The cost to drive a mile rose to 60.8 cents…
Which includes, of course, an increase in gas prices (+1.93% to 14.45 cents)
But also an increase in maintenance costs (+11.26% to nearly 5 cents)
And insurance (+2.76% to $1029 annually)
And — possibly worst of all — depreciation (.78% to $3,571 annually)
BUT not tires because that cost held steady.
So that’s something…
All these increases add up to over $9,000 a year. So you’re literally rolling in it.
Are you surprised by these findings? Does the data impact your thoughts about car ownership? Weigh in.
]]>The cost to drive a mile rose to 60.8 cents…
Which includes, of course, an increase in gas prices (+1.93% to 14.45 cents)
But also an increase in maintenance costs (+11.26% to nearly 5 cents)
And insurance (+2.76% to $1029 annually)
And — possibly worst of all — depreciation (.78% to $3,571 annually)
BUT not tires because that cost held steady.
So that’s something…
All these increases add up to over $9,000 a year. So you’re literally rolling in it.
Are you surprised by these findings? Does the data impact your thoughts about car ownership? Weigh in.
]]>
Talk about big data! This week we found a map of the Internet, an infographic of the loneliest islands on Earth, and a visualization of the distance to Mars in pixels. We think you’ll also get a kick out of a video game based on infographics and Persian rugs made from Google Maps images. After you’ve caught up on the best in this week’s information design, check out our past posts.
[Infographic] Loneliest Islands
Inspired by Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands, this infographic created by Kanny Yeung shows the 50 loneliest islands on Earth ranking each island by number of inhabitants and it’s proximity to other islands.
[App] Map of the Internet
This app is a 3D visualization of the worldwide system of networks that connect together to form the Internet. The map shows ISPs, exchange points, and organizations that route online traffic and allows you to zoom in, pan and explore these global connections at a mind-blowing level of detail. Grab it now for free for both Android and iPhone!
[Visualization] British Casualties in Afghanistan
LONO, a UK based creative agency, tasked themselves with making the numbers surrounding British troop casualties in Afghanistan more accessible to a wide audience. Without a key this visualization may not be the easiest to read as it isn’t 100% clear that the colours represent the different years, however by breaking down the data by year and by month they have painted a vivid picture of these staggering numbers.
[Visualization] Out of Sight
A startling visualization that tells the story of the thousands of people killed by U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan. The aim of this project was not to speak for or against the usage of drones, but to bring to light the topic and to inform the public so they are able to form their own opinion based on the evidence.
[App] Future Urban World
Over 50% of the world’s population lives in an urban world, driving significant economic transformations. This app by McKinsey & Company seeks to help users understand the sheer scale of urbanization by plotting economic and demographic data onto interactive maps, giving them access to figures about population, household incomes and GDP.
[Game] Metrico Chart Game
Metrico is, at it’s core, a puzzle game for the PS Vita, but what makes this game unique, is that is centres around a world created from charts. The idea came to the creators after they noticed how beautiful infographics can look as an art form, and subsequently drove the style and type of interaction throughout the rest of the game.
[Cartography] Google Maps as Persian Rugs
Ever wondered what a map would look like as a rug? Well now you can! David Thomas Smith’s latest project called Anthropocene involves stitching together thousands of Google Maps images into complex patterns inspired by intricately detailed Persian rugs. Stunning!
[Visualization] Distance to Mars
It’s often hard to fully comprehend the unfathomable distances of space, but this handy little graphic-based visualization aims to put things in perspective by showing you the distance to Mars in pixels. Mind-blowing!
[Video] Kobe Bryant’s Salary
Every 60 seconds Kobe Bryant earns $162.55, which stands in stark contrast to a U.S. minimum wage worker who would earn around $0.12 for the same amount of time. This short video by CNN Money really highlights just how effective and poignant a simple chart can be.
