Case of the 500-mile email

Trey Harris, a previous tech administrator for a university, tells the story of a statistics department that couldn’t send email farther than 500 miles away. The story is more about the pecul… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

✚ Forcing You to See the Data

John Tukey wrote, “The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.” Not everyone wants to see though. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

FastCharts to make charts fast

FastCharts is the public version of the Financial Times’ in-house solution for making charts, uh, fast. Load some data. Get the chart fast. FastCharts. Kachow. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

How People Meet Their Partners

“So how’d you two meet?” There’s always a story, but the general ways people meet are usually similar. Here are the most common. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Internet under the sea

To connect servers around the world, there are actual cables that run under the ocean. The New York Times mapped current and future cables, with a focus on the ones owned by Amazon, Facebook, Googl… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

TwoTone is a tool to sonify your data

TwoTone, by Datavized and supported by the Google News Initiative, is a straightforward tool to sonify a dataset. Upload your data, select the metric, speed, and instrument, and you get a tune outp… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Inverse map of the United States

I’m thoroughly enjoying the work coming from graphic designer Scott Reinhard as of late. He combines modern techniques with vintage feels. In his most recent, he provides a “look at wha… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Celebrity name spelling test

Colin Morris culled common misspellings on Reddit and made the data available on GitHub. For The Pudding, Russell Goldenberg and Matt Daniels took it a step further so that you too can see how bad … | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

✚ Visualization Tools, Datasets, and Resources – February 2019 Roundup

Throughout the month I collect new tools for data and visualization and additional resources on designing data graphics. Here’s the new stuff for February. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Names in movies vs. real life

Here’s a fun spin on the name analysis genre by Mary Zam. She compared the distribution of names used in movies against names used in real life: Thousands of babies are called Sophia or Abiga… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

✚ How to Make Dot Timelines in R

For when you want to show the occurrence of events over time. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Where Your Job is Most Popular

Some jobs are common nationwide, because they are needed everywhere. Others are more specific to geography. See where job falls on the spectrum. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Probability you will break up with your partner

Rosenfeld, et al. from Stanford University ran a survey in 2009 for a study on How Couples Meet and Stay Together. Dan Kopf and Youyou Zhou for Quartz used this dataset to estimate the probability … | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Stacked bus routes on a map

Speaking of 3-D usage on maps, here’s a map of bus routes in Singapore stacked one on top of the other. I’m not sure it’s especially useful to find individual routes as intended, … | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Segregation compared during work and at home

Based on commuting data from the Census Bureau, researchers Matthew Hall, John Iceland, and Youngmin Yi tracked segregation during the day and night. Alvin Chang for Vox mapped their results: They … | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Most Uniquely Popular Job in Each State

These are the jobs in each state that are most specific to the place. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Searching for the saddest punt ever, with statistics

For SB Nation, Jon Bois takes a statistical deep dive in the search for the saddest punt in football. It’s an hour long. It’s a surprisingly fun watch. At the very least, even if you do… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

✚ Making Data “Come Alive”, Needs More Cowbell

“How do I make my data come alive? I want it to sing. I want it to dance.” Here are some ways to achieve that. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

From text to paint

Leslie Roberts uses paint to encode text as colors and geometry: My paintings translate words into visual language. These panels with texts and accompanying abstract structures might be called illu… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Franchise Box Office

There’s big money in wizarding worlds, galaxies far away, and various time-shifted universes. Let’s take a stroll through the billions of dollars earned by franchises over the years. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

How fast emissions would reduce if other plans were adopted

The United States is doing pretty poorly in reducing emissions. For The New York Times, Brad Plumer and Blacki Migloiozzi, show the current status and what could happen if the U.S. adopted more dra… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

French fry power rankings

Lucas Kwan Peterson for the Los Angeles Times ranked fast food french fries. That is all. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Opportunity rover’s path on Mars

After a most unforgiving dust storm on Mars, NASA ended the 14-year mission with the Opportunity rover. It was originally only planned to last 90 days. Jonathan Corum, for The New York Times, mappe… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

