Today is Friday. And that means it is time for the seriousness. So here you go, folks. Goats. All the goats. The US Agricultural Census recorded all the goats as of 2012. And so people can map that out. Thankfully the Washington Post did it for me.
Note the exclamation point
Credit for the piece goes to the Washington Post graphics department.
Last week’s terror attacks in Paris highlight the tension in Europe between secular Europe and those believing in Islamist values. The Economist looked at some of the available data and noted the gap between Europe’s perception of Islam and its reality. A quick figure called out for France, French respondents thought 31% of the French population to be Muslim. The reality is a mere 8%.
Perception vs reality
Credit for the piece goes to the Economist Data Team.
Today’s post looks at peak income for the middle class. The Washington Post looked at peak median household income for each county in the United States. And for 81% of counties, that peak was over 15 years ago.
Income map
The really nice features of this piece are not actually the map, which is a standard choropleth map. Instead small multiples above the map breakdown the appearance of counties in each era bracket. And then to the right the user can compare a selected county against both the state and the United States. Overall, a very nice piece.
Credit for the piece Darla Cameron and Ted Mellnik.
The Wall Street Journal recently published an interesting article about the link between work and access to transit. They included a graphic that looked at the link between the two.
Linking the two together
Credit for the piece goes to the Wall Street Journal graphics department.
I apologise for the lack of posts over the last two weeks, but I was on holiday. Naturally, I have returned just in time for some snowstorms in the Midwest. But today’s piece comes from WGN and it explains how the type of winter precipitation that falls depends not solely on ground temperatures. Rather, temperature profiles in the upper atmosphere can make all the difference between rain, sleet, and snow.
How temperatures create different precipitation types
Credit for the piece goes to Steve Kahn and Jennifer Kohnke.
We hear a lot about deforestation around the world. But, in this piece from the Washington Post, we see how over the last century, Europe has actually managed to reverse that trend and reforest parts of the continent.
Today’s piece comes via a colleague. It is an article about hit-and-run cycling accidents in and around Los Angeles. The data visualisation in the article is not entirely complex—we are talking only about line charts and bar charts—but they support the arguments and statements in the article. And in that sense they are doing their job.
Locations of hit-and-run accidents in and around LA
Credit for the piece goes to Armand Emamdjomeh, Laura J. Nelson, and Joseph Serna.
Last week, there was a disruption at the air traffic control centre for the United Kingdom. It caused many travel problems. And the BBC included a graphic showing how the problem was shutting down London air space.
Empty skies over London
Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.
To continue with the sports theme from yesterday, today we have an interactive map from Twitter that looks at NFL team popularity. The methodology is simple, where are the users following the various football teams and map that out by county. The overall blog post features a country-wide map, but then narrows down into a few particular stories. The image below is from the divide in the state of Pennsylvania between Eagles fans and Steelers fans.
Philly vs. Pittsburgh
Credit for the piece goes to Simon Rogers and Krist Wongsuphasawat.
A little while ago, LinkedIn put together a map looking at the disproportionately represented jobs and skills in cities in both the United States and Europe. That is different from the most common jobs but those that are “most uniquely found” in cities.
The unique skills of America’s various cities
Unfortunately the interface is a bit clumsy. For something that is about exploring different cities, I think the small area of the map could be bigger. And the highlighting functionality lags. But the overall idea is interesting.
And on a side note, while graphic design is not specifically covered, I found the list of skills for Chicago surprising. If only because I work as a designer for a company in the market research industry.