]]>
Talk about big data! This week we found a map of the Internet, an infographic of the loneliest islands on Earth, and a visualization of the distance to Mars in pixels. We think you’ll also get a kick out of a video game based on infographics and Persian rugs made from Google Maps images. After you’ve caught up on the best in this week’s information design, check out our past posts.
[Infographic] Loneliest Islands
Inspired by Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands, this infographic created by Kanny Yeung shows the 50 loneliest islands on Earth ranking each island by number of inhabitants and it’s proximity to other islands.
[App] Map of the Internet
This app is a 3D visualization of the worldwide system of networks that connect together to form the Internet. The map shows ISPs, exchange points, and organizations that route online traffic and allows you to zoom in, pan and explore these global connections at a mind-blowing level of detail. Grab it now for free for both Android and iPhone!
[Visualization] British Casualties in Afghanistan
LONO, a UK based creative agency, tasked themselves with making the numbers surrounding British troop casualties in Afghanistan more accessible to a wide audience. Without a key this visualization may not be the easiest to read as it isn’t 100% clear that the colours represent the different years, however by breaking down the data by year and by month they have painted a vivid picture of these staggering numbers.
[Visualization] Out of Sight
A startling visualization that tells the story of the thousands of people killed by U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan. The aim of this project was not to speak for or against the usage of drones, but to bring to light the topic and to inform the public so they are able to form their own opinion based on the evidence.
[App] Future Urban World
Over 50% of the world’s population lives in an urban world, driving significant economic transformations. This app by McKinsey & Company seeks to help users understand the sheer scale of urbanization by plotting economic and demographic data onto interactive maps, giving them access to figures about population, household incomes and GDP.
[Game] Metrico Chart Game
Metrico is, at it’s core, a puzzle game for the PS Vita, but what makes this game unique, is that is centres around a world created from charts. The idea came to the creators after they noticed how beautiful infographics can look as an art form, and subsequently drove the style and type of interaction throughout the rest of the game.
[Cartography] Google Maps as Persian Rugs
Ever wondered what a map would look like as a rug? Well now you can! David Thomas Smith’s latest project called Anthropocene involves stitching together thousands of Google Maps images into complex patterns inspired by intricately detailed Persian rugs. Stunning!
[Visualization] Distance to Mars
It’s often hard to fully comprehend the unfathomable distances of space, but this handy little graphic-based visualization aims to put things in perspective by showing you the distance to Mars in pixels. Mind-blowing!
[Video] Kobe Bryant’s Salary
Every 60 seconds Kobe Bryant earns $162.55, which stands in stark contrast to a U.S. minimum wage worker who would earn around $0.12 for the same amount of time. This short video by CNN Money really highlights just how effective and poignant a simple chart can be.
]]>We’ve been particularly intrigued lately by sites that make use of infinite scroll to create stories that are both interactive and beautiful. Whether they present their data chronologically or in a taxonomy of ideas, these sites combine a multitude of data processing to help the viewer absorb the information in stages. Innovative and fresh, we’ve chosen three that we believe do a first-class job of piecing up the data bit by bit.
Distinguished speaker, teacher, and information designer Angela Morelli presents the unseen daily usage of water per person in “The Water we Eat” — accounting for not only the domestic, but also industrial and food-based consumption, we go through each day. Part wake up call to the growing depletion of water and part inspirational appeal to a more conscious consumption of our food and amenities, this “infographic story” paints a full picture of a large and complex world issue.
In a similar vein, we found a site that looks at the effects of hydraulic fracking. Created by designer Linda Dong, the interactive story is part of a campaign against fracking’s harmful impact on the earth. Showing the procedure from beginning to end, you are taken through the steps, seeing how much water and chemicals are used to produce 300,000 barrels of natural gas a day, but at the price of numerous environmental, safety, and health hazards.
To end, we found a great flowing timeline of iconic furniture pieces, created by design group LLI. Scrolling down, chairs created by celebrated designers such as Norman Cherner seamlessly flow from one to the next, seating you in the time period when they were made.
Did we miss any good scrolls? What other interactive features grab your attention?