✚ Visualization Critique: Giving, Interpreting, and Rejecting

Figure out the useful bits and get rid of everything else. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Language used for the wall

For The Upshot, Kevin Quealy continues on his path looking at the words used by Donald Trump. This time Quealy examines descriptions of the wall and who will pay for it, pre- and post-inauguration. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

EGOT Winner Timelines

Only 15 people have done it, since you know, it’s not really easy to do. Here’s how and when they did it. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Generate a noise field from an image

Kjetil Golid made an interactive that lets you generate a noise field using a gradient from an image of your choosing. Fun. And excellent wallpaper material. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Scale of Star Wars characters and ships

It’s the scale of significant Star Wars characters, objects, and ships from Episode I through VIII, plus Rogue One and Solo. Need I say more? | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Optimized Brewery Road Trip, With Genetic Algorithm

Visit the best American breweries of 2018, based on RateBeer rankings, while minimizing travel time and distance. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Evolution of the periodic table of elements

As more elements were discovered, the table grew and changed layout. For Science Magazine, Jake Yeston, Nirja Desai, and Elbert Wang provide a visual history. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

✚ Stolen Charts, Reusing Visualization Methods, and the Difference

In visualization, there are tools, templates, and defaults, which are meant to be copied and reused. Then there are data graphics that are designed with a specific purpose and dataset, which are so… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Distorting geography to show train travels

Jan Willem Tulp visualized train travel times using distance and color as an indicator. His reasoning: When a train starts running from one station to the next station, conceptually, these two stat… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Map of Best Breweries in America, 2018

RateBeer puts out a list every year for top 100 breweries in the world. Here are the states that cracked the list. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Recursive painting in real life

It started with a mom holding her painting of a bird. Then someone painted that photo and took a picture of himself holding the painting. Then someone painted the photo of the man holding the paint… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Average view of Earth from space

Using a year’s worth of daily images from NASA’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), Johannes Kroeger constructed the average snapshot for 2018. Fun. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

How Many Kids We Have and When We Have Them

Many parents stop at two kids. Most are done by three. Still, everyone has their own timelines. Here are 1,000 of them. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

✚ Visualization Tools, Datasets, and Resources – January 2019 Roundup

Throughout the month I collect new tools for data and visualization and additional resources on designing data graphics. Here’s the new stuff for January. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

News story lifespan charts

A wideout view of the news cycle can look like a series of rise and falls. Something captures the general public’s attention, and then it fades off. Thank you, next. This collaboration betwee… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Evolution of the alphabet

Matt Baker provides this nifty diagram on how the alphabet changed over the centuries, evolving to what it is now. Grab the print. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Closeness lines over time

Cartoonist Olivia de Recat illustrated the closeness over time for various relationships. Charming. Unfortunately, the print is sold out. Sad trombone. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

✚ How to Make a Mosaic Plot in R

Also known as a Marimekko diagram, the mosaic plot lets you compare multiple qualitative variables at once. They can be useful, sometimes. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

After Marriage, How Long People Wait to Have Kids

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage. Sometimes. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

See every member’s path to the House of Representatives

For The New York Times, Sahil Chinoy and Jessia Ma visualized the path to Congress for every member. See it all at once like above or search for specific members. The vertical scale represents prev… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

xkcd: technical analysis

Seems about right. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Baby-Making Age

We looked at prime dating age and when people usually marry. Now it’s time for the next step in the circle of life. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

✚ Find Data to Drive Your Visualization

Unfortunately, you can’t just conjure data out of thin air. Well, I guess you can, but it’d probably be sort of unreliable. Kind of. Maybe. So where do you find data? Here’s where… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Rail delay scarf goes for $8,500 on eBay

Sarah Weber posted a picture of a scarf that her mom knit to represent rail delays. Weber’s mom knitted two rows per day and used color to indicate the delay. Grey was under 5 minutes, pink w… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago

Scale of tens

I’m always up for some scaled perspective. From David Packer: Anyone need a video demonstrating 1000s, 100s, 10s and 1s? You're in luck pic.twitter.com/sMGKlXKVy7— Dave (@sheepfilm… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 5 years ago