At lunch, I felt inspired enough to create a quick chart that looks at some urban population statistics.
A caveat about the data, it comes from the Census Bureau’s tables on the top-100 cities. So until a city appeared on that list, I did not chart it. The exceptions are 2000 and 2010, where I pulled directly from those census results. Mostly because it was lunch and I needed to be quick about it.
Hint, US Census Bureau, make your interface more friendly.
Credit for this goes to me.
I should be returning to Chicago this weekend. And if I were returning 21,000 years ago, that would be I would have been returning to a massive ice sheet covering the city. Would have been way worse in Montreal, though.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Line charts can be a great way of looking at the impact of event over a metric over a set period of time. But what happens when you want to look at multiple metrics over that same period of time?
In this example from the New York Times, we have a series of line charts examining the impact of Federal Reserve actions over several years. Instead of attempting to conflate and confuse the issue by combining multiple charts into one, the designers chose to construct a vertical-running story that is linked by running narration. The final piece looks at four metrics: Federal Reserve assets, the S&P 500 index, the unemployment rate, and the labour force participation rate.
The use of the coloured bars in particular works to create and enforce the vertical narrative. The colour consistency across the four charts also aids in that effort. While an option like four small charts could have worked in one visual screen space, you would likely lose much of the detail and fidelity in the lines.
Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.
Today’s post looks at an interactive graphic from the Los Angeles Times. The subject matter is piracy and the piece has three distinct views, the second of which is displayed here.
Generally speaking, the package is put together fairly well. My biggest concern is with the first graphic. It uses circles to represent the number of attacks by locale over time. I would have either included a small table for each geographic area noted, or instead used a bar chart or line chart to show the progress over time.
Credit for the piece goes to Robert Burns, Lorena Iñiguez Elebee, and Anthony Pesce.
Earlier this month the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published a report on household debt. Among the findings was the story that student debt is rising to problematic levels as it may act as a brake on economic recovery. In short, without an economy creating jobs for the young (recent university graduates) it becomes increasingly difficult for the young to pay pack the loans for the sharply rising costs of university tuition.
The report made this argument by use of interactive choropleth maps and charts. The one below looks at
But another chart that talks about the rising levels of student loan debt misses the mark. Here we see some rather flat lines. Clearly student loans are growing, but without a common baseline, the variations in the other types of debt muddle that message.
I took the liberty of using the data provided by the New York Fed and charting the lines all separately. Here you can clearly see just how in less than ten years, student loans have risen from $200 billion to $1,000 billion. This as credit card debt is falling along with other forms of debt (non-automotive).
The New York Fed did some great work, but with just one tweak to their visualisation forms, their story is made much more powerful and much more clear.
Credit for the original work goes to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Strikeouts are an important part of baseball. They are the moments where the pitcher wins the duel between pitcher and batter that is the essential element of baseball. But over the years the game has seen more and more batters striking out more often. Earlier this year the New York Times looked at the rising rates of strikeouts in a story supported by interactive data visualisation components.
Like the piece on Bryce Harper, this piece on strikeouts is more of a narrative with the interactive graphics supporting the written words. It is not as lengthy as the Washington Post’s piece, but this one is far more interactive as the user can select his or her favourite teams and follow their performance over time.
Credit for the piece goes to Shan Carter, Kevin Quealy and Joe Ward.
The Kentucky Derby is this weekend, but your humble author is out until next week. So here is a work from David Yanofsky at Quartz that looks at the average horse times in the one and three-quarter miles at the Kentucky Derby. (I’m a baseball guy, so ask me about Pedro’s strikeout rates in the late 1990s and I’m much better equipped with answers.)
But he takes decade-long averages and shows how horse speeds have essentially plateaued since the 1960s.
Credit for the piece goes to David Yanofsky.
Earlier this year, the mobile phone (or cell phone for many Americans) turned 40. Today’s infographic comes from the National Post and looks at the history and the near future of the mobile phone market, mobile phones, and related technologies. A nice touch is a actual-scale drawing (best seen in print) comparing a modern iPhone to an “old school” mobile phone, as shown in the cropping of the original below.
Credit for the piece goes to Mike Faille and Kristopher Morrison.
Following from yesterday’s post about the undocumented immigrant paths to citizenship, today’s post is a graphic from a New York Times article that looks at the integration of Latinos into the United States vis-a-vis all immigrants.
Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times.
I am a fan of the Boston Red Sox and have been since 1999. The first (and sadly only) Red Sox game I saw at Fenway was the day after Nomar Garciaparra hit three home runs in one game. Two of them were grand slams. For you non-baseball folks (NBF) reading this, that is majorly impressive. Anyway, the Red Sox traded him in 2004 to acquire some pieces they needed to make a run for the World Series title that had eluded them for 80+ years (also significant for NBF). The result? My favourite player traded to the Cubs, but my favourite team won the World Series.
But now it’s Opening Day, the kickoff for the baseball season—that reference is for you American football fans. (To be fair, there was a game last night between two Texas teams, but today’s the de facto start.) Since that 2004 trade, however, the Red Sox have not had a consistent, long-term shortstop of the same offensive calibre of Nomar. How bad has this revolving door been? My infographic today looks at the shortstop replacements for Nomar Garciaparra.