]]>We’ve been particularly intrigued lately by sites that make use of infinite scroll to create stories that are both interactive and beautiful. Whether they present their data chronologically or in a taxonomy of ideas, these sites combine a multitude of data processing to help the viewer absorb the information in stages. Innovative and fresh, we’ve chosen three that we believe do a first-class job of piecing up the data bit by bit.
Distinguished speaker, teacher, and information designer Angela Morelli presents the unseen daily usage of water per person in “The Water we Eat” — accounting for not only the domestic, but also industrial and food-based consumption, we go through each day. Part wake up call to the growing depletion of water and part inspirational appeal to a more conscious consumption of our food and amenities, this “infographic story” paints a full picture of a large and complex world issue.
In a similar vein, we found a site that looks at the effects of hydraulic fracking. Created by designer Linda Dong, the interactive story is part of a campaign against fracking’s harmful impact on the earth. Showing the procedure from beginning to end, you are taken through the steps, seeing how much water and chemicals are used to produce 300,000 barrels of natural gas a day, but at the price of numerous environmental, safety, and health hazards.
To end, we found a great flowing timeline of iconic furniture pieces, created by design group LLI. Scrolling down, chairs created by celebrated designers such as Norman Cherner seamlessly flow from one to the next, seating you in the time period when they were made.
Did we miss any good scrolls? What other interactive features grab your attention?
]]>It’s been 10 years since Michael Lewis’s Moneyball introduced a revolution in sports management to the public at large — the notion that knowing which stats make valuable metrics, and more importantly knowing which metrics your competitors undervalue, can give you a major advantage, even if you’re on a David-sized budget in a league of Goliaths. Today, Big Data is the hot topic, and while it certainly has transformative potential everywhere from retail to climate science, it takes some serious (and seriously expensive) technology to collect and store those reams of data, not to mention a hardcore number cruncher to analyze them.
That’s why it’s time to think about the Age of Big Data as the Age of Small and Medium Data Too, and time to take the lessons of Moneyball and run with them. As Elena Klau wrote in Adweek last week, you don’t need Big Data to make smart decisions — you just need the right data, and you need it to yield better results than your competitors’ data. Most importantly, whether you’re a data scientist or not, you need to be able to make sense of that data, which means starting with simple, manageable metrics that can actually produce actionable insights.
MAKING METRICS MEAN SOMETHING
The biggest problem with statistics is that they’re meaningless unless you understand them in context. Is a 30% success rate good or bad? If you’re a professional baseball player, batting .300 gets you into the Hall of Fame; if you’re an NFL kicker, hitting 30% of your field goal attempts will get you cut in training camp. A 30% conversion rate might make you an e-commerce supergenius, but if you’re an air traffic controller, a 30% success rate will get you thrown in prison. We may intuitively understand that each of those jobs has certain benchmarks for success or failure, but we only intuit those benchmarks after we see how lots of different people perform at those jobs and figure out who’s better than the others.
But the thing about competition, whether it’s in sports management or in marketing, is that finding a winning formula isn’t about perfection or even hitting benchmarks — it’s about being better than the rest. And sometimes, “better” or “best” is not a matter of one simple metric, but several combined. So how do you put all those metrics together to make the perfect Voltron-esque mega-metric? Using a simple stats trick, even the non-stat-heads can make their numbers come together.
A WINNING FORMULA
If you took a statistics course in college, you probably learned, and then quickly forgot, all about standard deviations and Z-scores. Don’t worry, I’m not even going to try to refresh your memory. Just think about Z-scores as a ratings system: 0 is average; -1 is bad, -2 is terrible, -3 is dreadful, and so on; 1 is good, 2 is great, 3 is amazing, and so on. A Z-score simply tells you how much better or worse than average an individual is. The range of Z-scores depends on how many outliers exist and how many individuals are roughly average, but typically a -2 is in the bottom 5% and a 2 is in the top 5%. While a Z-score of 3 is amazing, a mind-blowing outlier could go way beyond that: in 1920, when Babe Ruth hit 54 home runs in a league where the average was just over 5 and the runner-up hit 19, the Bambino’s home run Z-score was a ridiculous 7.3.
