The Illinois Tollways will be raising speed limits starting 1 January. Part of that process includes researching current driving habits and patterns. This graphic by the Chicago Tribune looks at some of the results. While the map part is necessary to show the routes themselves and the limits on those routes, the more interesting part is the dot plot below.
Credit for the piece goes to the Chicago Tribune’s graphic department.
This time last year, the Northeast began to pick up what was left from Hurricane Sandy. There was a lot of rain, a lot of wind, flooding, and electrical outages. But not all the damage was ashore. In an excellent long-form narrative piece, the Tampa Bay Times covered the story of the Bounty, a functional replica of HMS Bounty from that famous story of a mutiny. This Bounty was used in the 1960s movie and had sailed ever since until it sank off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
The piece doesn’t makes use of some charts and graphics to explain positioning and familiarise the reader with terminology. It’s a fascinating though ultimately tragic story. And like so many of these long-form pieces, the credit list is extensive.
Credit for the piece goes to Michael Kruse, Don Morris, Maurice Rivenbark, Carolyn Edds, Caryn Baird, Barbara Moch, Mike D’Andrea, Bill Duryea, Alexis N. Sanchez, and Lee Glynn.
I didn’t see a lot of informative graphics regarding the shooting at LAX. But, here are two pieces. The first is from the Los Angeles TImes. Terminal 3 is rendered in three dimensions. Different buttons add views of the remainder of the airport.
The Washington Post opted for a flat, two-dimension drawing in one graphic with both all of LAX and Terminal 3 in the same graphic.
The thing about the three-dimensional rendering is that it adds too much complexity whereas the two-dimensional schematic strips most of it out. Is it important to know the specific details of a building? Or is it more important to see its general shape and an area inside of it?
Credit for the Los Angeles Times piece goes to Javier Zarracina, Raoul Ranoa, Lorena Iniguez, and Anthony Pesce.
This article on Yahoo by the AFP has an interesting graphic on the problem facing Australia of illegal arrivals via boat that, in part, probably cost Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party of Australia the recent election.
I like the overall graphic, but I feel that the data labels are unnecessary on the line chart and the bar chart. They distract from the overall shape of the data and are anyways hinted at by the axes labels within the charts themselves. Also, I am a bit unclear as to the meaning of the grey bars in the line chart.
Credit for the piece goes to John Saeki.
Infographics of the science-y, illustration-y kind have always been my favourite. They show you how the world works. Now, it has been a long time since I have used a leaf blower or lawn mower, but I always took for granted how they worked. But this fantastic graphic from the Washington Post makes sure that I know how they work. In animated .gif form. For an infographic. It’s really nice and worth a look.
Credit for the piece goes to Patterson Clark.
This small graphic is one of several from a very smart piece on redesigning the traffic map. Have you ever looked at a Google or an Apple traffic map to find the quickest route home or to get an idea of how long it will take you to get to the ballpark? According to Josh Stevens, your traffic map is lying to you.
The article is a summary or overview of a research paper not-yet-published. When you have a few moments, the whole thing is worth the read for its analysis of popular transit map designs and the five big lies.
Credit for the piece goes to Josh Stevens.
Last week NASA announced that last year, Voyager 1 left the Solar System about 25 August 2012. A lot of the graphics that were published to support that story chronicled the distance travelled by that probe. However, this excellent graphic by the Los Angeles Times instead looks at how NASA determined through the data returned that Voyager had left the Solar System.
The piece does a really good job of setting up the story in illustrating the instrument packaged used to collect the data. Moving down the piece, it shows locations and the different environments and then how those environments differ in electron density. Lastly it looks at how NASA interpolated the date from the data collected. A really solid piece.
Credit for the piece goes to Monte Morin, Doug Stevens, and Anthony Pesce.
For those of you who read this blog in Chicago know very well that the Red Line, Chicago’s busiest subway line, is undergoing major construction as the transit authority rebuilds much of the line. But what exactly does that entail?
Earlier this year the Chicago Tribune looked at that and with a series of illustrations, explained the different steps of the process. This first section details the steps taken to rip up the rails.
Credit for the piece goes to Jemal R. Brinson and Kyle Bentle.
…it’s an Aeroscraft! This interactive, diagrammatic infographic from the Los Angeles Times explains just how the aeroscraft is part zeppelin, part plane, and part chopper.
Credit for the piece goes to Raoul Ranoa and Anthony Pesce.
A little while ago the Washington Post published this graphic on Metro ridership. But not just anybody’s ridership, that of the individuals who sit on the DC transit agency’s board. After all, should not those overseeing Washington’s transit agency be intimately familiar with the conditions faced by DC commuters?
The graphic is a really nice use of small multiples and shading and tinting to indicate which lines are travelled by specific persons. An icon of a bus denotes bus ridership. This is a very good piece.
Credit for the piece goes to Wilson Andrews, Dana Hedgpeth, Mark Berman, and Luz Lazo.
