Explaining the Greek Crisis

In today’s post we look at a graphic made by the South China Morning Post to explain the Greek Crisis. The graphic does a nice job anchoring the story in a combined chart and timeline. The reader then continues down the piece learning about additional points from demographics to text-based explanations.

The combined chart and timeline
The combined chart and timeline

Credit for the piece goes to the South China Morning Post graphics department.

Native Languages of the World

Today’s post looks at an infographic from the South China Morning Post. The graphic in question looks at languages and how many speak them. Specifically, the graphic narrows the focus down to those native languages spoken by 50+ million people, of which there are 23 spoken by a combined 4.1 billion people out of the world’s 7.2 billion inhabitants.

Native language speakers
Native language speakers

Credit for the piece goes to Alberto Lucas López.

The Silk Road, Respun

Today’s piece comes from the South China Morning Post. It looks at the Chinese government’s efforts to connect China to trade partners via a maritime route. This is conjunction with efforts to build a railway intended to connect Europe and China via Russia.

Cropping of the revival route
Cropping of the revival route

Credit for the piece goes to Lau Ka-kuen.

Jade Rabbit

In December, China landed a rover named Jade Rabbit on the Moon. The South China Morning Post created a nice infographic to explain the lunar landing and place it in the context of other missions to the Moon.

Cropping from the infographic
Cropping from the infographic

Credit for the piece goes to Adolfo Arranz.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Ukraine has dominated the news much of the last few weeks. But the new 24/7 international news story is the missing aircraft (at least as of my writing this) that was Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. There are presently two nice graphics I have seen attempting to explain the story. The first, a cropping of which is below, is from the Washington Post.

The Washington Post piece
The Washington Post piece

The second piece, again another cropping, is from the South China Morning Post.

South China Morning Post's graphic
South China Morning Post’s graphic

Credit for the Washington Post piece goes to Gene Thorp, Alberto Cuadra, Laris Karklis, and Richard Johnson.

Credit for the South China Morning Post piece goes to the South China Morning Post graphics department.

World War II Bombs in Hong Kong

Last month, police in Hong Kong defused a 2000 pound (900 kilogram) bomb found undetonated since World War II. The South China Morning Post created a small graphic to diagram just what the bomb was and how it was delivered (by US aircraft) to Hong Kong.

The 2000 pound bomb
The 2000 pound bomb

Credit for the piece goes to Adolfo Arranz.

The Science Behind the Thoroughbred

I do not know a thing about horses. I leave that knowledge to others in my family. However, this piece from the South China Morning Post explains quite a bit of why the thoroughbred is such a famous type of horse for racing.

The science behind thoroughbreds
The science behind thoroughbreds

Credit for the piece goes to Alberto Lucas López.

Ivory Poaching

The South China Morning Post had a fantastic infographic detailing the hunting of elephants for their ivory. Despite bans to make such hunting illegal, the problem continues and is worsening because of the Asian trade in ivory.

Cropping of the infographic
Cropping of the infographic

Credit for the piece goes to Adolfo Arranz.

Hong Kong and Hongkonger Identity

Hong Kong—and to a similar extent Macau—is part of China, but at times not so much. Because of the long history of British control through their colony, the people of Hong Kong, Hongkongers, are accustomed to a more liberal, democratic, and perhaps Western lifestyle than those of mainland China. Since the British handover, a local university has been asking the inevitable question of “Are you Hongkonger or Chinese?”. This interactive piece from the South China Morning Post looks at how that answer has evolved over nearly 20 years.

Hongkonger identity
Hongkonger identity

The piece presents a broad overview on the right with the specific survey results displayed larger on the left. Broadly speaking, the piece is successful. In particular, the decision to highlight the particular survey on the right brings that into focus without losing the context of the historical results. And providing a timeline beneath the larger stacked bar chart on the left offers a second means of choosing a survey of interest.

Yet I think the piece lacks two, perhaps three, elements that would improve the piece. First, sometimes I like to see the numbers for data visualisations. Adding a hover or mouseover state would help with that. Second, while the chart on the left includes a 50% line, I wonder if that would not also be helpful in the historical display on the right. Thirdly, and perhaps not too important for those not terribly interested in the data, the overall piece states the sample size for all surveys being within a range. People wanting more data on the survey responses might be interested in seeing the sample size per survey.

Credit for the piece goes to Simon Scarr and Joe Lo.