The nice thing about Z-scores is that they’re easy to calculate in Excel and they can give you normalized ratings for all sorts of different data sets, which you can then add up to calculate a “best overall.” For instance, if you’re buying a new car, you might be looking at all kinds of disparate data: price, safety rating, gas mileage, durability, and so on. If you put those numbers together for every car you’re considering, calculate Z-scores for each category, and then add up those Z-scores, you’ll see which one is actually the best. Say the price is twice as important to you as any other figure; simply double the price Z-score in your tally to give it that extra weight. You could do the same sort of analysis for buying stocks or determining what social media channels will yield the best ROI for your marketing campaign. I just happen to be a baseball nerd, and this is my (now-open) secret for winning my fantasy league.
INSIDE BASEBALL
Fantasy baseball is all about the numbers. Every owner in a fantasy league fields a team comprised not of real baseball players, but of real baseball players’ statistics. That is to say, while Matt Kemp may not wear my team’s uniform, every time he gets a hit or steals a base my team accumulates those stats. Most leagues use five statistical categories: home runs, runs, runs batted in, batting average, and stolen bases. Some players may be major contributors in one category and detractors in another. The best way to understand how they actually help or hurt a fantasy team is to look at their Z-scores.
In the graphs below, you can see how the ZiPS projection system expects the 2013 MLB season to play out. As the distribution curves indicate, most categories have relatively even amounts of good and bad performers, with batting average being more tightly bunched in the middle and stolen bases skewed toward zero, as there are far more slowpokes than speedsters in the majors right now. The real story, though, is in the top 10 players: Miguel Cabrera, who last year became the first player since 1967 to win the Triple Crown, is only projected to have the third-best stats, mainly because of his negative Z-score for stolen bases. Giancarlo Stanton may be the presumed home run king, but because he doesn’t contribute as much in other areas he’s ZiPS’ number six overall.
And who’s the fantasy MVP? The Z-scores tell us it’s the man whom many people thought should have beaten Cabrera for the real MVP trophy last year: Mike Trout.
]]>
It’s been 10 years since Michael Lewis’s Moneyball introduced a revolution in sports management to the public at large — the notion that knowing which stats make valuable metrics, and more importantly knowing which metrics your competitors undervalue, can give you a major advantage, even if you’re on a David-sized budget in a league of Goliaths. Today, Big Data is the hot topic, and while it certainly has transformative potential everywhere from retail to climate science, it takes some serious (and seriously expensive) technology to collect and store those reams of data, not to mention a hardcore number cruncher to analyze them.
That’s why it’s time to think about the Age of Big Data as the Age of Small and Medium Data Too, and time to take the lessons of Moneyball and run with them. As Elena Klau wrote in Adweek last week, you don’t need Big Data to make smart decisions — you just need the right data, and you need it to yield better results than your competitors’ data. Most importantly, whether you’re a data scientist or not, you need to be able to make sense of that data, which means starting with simple, manageable metrics that can actually produce actionable insights.
MAKING METRICS MEAN SOMETHING
The biggest problem with statistics is that they’re meaningless unless you understand them in context. Is a 30% success rate good or bad? If you’re a professional baseball player, batting .300 gets you into the Hall of Fame; if you’re an NFL kicker, hitting 30% of your field goal attempts will get you cut in training camp. A 30% conversion rate might make you an e-commerce supergenius, but if you’re an air traffic controller, a 30% success rate will get you thrown in prison. We may intuitively understand that each of those jobs has certain benchmarks for success or failure, but we only intuit those benchmarks after we see how lots of different people perform at those jobs and figure out who’s better than the others.
