Today’s post comes from the New York Times and offers more detail on the twin terror bombings Monday. While the topic is surely gruesome, the interactive graphic is clean without the inclusion of photos or videos of the violence. It focuses on the facts without the fanfare or sensationalism to which we are accustomed from a media that too often needs it to draw and sustain viewership. A sober and informative piece from the New York Times.
Details of the Boston Marathon Bombing
Credit for the piece goes to the graphics department of the Times.
Continuing this week’s map theme, we have an example of a cartogram from the New York Times. This piece supplements an article about how some manufacturing companies are starting to look away from China as a place for their facilities. There are two maps, the first (not shown here) looks at economic output overall. The second (below) takes that output and accounts for population.
GDP per capita
Hexagons are used instead of the more familiar squares to represent 500,000 people and the colour is the GDP per capita. The text accompanying the graphic explains how this is a measure of economic potential being (or not being) realised. But what the hexagons allow the map to do is better represent the shapes of the countries. Squares, more common in cartograms, create awkward box-like outlines of countries. That would be fine if countries were often shaped like squares, but they are not.
I am not often a fan of cartograms, but I find this one well executed and the annotations and explanatory text make what might otherwise be confusing far simpler to understand. All in all, a solid piece.
Credit for the piece goes to Mike Bostock and Keith Bradsher.
Keeping with maps, they can be useful, but all too often people fall back upon them because it is a quick and easy way of displaying data for geographic entities. This graphic from the New York Times on ADHD is not terribly complex, but it uses a map effectively.
The article discusses how ADHD rates among states vary, but are still higher in the South. The map supports that argument. Consider how it would be different if every other state were darkened to a different shade of purple. There would be neither rhyme nor reason as to why the map was being used.
A map well done
A subtle point worth noting is that only the states falling into the highest bin are labelled. Those are the states that best support the story. The remainder of the states are left unlabelled so as not to distract from the overall piece.
Today’s map comes from the Texas Tribune out of Austin, Texas. The map displays the location of disposal wells, i.e. the sites where the waste water from fracking and related drilling operations are dumped. Firstly, the map hints that the fracking industry is not spread equally across the state.
But secondly, the map does this through the use of hexagons that represent well density. So at a broad, state-wide view, the user sees almost a traditional choropleth. The difference is that these are not natural or political boundaries but rather data constructs designed to aggregate highly granular data points.
Well locations state-wide are aggregated into coloured hexagons
Even nicer, however, is that if you want to see where disposal wells are in your county or town, the map lets you do that too. Because as you zoom in ever closer, the individual wells appear within the hexagons that they colour. It’s a very solid piece of work.
Individual wells colour the hexagons, but are only visible up close
War is good for the arms business. So a long and bloody civil war in Syria is just what arms manufacturers want. And while arming the Syrian government is fairly easy, how do you get weapons and ammunition to the Syrian rebels? The New York Times maps the flow of arms through an almost Sankey-like diagram where the number of flights determines the width of the arrows from source to destination.
And while that would be sufficient information to warrant a map, the Times adds a further layer by showing when the flights arrived. Clearly the civil war began with a certain number of arms. But as the war has both drawn on and become bloodier, new weapons are needed and ammunition needs to be restocked. Those needs likely explain a recent surge in flights.
Map of routes used to arm Syrian opposition forces
When we talk about new rail projects, or even highway or airport expansions, we like to include maps of new routes and destinations. In that sense this map from the New York Times is not new. However, we often forget in such visualisations that we have the opportunity to add layers of information that show why these expansions are beneficial.
Proposed Massachusetts railway network expansion
Here, note in particular how the proposed improvement projects link the dense corridor of urban settlements stretching from Boston through Worcester to Springfield. Additional lines connect more distant southerly cities such as Fall River to Boston. These might normally be seen as dots at ends of a line, but by showing the density of the population in these corridors, readers can understand how the proposed lines might benefit more people than just those living at the dots.
Today’s post comes via my coworker Jonathan and his subscription to National Geographic. The spread below looks at the gap in life expectancy between men and women in the United States. Outliers are highlighted by drawing lines to the counties in question while the same colour scale is used on a smaller map to look at historic data. And of course for those concerned about how the US places amongst its piers on the international stage, a small selection of countries are presented beneath in a dot plot that looks at the differences and averages.
The National Geographic spreadA detail of the choropleth mapA closer look at the dot plot
Don’t stare into the sun. It’ll burn your eyes out, kid. Okay, so maybe that’s a stretch of a reference, but, seriously, don’t. Let the professionals do it with (properly shielded) telescopes and such. This piece from the New York Times looks at a solar flare from 2012 and shows how quickly it developed. The bottom of the piece then shows the reader the frequency of solar minimums and maximums along with some explanatory graphics about just what flares and sunspots are and how they are created.
Also note the centre panel in the top row for the relative size of Earth. Yeah, who’s feeling big now? (Not me.)
The Brookings Institution released a report investigating the ridership of Amtrak’s various routes in an attempt to identify ways of cutting costs. They also released an interactive piece along with the report that pairs a map with a simple table.
Highlighting a route in the table highlights the route in the map and links the two together for the user. Clicking a dot on the map shows the details for the metropolitan area ridership along with the total number of stations. Lastly, because the table is sortable, the user can identify for themselves the conclusion reached by the report. To become solvent, Amtrak should divest itself of its long-haul routes that run at significant losses and focus on the profitable routes that could subsidise the popular though still minor loss-making routes.
Amtrak routes with the Northeast Regional highlighted
