Via the Guardian comes an interactive piece from researchers at MIT and the Technical University of Lisbon that allows users to examine urban environments to compare population, energy use, and building material intensity for a select set of 42 different cities. The screenshots below are of neighbourhoods in Philadelphia.
Population density
Once the user has chosen an area, he or she can move on and analyse a different section of the city. This behaviour generates a comparison on the right of the current area to the previous area.
Energy use
After the user has found an area of particular interest, he or she can generate a graphical report that summarises the findings for the selected area and compares that to other areas of similar scale in the city.
Graphical report
Credit for the piece goes to David Quinn and Daniel Wiesmann.
The US is not the only country with elections in 2012. Actually quite a few other places have had them, will have them, or are in the midst of having them. The latter includes France, which had the first round of its presidential election earlier this week.
To put it simply, France has a first round to narrow the whole field to just two candidates—lots of democracies outside the US have multiple party systems that mean more than just two parties—and then a second round between the last two. Nicholas Sarkozy was thought likely to win the first round and then lose the second, but he instead lost the first outright. He still isn’t expected to do well in two weeks’ time. But, the French media of course produce infographics just as US, Canadian, and British media do. Except unlike the last three, French infographics tend to be in French and I tend to not read them because, well, I cannot.
But pictures and colours make it easier. Socialists like red. Centre-right like blue.
From Le Figaro comes a map of the results. The island-looking thing on the right is Paris, beneath that Corsica, and then the bottom are the various overseas territories and departments that all vote.
Election results by French department
The question with French presidential elections—and in fact any country that has run-off elections—is what happens to the voters of the losers? For whom will they vote in the second round? Le Figaro also has an interactive piece that allows the user to play out different scenarios based on how many voters will not show up and of those who do, how they split their vote. Again, it’s in French, so I had to assume some things when playing around with the controls and then know a few things about French politics.
Scenario builder for Round 2
From Le Monde, another respected French media source that I have featured on morethan oneoccasion, come some simpler visualisations of the results but with some nice features for comparison. The first is obviously a look at the 2007 results. (Anybody recall Segolene Royal? Her ex-husband/partner is Francois Hollande…the guy running for the Socialists this time round.)
Election results of 2007
But another interesting view is that of the results strictly from 2012’s first round.
Election results 2012, Round 1
But with the added feature of comparing those results per party to their performance in 2007.
Round 1 comparison, 2012 to 2007
There are always interesting things going on in politics when it comes to data visualisation and infographics. We just have to look outside the US from time to time.
North Korea wanted to launch a missile, but failed miserably in doing it. Richard Johnson at the National Post created an infographic, prior to the missile’s launch, that looked at what the North Koreans wanted to do.
For the past two posts I focused on the sinking of the RMS Titanic, an historical event that has always been of some interest to me, but is not always the most uplifting of subjects. When in high-school, I once had an English teacher who took to heart our complaints that our literature selection was rather dark and depressing. So after finishing yet another such story, he had us turn to a specific page in our reader. The title of that day’s story was To the Gas Chambers, Ladies and Gentlemen; it was a story about the Holocaust.
Here is today’s uplifting story. What would happen if a dirty bomb was detonated in lower Manhattan. Courtesy of the National Post.
Saturday will be the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. She struck an iceberg just before midnight—at the time the crew thought merely as a glancing blow—and within three hours she would be headed towards the seabed. By the time the survivors were all picked up, over 1500 people would die in what is perhaps the most (in)famous sinking in human history.
But, what about the iceberg? There are of course the reports that a ship scouring the sea for survivors after the sinking found the killer berg. But how did it get there? The New York Times put together an infographic exploring the science behind how the RMS Titanic might have ended up colliding with what originally was part of (probably) a Greenlandic glacier.
The Titanic Iceberg
Also in the piece are explanations of how it is possible that the SS Californian did not come to the rescue of the stricken RMS Titanic.
Credit for the piece goes to Mika Gröndahl and Joe Burgess.
So Rick Santorum is now out of the race. Mitt Romney is basically now set to run against the President. But why should Santorum go out without an infographic looking back at the Republican primary race. (Since neither Newt nor Ron come even close to running the same race as Rick.)
The New York Times put out an infographic looking at Rick Santorum’s campaign. And as one can see, he did do well in the evangelical and Christian conservative heartland of the United States. It just was not quite enough to beat Romney’s supporters.
County leaders in Republican primary states
But, Santorum did manage to last longer in the race than many others have in recent years. So who knows, depending on how the election in November turns out, we may just see more of Rick in the future.
For those that may have missed it, earlier this week Google released its newest addition to its Google Maps product offering: the 8-bit Quest map. Never before has the world been seen in such high-resolution. And if you look close enough, you might even be able to spy some interesting features.
America…if only Vespucci had a map like thisThe Chicago metropolitan areaMy old stomping groundsMonsters in the southeast suburbs, another reason not to visit Indianapolis…Scranton–Wilkes-Barre is also under monster threat…Wolfman…I'll be near him when on holiday next weekend…maybe I'll okay…And if you know where Swedesboro is you get bonus points…
There are a few things in this world that I really dislike. Two of them are coffee and chocolate. So this map from the Guardian, a map made of real melted chocolate, is not quite to my liking.
Chocolate map
While I can appreciate the concept behind it—regardless of the chocolate-ness—I am left to wonder if from a data visualisation point a world map might not have been the best choice. Only fourteen countries are shown, if I count melted chocolate correctly.
I am just thankful that at the bottom of the piece I am not looking at chocolate doughnuts.
For many, this past winter was not so wintery, warmer than average temperatures and less than average snowfall. The National Post looked at Canada’s winter experience and found it to be the third-warmest in history. The story was covered in a large infographic piece that uses small multiples to look at previous Februaries across Canada and then bar charts to look at March temperatures specifically.
Previous February temperature differences
Credit for the piece goes to Tristin Hopper, Jonathon Rivait, and Richard Johnson.
Via the Guardian, Stamen Design has teamed up with Climate Central to create an interactive piece that maps the potential effects of rising sea levels. The user has control over the amount of the rise—this graphic says four feet—after which the coastline recedes to reveal the devastation. This is complemented by statistics of the land, including the population potentially affected along with the number of homes and total acres. In this case you see South Jersey, which is where I spent my summers. As you can see, the coastal beach towns I called home would be underwater. (And the little blue specks inland in Pennsylvania near my hometown, those are quarries; nobody lives there. No need to worry.)
Changing coastline
The problem, of course, is that a large percent of the Earth’s population lives near the ocean. There are not, after all, many people living in the interiors of the continents. So receding coasts may very well be a problem in the coming years.