But the thing about competition, whether it’s in sports management or in marketing, is that finding a winning formula isn’t about perfection or even hitting benchmarks — it’s about being better than the rest. And sometimes, “better” or “best” is not a matter of one simple metric, but several combined. So how do you put all those metrics together to make the perfect Voltron-esque mega-metric? Using a simple stats trick, even the non-stat-heads can make their numbers come together.
A WINNING FORMULA
If you took a statistics course in college, you probably learned, and then quickly forgot, all about standard deviations and Z-scores. Don’t worry, I’m not even going to try to refresh your memory. Just think about Z-scores as a ratings system: 0 is average; -1 is bad, -2 is terrible, -3 is dreadful, and so on; 1 is good, 2 is great, 3 is amazing, and so on. A Z-score simply tells you how much better or worse than average an individual is. The range of Z-scores depends on how many outliers exist and how many individuals are roughly average, but typically a -2 is in the bottom 5% and a 2 is in the top 5%. While a Z-score of 3 is amazing, a mind-blowing outlier could go way beyond that: in 1920, when Babe Ruth hit 54 home runs in a league where the average was just over 5 and the runner-up hit 19, the Bambino’s home run Z-score was a ridiculous 7.3.
The nice thing about Z-scores is that they’re easy to calculate in Excel and they can give you normalized ratings for all sorts of different data sets, which you can then add up to calculate a “best overall.” For instance, if you’re buying a new car, you might be looking at all kinds of disparate data: price, safety rating, gas mileage, durability, and so on. If you put those numbers together for every car you’re considering, calculate Z-scores for each category, and then add up those Z-scores, you’ll see which one is actually the best. Say the price is twice as important to you as any other figure; simply double the price Z-score in your tally to give it that extra weight. You could do the same sort of analysis for buying stocks or determining what social media channels will yield the best ROI for your marketing campaign. I just happen to be a baseball nerd, and this is my (now-open) secret for winning my fantasy league.
INSIDE BASEBALL
Fantasy baseball is all about the numbers. Every owner in a fantasy league fields a team comprised not of real baseball players, but of real baseball players’ statistics. That is to say, while Matt Kemp may not wear my team’s uniform, every time he gets a hit or steals a base my team accumulates those stats. Most leagues use five statistical categories: home runs, runs, runs batted in, batting average, and stolen bases. Some players may be major contributors in one category and detractors in another. The best way to understand how they actually help or hurt a fantasy team is to look at their Z-scores.
In the graphs below, you can see how the ZiPS projection system expects the 2013 MLB season to play out. As the distribution curves indicate, most categories have relatively even amounts of good and bad performers, with batting average being more tightly bunched in the middle and stolen bases skewed toward zero, as there are far more slowpokes than speedsters in the majors right now. The real story, though, is in the top 10 players: Miguel Cabrera, who last year became the first player since 1967 to win the Triple Crown, is only projected to have the third-best stats, mainly because of his negative Z-score for stolen bases. Giancarlo Stanton may be the presumed home run king, but because he doesn’t contribute as much in other areas he’s ZiPS’ number six overall.
And who’s the fantasy MVP? The Z-scores tell us it’s the man whom many people thought should have beaten Cabrera for the real MVP trophy last year: Mike Trout.
]]>
Our thinking is that at one point someone pulled a prank and the prankee got really mad. To cover his/her butt, the pranker was just like, “But that’s what I’m supposed to do today. It’s, uh, April Fools’ Day.”
In that spirit, here’s a roundup of our favorite April Fools’ Day gags of 2013.
Google Nose
What does a ghost smell like? Google Nose knows. In the tradition of a long line of genius hoaxes, Google released this ad for their newest product that offers “the sharpest olfactory experience available.”
The YouTube Contest Ends
On Sunday, YouTube uploaded this clip, which excitedly explains that after a terriffic turnout, the company is ready to review all the footage (70 hours every minute over the last 8 years) entered into their “Best Video in the World” contest. They’ll announce the winner in 10 years.
