Spending bill in a treemap box

Margot Sanger-Katz and Alicia Parlapiano for NYT’s The Upshot broke down a Democrat spending proposal. I like the lead-in treemap that shows the proposed components and the box that it needs … | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

✚ I Want to Visualize Aspects of the Data – The Process 162

When you visualize aspects of the data instead of just the data itself, what you show grows more obvious. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

3-D rendering of Dixie fire smoke clouds

The New York Times used radar data to create a 3-D model of the Dixie fire smoke clouds: The raw data was collected every 10 minutes in radial sweeps around the radar stations, each at a higher alt… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Search every USPS mail route

I’m not sure how long this has been around, but the USPS has a tool where you can see the mail route in any geographic area. Just search for an address and you can see where they go. It’… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

A view from the Moon’s south pole

NASA Goddard visualized the point of view from the south pole of the Moon, based on years of data collection to map the Moon’s surface. The result is a data-based time-lapse that shows Earth … | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Treemap tour of political donations

The Digital Story Innovation Team for ABC News in Australia looked at political donations from the gambling industry. The piece goes all-in with treemaps in a scrollytelling format to show categori… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

How the Longest Running Shows Rated Over Episodes

Most television shows don’t get past the first season, but there are some that manage to stick around. These are the 175 longest running shows on IMDb that have ratings. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

✚ Keep Them Separated – The Process 161

Not everything has to be in the visualization at the same time. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Simulating how just a little gender bias in the workplace can lead to big effects up the chain

Yuhao Du, Jessica Nordell, and Kenneth Joseph used simulations to study the effects of small gender biases at entry level up to executive level. It doesn’t take much to skew the distribution.… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

How the 3-point line changed basketball

Vox shows how the 3-point line is “breaking” the game. The basic math says a 3-point shot is more efficient for scoring points than a 2-point shot if the team can make a high enough per… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Possible cheating seen in a scatterplot

When plotting Russian election results, a structured grid patterns appear. From The Economist: When Dmitry Kobak and Sergey Shpilkin, two researchers, analysed the results, they found that an unusu… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

A data visualization magazine

Nightingale is a publication from Data Visualization Society that offers more depth for many topics in the field of visualization. They’re working on a print magazine of the same name. Subscr… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Scientists with bad data

Tim Harford warns against bad data in science: Some frauds seem comical. In the 1970s, a researcher named William Summerlin claimed to have found a way to prevent skin grafts from being rejected by… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Reducing methane to slow climate change

We often hear about increased CO2 in the context of global warming. Hayley Warren and Akshat Rathi for Bloomberg show why we should talk more about methane: In the fight against global warming, met… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Spike maps in R

Spike maps use the height of spikes to encode data geographically. The format provides a similar effect to frequency trails where the layering looks 3-D-ish, except spikes are typically centered on… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

✚ Data Visualization Freelance Advice, from Someone Who Doesn’t Freelance and Has No Clue What He is Talking About – The Process 160

This is the best freelance advice ever written. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Comparing abortion limits in the U.S. against other countries

The Washington Post, in an effort that I’m sure took more energy and time than it looks, compared U.S. abortion laws against those in other countries: In the last three decades, countries aro… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Visualizing time-based data

Zan Armstrong, Ian Johnson, and Mike Freeman for Observable wrote a guide on analyzing time series data. Using an energy dataset, they show how asking different questions can lead to different find… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Heatmap of average IMDb ratings for all the shows

Inspired by a graphic on Reddit, Jim Vallandingham expanded the format for all the shows. Search for a show and get a heatmap for average ratings by season and episode. See how your favorite show w… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

How Facebook disappeared from the internet

Cloudflare describes how things looked from their point of view the day that Facebook, along with its other properties, went down. From the Border Gateway Protocol, which defines routing informatio… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Visual guide for protecting your home from wildfire

Aaron Steckelberg and Tik Root for The Washington Post provide a visual guide on how to protect your home from wildfire. It starts with an ember floating carefree in the air, and then the tour high… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Your location for sale

Companies collect and aggregate location data from millions of people’s phones. Then that data gets sold in a multibillion-dollar market. Jon Keegan and Alfred Ng for The Markup report on who… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

✚ Backwards Visualization Critique – The Process 159

At least it gave us something to look forward to. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Age and Occupation

Whether it’s because of experience, physical ability, or education level, some jobs tend towards a certain age of worker more than others. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Mapping climate change in the Arctic

UnstableGround is a project from the Woodwell Climate Research Center that focuses on climate change in the Arctic: Climate change is transforming the Arctic, impacting people and ecosystems across… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

A Succinct Intro to R

Before you get into analysis and visualizing data with R, you need to know the basics. Steve Haroz wrote a guide on getting started: This book is a short introduction to the R language. It covers t… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

This is a good Venn diagram.

