme Court ruled that yes, Virginia, Pennsylvania was egregiously gerrymandered and the court ordered the state government to redraw the maps ahead of the 2018 midterms.

One of the worst offenders is the state’s 7th district. And if we go back a few years in time, the Washington Post had a nice piece that showed the (d)evolution of said district into the weird abstract art it is today.

The changing shape of Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District — The changing shape of Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District

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

Cloudy in Europe

During my travels in Europe, I enjoyed very little sunshine. It did not rain often, but the skies were overcast in both Scandinavia and London. Turns out that at least in January, after my trip, Europe was covered in an inordinate amount of sunshine. The Guardian covered the story, with a graphic showing just how little sunshine has been seen in northern Europe.

Credit for the piece goes to the Guardian graphics department.

Triple Decker Sandwiches

I am working from home today, which likely means finding a little cafe or sandwich shop for lunch. And that is the only reason I am sharing this post from xkcd.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

Gerrymandering Pennsylvania

Here in Pennsylvania this week, the state Supreme Court will hear arguments on the legality of congressional districts drawn by Republicans in 2010. The state is rather evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, e.g. Donald Trump won by less than one percentage point or less than 45,000 votes. But 13 of its 18 congressional districts are represented by Republicans, roughly 72%.

This graphic is from the New York Times Upshot and it opens a piece that explores gerrymandering in Pennsylvania. The graphic presents the map today as well as a nonpartisan map and an “extreme” gerrymander. The thing most noticeable to me was that even with the nonpartisan geography, the Democrats are still below what they might expect for a near 50-50 split. Why? One need only look at Philadelphia and Pittsburgh where, using the Times’ language, the Democrats “waste” votes with enormous margins, leaving the suburban and rural parts of the state open for Republican gains.

Three different ways of drawing Pennsylvania's congressional districts — Three different ways of drawing Pennsylvania’s congressional districts

Credit for the piece goes to Quoctrung Bui and Nate Cohn.

The NHS Winter Crisis

In the United Kingdom, the month of January has been less than stellar for the National Health Service, the NHS, as surgeries have been cancelled or delayed, patients left waiting in corridors, and a shortage of staff to cope with higher-than-usual demand.

But another problem is the shortage of hospital beds, which compounds problems elsewhere in hospitals and health services. The Guardian did a nice job last week of capturing the state of bed capacity in some hospitals. Overall, the piece uses line charts and scatter plots to tell the story, but this screenshot in particular is a lovely small multiples set that shows how even with surge capacity, the beds in orange, many hospitals are running at near 100% capacity.

Credit for the piece goes to the Josh Holder.

The Shitholes

Today’s post is a very quick reaction to the news last night about President Trump calling Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries “shitholes” and trying to get rid of immigrants from those countries in favour of immigrants from places like Norway.

Norwegian contributions to American immigrants peaked well before the 21st century. At that time, Norway was poor and lesser developed. The data was hard to find, but on a GDP per capita level, Norway was one of the least developed countries in Western Europe. On a like dollar-for-dollar basis, El Salvador of 2008 is not too far from Norway 1850.

I wish I had more time to develop this graphic for this morning. Alas, it will have to do as is.

I'm just really hoping Africa isn't a country again… — I’m just really hoping Africa isn’t a country again…

Where It’ll Be Too Warm for the Winter Olympics

The Winter Olympics are creeping ever closer and so this piece from the New York Times caught my eye. It examines the impact of climate change on host cities for the Winter Olympics. Startlingly, a handful of cities from the past almost century are no longer reliable enough, i.e. cold and snow-covered, to host winter games.

This screenshot is of a bar chart that looks at temperatures, because snow and ice obviously require freezing temperatures. The reliability is colour-coded and at first I was not a fan—it seemed unnecessary to me.

At first I did not care for the colours in the bars

But then further down the piece, those same colours are used to reference reliability on a polar projection map.

That was a subtle, but well appreciated design choice. My initial aversion to the graphic and piece was changed by the end of it. That is always great when designers can pull that off.

Credit for the piece goes to Kendra Pierre-Louis and Nadja Popovich

The Internationalism in Sport

Whilst away, I came upon this piece in the following of my offseason baseball news. The New York Times published it between Christmas and New Years and the piece looks at the origins of sports persons in European football leagues compared to several American sports leagues, including American football, baseball, and basketball.

I was most confused by US women's football, which I had not realised has not been a single continuous organisation — I was most confused by US women’s football, which I had not realised has not been a single continuous organisation

The piece features an opening set of small multiples comparing all the leagues. Maddeningly, I wanted details and mouseovers and annotations at the start. Fortunately, as the reader continues through the article, each small multiple becomes big and the reader can explore the details of the league.

Credit for the piece goes to Gregor Aisch, Kevin Quealy, and Rory Smith.

The World Grows On

January is the month of forecasts and projections for the year to come. And the Economist is no different. Late last week it published a datagraphic showcasing the GDP growth forecasts of the Economist Intelligence Unit. I used to make this exact type of datagraphic a lot. And I mean a lot. But what I really enjoy is how successfully this piece integrates the map, the bar chart, and the tables to round out the story.

Take a note at how the chart distributes the bins as well

The easy thing to do is always the map, because people like maps. They can be big, and if the data set is robust, full of data and colour. But maps hide and obscure geographically small countries. And then you have to assume that people know all the countries in the world. Problem is, most people do not.

So the bar chart does a good job of showing each country as equals, a slim vertical bar. In such a small space, labelling every country is impossible, but the designers chose a select number of countries that might be of interest and called them out across the entire series.

Lastly, people always like to know who is #winning and who is a #loser. So the tables at the extreme ends of the chart showcast the top and last five.

I may have rearranged some of the elements, and dropped the heavy black rules between the bins on the legend, but overall I consider this piece a success.

Credit for the piece goes to the Economist Data Team.

Data Displays

This past weekend I saw the film Darkest Hour with one of my mates. The film focuses on Winston Churchill at the very beginning of his term as prime minister. Coincidentally I was walking through some of the very rooms and corridors depicted in the film—and rather accurately I should say—just one week prior.

One of the things in the real place that caught my eye in particular was the Map Room Annex. Most people know about the Map Room proper, from which the British Empire’s war effort was coordinated, but the annex contained data on wartime casualties, material production, &c. Consequently the walls were lined with displays of that data. But this was also the early 1940s and so none of it was computerised. Instead, we had handmade charts.

Alas, the space is quite narrow and the museum was quite crowded. So I only managed a snapshot or two, but I think this one does some justice to the hardworking folks producing charts about the war.

They were not made to be mobile-friendly or responsive…

Credit for the piece goes to some junior officer/staffer back in the day.