Vimeow from Vimeo
The most adorable prank ever? The details of the feline takeover are outlined on the Vimeo blog. Our favorite detail is that “Following is now called Patiently Stalking.”
Sony for Pets
Another cuddly April Fools’ joke! Sony announced their Animalia line this morning, which features tech options for pets.
Upload via Snail Mail
Imgur got in on the analog trend this morning, by adding the option to mail in uploads.
Scope Bacon
Scope started this one early — last Wednesday — and judging from the comments section on their sponsored Facebook posts, most people fell for it. Good one, Scope.
A Special Message From The President
We won’t ruin this one, just click play. The official white house YouTube channel is doing it right.
]]>Our thinking is that at one point someone pulled a prank and the prankee got really mad. To cover his/her butt, the pranker was just like, “But that’s what I’m supposed to do today. It’s, uh, April Fools’ Day.”
In that spirit, here’s a roundup of our favorite April Fools’ Day gags of 2013.
Google Nose
What does a ghost smell like? Google Nose knows. In the tradition of a long line of genius hoaxes, Google released this ad for their newest product that offers “the sharpest olfactory experience available.”
The YouTube Contest Ends
On Sunday, YouTube uploaded this clip, which excitedly explains that after a terriffic turnout, the company is ready to review all the footage (70 hours every minute over the last 8 years) entered into their “Best Video in the World” contest. They’ll announce the winner in 10 years.
Vimeow from Vimeo
The most adorable prank ever? The details of the feline takeover are outlined on the Vimeo blog. Our favorite detail is that “Following is now called Patiently Stalking.”
Sony for Pets
Another cuddly April Fools’ joke! Sony announced their Animalia line this morning, which features tech options for pets.
Upload via Snail Mail
Imgur got in on the analog trend this morning, by adding the option to mail in uploads.
Scope Bacon
Scope started this one early — last Wednesday — and judging from the comments section on their sponsored Facebook posts, most people fell for it. Good one, Scope.
A Special Message From The President
We won’t ruin this one, just click play. The official white house YouTube channel is doing it right.
]]>Like everyone else, we’re excited. To show that excitement, like everyone else, we wanted to create an homage to the series. The fan culture around the fantasy series has already produced tributes ranging from maps to supercuts to beer. We knew we had our work cut out for us.
One of the themes that really struck us when exploring the GOT universe is that everybody on the show is doing business — whether in the traditional, capitalist sense (like the Spice King) or in the power plays within houses (like, well, just about everybody in every house). Applying lessons from these dealings has already been covered (along with lessons in parenting, weddings and life in general), so we decided to take it a step further. We set out to re-imagine these characters as modern businesspeople, answering the questions: What if we lived with these people today? Who would they be, what would they do, and how would we interact with them?
To do this, we equipped some of our favorite GOT characters with professional tools: business cards and Linkedin profiles.
Below, you’ll find the cards and profiles of some of our favorite characters (clicking on the profiles will enlarge them). Enjoy!
Like everyone else, we’re excited. To show that excitement, like everyone else, we wanted to create an homage to the series. The fan culture around the fantasy series has already produced tributes ranging from maps to supercuts to beer. We knew we had our work cut out for us.
One of the themes that really struck us when exploring the GOT universe is that everybody on the show is doing business — whether in the traditional, capitalist sense (like the Spice King) or in the power plays within houses (like, well, just about everybody in every house). Applying lessons from these dealings has already been covered (along with lessons in parenting, weddings and life in general), so we decided to take it a step further. We set out to re-imagine these characters as modern businesspeople, answering the questions: What if we lived with these people today? Who would they be, what would they do, and how would we interact with them?
To do this, we equipped some of our favorite GOT characters with professional tools: business cards and Linkedin profiles.
Below, you’ll find the cards and profiles of some of our favorite characters (clicking on the profiles will enlarge them). Enjoy!
The data visualizations we found this week are extensive in their scope: a whole year in the life of a man, every recorded meteorite, all the Twitter relationships between the company’s employees. That much data is hard to sum up, so we’ll dive right in! After you’ve caught up on the best in this week’s information design, check out our past posts.
