Tag: line chart

Virginia Election Results

Last night was election night. Okay, maybe not the big midterm, but there were still a few interesting races. The one I want to look at it, however, is the gubernatorial race in Virginia. Maps are pretty much the default in big, statewide races like these and it is no surprise that the three screenshots here are use a map as an anchor component.

The Huffington Post uses a scatterplot to compare the margin of victory for Terry McAuliffe to that of Barack Obama in 2012. A technical flaw places the drop down menu atop the plot, unfortunately, but the component works to show differences in just one year.

Huffington Post results
Huffington Post results

Over at the New York Times, the Virginia results were given a nice overview. Here they used a text summary to explain the race in short. They used a small amount of space to show polling results over time. And then beneath the map they looked at recent elections across the state.

New York Times results
New York Times results

The Washington Post, which reports to the northern counties of Virginia, had a much simpler piece. They used solely a map to present the data.

Washington Post results
Washington Post results

Credit for the Huffington Post piece goes to Aaron Bycoffe, Jay Boice, and Hilary Fung.

Credit for the New York Times piece goes to the New York Times’ graphics department.

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

Illegal Arrivals to Australia

This article on Yahoo by the AFP has an interesting graphic on the problem facing Australia of illegal arrivals via boat that, in part, probably cost Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party of Australia the recent election.

Illegal arrivals to Australia
Illegal arrivals to Australia

I like the overall graphic, but I feel that the data labels are unnecessary on the line chart and the bar chart. They distract from the overall shape of the data and are anyways hinted at by the axes labels within the charts themselves. Also, I am a bit unclear as to the meaning of the grey bars in the line chart.

Credit for the piece goes to John Saeki.

The New American Center

NBC News and Esquire magazine published results from their August survey of some 2000+ respondents that attempted to define the New American Center, i.e. the political persuasions of the majority of the country excepting the radical right and the loony left. For the purposes of Coffee Spoons, I am most interested in looking at the data visualisation and the infographics that result.

Both NBC News and Esquire visualised the results. While I could write two long blog posts looking at both of them, for today, it is more important to look more at the fundamental design difference between the two.

NBC News opted for a design direction emphasising data first. Perhaps because NBC is a news platform, their focus was on the clean communication of the data. Looking

NBC News results
NBC News results

On the other hand, Esquire opted for a more sensationalised direction. The same data points used for the screenshot above creates this graphic below. Not only is less data is contained, less context given, less subtlety and nuance captured, it also is just difficult to read. Is the 59% supposed to be the area of the cross filled in? Its length? Why is it three-dimensional? Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear? At first glance, I ignore the horizontal wings and focus solely on the vertical length of the main bar.

Esquire results
Esquire results

For a useful representation of data, I think NBC News clearly wins. But that both organisations used the same data to craft their separate results, this story on the New American Center is useful for comparing two different design directions and the results thereof.

No designers are specifically mentioned, at least not that I could find, so credit for each piece goes to its respective owner, i.e. NBC News or Esquire.

The Future of Data Visualisation

Happy Friday, everyone. According to xkcd, I am failing the future test. That is to say, by 2019, I will be unable to communicate data through infographics or create data visualisations.

The future of data visualisation
The future of data visualisation

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

Where’s the Wine?

So my wine palate is neither as refined nor sophisticated as it was before I moved to Chicago. (Oh hi, whisky.) However, wineries are springing up all over the country—and not just in California. This interactive graphic from the New York Times details the country, mapping out wineries up top and then exploring the growth in several key states near the bottom. In particular, note the chart for the number of wineries in California that runs down the right-hand side.

Map of US wineries
Map of US wineries

Credit for the piece goes to Kevin Schaul, Tim Wallace, and Adrienne Carter.

Hunger Strikes

Guantanamo Bay and the US military prison there almost always spark a debate. For some months now, prisoners have been staging a hunger strike. Increasingly, however, the strike is garnering attention not for itself, but for the US military’s treatment of the prisoners in force feeding them. The National Post looked at just how this is being done in this infographic. Pay particular attention to the illustration of the tube, which is drawn to actual size.

Force feeding Guantanamo's striking prisoners
Force feeding Guantanamo’s striking prisoners

Credit for the piece goes to Andrew Barr, Mike Faille, and Richard Johnson.

Cutting the Cable

We have all heard talk about cutting cable, i.e. unsubscribing from cable television. But the question is what is replacing it if anything? Fortunately, this really nice graphic produced by Quartz shows the market over the course of the last five years.

Cutting the cable
Cutting the cable

It is a really nice use of small multiples and the power of not overlapping size and growth charts, or combo-charts, just because you can. Different metrics deserve different charts. The important part is placement, and that’s where a good designer can make sure to place relevant data near its partner.

Credit for the piece goes to Ritchie King.

Consumer Spending by Store Type

Today’s post is a small interactive from the Wall Street Journal that allows the user to explore consumer spending not by category of spending, but rather the type of store in which they are spending, e.g. grocery retailers. Consumer spending is a fairly important measure of the US economy since so much of our economy depends upon it (I want to say roughly two-thirds, but I cannot recall exactly).

Comparing retail spending by type of store
Comparing retail spending by type of store

This piece has a few interesting things going for it. Firstly is the ability to compare and contrast three different retail channels (My screenshot compares only two). An unlimited amount would have been far too many, but three is a manageable number, especially in the various charting components used.

The tree map is interesting. I like the idea of using them, but I am not sure this is the best application. First, a tree map is fantastic for showing hierarchy. If, for example, there were sub-channels of the big retailing types, they could be nested within, well, squares or rectangles. But here the size and growth could have been compared perhaps more easily in a scatter plot. Secondly, I cannot determine the order for which the channels have been arranged. Clearly it is not by size, because the small ones are near the top. Nor is it reverse, because there are smaller ones where there should be larger ones.

Then the bar chart. An interesting idea, to be sure, of aggregating the sales per channel to see their total value. But if the goal is to compare them, would not a line chart looking at both separately not in aggregate show size and relative gains/declines against the other?

Credit for the piece goes to Dan Hill.