[via] | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Assessment of the Covid-19 dashboards

Researchers evaluated 158 Covid-19 dashboards, assessing design, implementation, and usefulness. Marie Patino for Bloomberg CityLab reports: “All of these dashboards were launched very early in the… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Sand mining viewed from above

Poyang Lake is China’s largest freshwater lake, but sand mining has changed its depth and structure, which messes up the ecosystem. Simon Scarr and Manas Sharma for Reuters used satellite ima… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

✚ Visualization Tools and Learning Resources, September 2021 Roundup

Here’s the good stuff for September. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

SVG pattern repository

For when you want to fill SVG polygons with patterns instead of or in combination with color, Thomas Michael Semmler has a copy-and-paste collection. It’s just the basics, but it’s a co… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Americans are dying too much

Derek Thompson for The Atlantic highlights recent research comparing mortality in America against rates in Europe: According to a new working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Resea… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

✚ How to Make Print-ready Graphics in R, with ggplot2

You don’t have to use illustration software to polish your graphics. If keeping everything in R is your thing, this tutorial is for you. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

A flag planted for every Covid-19 death

In fall 2020, Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg planted a flag for each American who died from Covid-19. There were over a quarter of a million flags at the time. The art installation is back at the Nati… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

How Men and Women Spend Their Days

Using an oldie but goodie visualization format to look at time use between different groups. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Using rates for more relatable Covid-19 numbers

With millions of Covid-19 deaths worldwide, and hundreds of thousands in the US, the absolute counts have been a challenge to relate to for a while. The Washington Post leaned into rates to communi… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Data visualization activities for kids

Nightingale has a kid’s section with printable visualization activities. Get the kids started early while they absorb information like a sponge. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

✚ Dot Patterns – The Process 157

The only limit is your imagination. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Humorous charts to organize thoughts

When I’m feeling confused about what’s going on around me, I gravitate towards making charts, so Michelle Rial’s book of charts, Maybe This Will Help: How to Feel Better When Thin… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Beautiful News, a book charting the good things in the world

From David McCandless and team, who you might know from such books as Information is Beautiful and Knowledge is Beautiful has a new book on Beautiful News: Inspired by our ongoing Beautiful News pr… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Black neighborhoods split by highways

Rachael Dottle, Laura Bliss and Pablo Robles for Bloomberg on how urban highways often split communities: By the 1960s, the neighborhood’s business core was gone, replaced by newly constructed Inte… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Where Americans Live

Everyone gets a dot. You get a dot. And you get a dot. And you. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths for vaccinated vs. unvaccinated

The CDC released a chart that shows case, hospitalization, and death rates for fully vaccinated (blue) against not fully vaccinated (black). As you might expect, the rates for the fully vaccinated … | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

How the demographics of your neighborhood changed

The San Francisco Chronicle compares demographics in your neighborhood in 2020 against 2010. It’s a straightforward app that lets you enter an address (not just in California) and it shows yo… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Data recorded in fabric quilt

Kim Moran-Jones quilted temperature minima and maxima in the UK, along with Covid-19 deaths on the perimeter in grayscale. Data and the physical fit well together. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

✚ Chart Types or Visual Encodings – The Process 156

If I had to pick just one. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Atlas of the Invisible

James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti teamed up for another book of maps, Atlas of the Invisible: Sometimes we miss what we can’t step back to see. Sometimes the invisible only appears with the creep of… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago

Black mortality gap

Anna Flagg, for NYT’s The Upshot, used dots arranged as a stacked area chart to show the difference between two mortality rates. Each dot represents 10 people, and they start as a random clou… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 years ago