information design – Page 99

More on the Muslim Split in the Middle East

Yesterday we looked at the Economist’s work on breaking down the Sunni and Shia split throughout the Middle East. Let’s take a look at that again today, especially since the world’s largest Muslim nation dealt with a terror attack overnight. That’s right, Indonesia is actually the world’s largest Muslim country and it is also largely secular in nature. But, back to the Middle East where the New York Times put together an article exploring the two power blocs and the religious affiliations within.

The map provides a bit more detail on a few different sects that are relevant, especially the Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia.

Credit for the piece goes to Sarah Almukhtar, Sergio Peçanha, and Tim Wallace.

The Muslim Split in the Middle East

Turning away from selfies and returning to the upbeat world of the Middle East, today we look at a graphic from the Economist that breaks down the Middle East into the Sunni and Shia sects. See anything that looks familiar? Do you know how Saudi Arabia and Iran are feuding at the moment? Well, take a look at the predominant sect in each country.

Credit for the piece goes to the Economist’s Data Team.

Selfiexploratory

New year, new selfies. Thankfully we have the Selfiecity to look at a sample of selfies, the goal to determine patterns and trends in the art of the selfie. Of course you also want to be able to look at the aforementioned selfies. For that they built the Selfiexploratory, an application that allows you to filter the set to see what you want. What I like is the return of data to show what the results of the filter look like against the whole set.

Credit for the piece goes to the Selfiecity team.

Types of Nuclear Weapons

When I was in high school I began to listen to music. To find music. To find artists. A guy who owned and operated the store next to where I worked recommended David Bowie, that guy whose songs I had heard on Philly’s classic rock radio stations. Back in those days we still had record stores—not that I knew what a record was—and I found a few used CDs—now that kids today would know what a CD is. Over that summer, I picked up a lot of new music. But what struck me about this David Bowie guy is that Space Oddity, Tonight, and Heathen all sounded so different from each other. He was a great one. And while I’m certain there will be some graphic in the future about his timeline—how can there not—today I am going to follow up once more on the North Korean nuclear test after coming across this graphic from Reuters.

You will recall how last week I looked at a New York Times post that explained the differences between a few different types of nuclear weapons. Well, here Reuters illustrates those differences.

Credit for the piece goes to S. Scarr.

Did North Korea Test a Hydrogen Bomb?

Yesterday we looked at the sites and timeline of nuclear weapons tests. Today, however, as we learn more about North Korea’s hydrogen bomb test, some are wondering whether it really was a hydrogen bomb or something else. After all, there are different ways to build the bomb. Some suggest North Korea tested an atom bomb on steroids, more properly called boosted fission. Anyway, the New York Times does a nice job explaining the differences between the atom bomb, the hydrogen bomb, and how we can infer what North Korea tested from the calculated size of the blast.

Credit for the piece goes to Josh Keller, Ford Fessenden, and Tim Wallace.

Nuclear Tests

Last night, in the States’ time at least, North Korea purportedly tested a hydrogen bomb. How does this differ from their previous tests? Well, those were all nuclear fission bombs, this is a nuclear fusion bomb. (Admittedly, I am simplifying a lot here.) Hydrogen bombs, the H-bomb, are more powerful and more efficient in that they emit less radiation. They are still pretty bad news, though. That bit has not changed.

Anyway, the Washington Post put together a nice piece about nuclear weapons testing. The big feature piece is a map of test sites over time. What I really like about it, however, is that they chose to split the world at a different point—the Pacific Ocean opposite the Prime Meridian. I have occasionally argued for using such maps more often given the increasing relevance of Asia and the relative decline of Western Europe. So it is nice to see it put to good use here.

Credit for the piece goes to Kevin Schaul.

Details in Charts

Today we are looking at a smaller piece from the Washington Post. The graphic fits within an article about US stock prices. What the graphic does is show the total scale, i.e. starting the chart on the 0 axis, and then showing in detail the fluctuations near the maximum end of the scale. And yet all of this done as an inset graphic. It need not be a full-width graphic, because the data does not demand it.

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

Married Men

Sorry for not writing the last few weeks, but I was on a much needed holiday. But I’m back now. And first things first, one of my good mates got engaged whilst I was back in Philadelphia. And so in honour of that we have today’s piece.

As the graphic might hint, it’s about marriage. The piece dates from September of last year—2015 and I think I will have to get used to that for a few weeks—and looks at the demographics of marriage mostly in the United States. The chart above in particular looks at men that are married at every age by year, i.e. how many men aged 30 were married in 1960 versus 2013.

Credit for the piece goes to Mona Chalabi.

Syria’s Refugees

We go from one crisis to another, as we go back to Syria. This piece from Bloomberg is very nicely designed and is almost entirely in black and white. We often think that because computer, everything needs to be in a rainbow of shiny, shiny colours. But here we have places where the designers smartly used patterns and smart labelling to avoid the need for colour.

Credit for the piece goes to Cindy Hoffman, Dave Merrill, Chris Nosenzo, Mira Rojanasakul, and Blacki Migliozzi.

Climate Change in Charts

So yesterday we reimagined a less-than-stellar BBC chart. Today, we look at a good chart from the BBC about climate change, timed to coincide with the start of the Paris climate talks. This comes from an article with six charts related to climate change, but it is the best in my mind.

Nothing but nice design here with the use of colour to highlight the top ten hottest and coldest years over the last 225+ years. But it really comes alive when animated and tells the story how those coldest years occurred at the beginning of the set and the hottest are among the most recent years.

Credit for the piece goes to Emily Maguire, Tom Nurse, Steven Connor, and Punit Shah.