[Information Design] Felton’s 2012 Annual Report
It’s that time of year again! Nicholas Felton has released his annual report. To meticulously record his day-to-day activities this year, he used a custom-built iPhone app called Reporter. Each day at random intervals the app would send him reminders to fill in a short survey with data that formed the basis of his beautifully designed report. Check it out!
[Book] Map of the World
A fascinating collection of work by the new generation of map makers and illustrators that not only takes a look at more traditional forms of cartography, but also features an array of contemporary examples showcasing unique representations of this classic art form. Purchase your copy from Gestalten.
[Visualization] WIDE
The World Inequality Database on Education, created by Interactive Things (IXT), uses clean and simple visualizations to demonstrate how different circumstances, such as wealth, gender or location, impact the opportunities for education and life. A tremendous amount of data to explore.
[Visualization] Mapping Relationships of Twitter Employees
Using publicly available information, Santiago Ortiz created this incredibly detailed interactive network map of the relationships between every Twitter employee as determined by their Twitter conversations. The pink lines represent incoming Tweets, and the blue lines show the outgoing Tweets, with the circles sized by Tweet frequency.
[Visualization] Every Meteorite on Earth Mapped
Javier de la Torre, cofounder of CartoDB, used data from the Meteoritical Society to map every recorded meteorite impact going all the way back to 2,300 BCE. The interactive visualization allows the viewer to zoom to any location on Earth to see if a meteorite has fallen near there, when it fell and its size. Fascinating stuff!
[Information Design] Pop-up Budapest Infographics
Livia Hasenstaub combined simple paper-folding techniques with basic charts to create this delightful little pop-up book which visualizes data about her home city, Budapest.
[Tools] Word Tree
This handy web app takes your pasted text and generates a word tree. There is even a bookmarklet that allows you to transform any webpage into a rich word-based visualisation. Neat!
[Article] Visualization Makes Things Real
In this short read, Robert Kosara of Eager Eyes explains the importance of choosing the right visualization method to represent numbers and statistics — and how easy it can be to mislead the viewer by choosing the wrong one.
[Article] Pies vs. Slopes
Pie charts may be an attractive form of data presentation, but it’s certainly not the most efficient or useful. VizWiz takes a brief look at the benefits of using slope graphs as an alternative to the classic pie for ease of understanding and comparison.
]]>
The data visualizations we found this week are extensive in their scope: a whole year in the life of a man, every recorded meteorite, all the Twitter relationships between the company’s employees. That much data is hard to sum up, so we’ll dive right in! After you’ve caught up on the best in this week’s information design, check out our past posts.
[Information Design] Felton’s 2012 Annual Report
It’s that time of year again! Nicholas Felton has released his annual report. To meticulously record his day-to-day activities this year, he used a custom-built iPhone app called Reporter. Each day at random intervals the app would send him reminders to fill in a short survey with data that formed the basis of his beautifully designed report. Check it out!
[Book] Map of the World
A fascinating collection of work by the new generation of map makers and illustrators that not only takes a look at more traditional forms of cartography, but also features an array of contemporary examples showcasing unique representations of this classic art form. Purchase your copy from Gestalten.
[Visualization] WIDE
The World Inequality Database on Education, created by Interactive Things (IXT), uses clean and simple visualizations to demonstrate how different circumstances, such as wealth, gender or location, impact the opportunities for education and life. A tremendous amount of data to explore.
[Visualization] Mapping Relationships of Twitter Employees
Using publicly available information, Santiago Ortiz created this incredibly detailed interactive network map of the relationships between every Twitter employee as determined by their Twitter conversations. The pink lines represent incoming Tweets, and the blue lines show the outgoing Tweets, with the circles sized by Tweet frequency.
[Visualization] Every Meteorite on Earth Mapped
Javier de la Torre, cofounder of CartoDB, used data from the Meteoritical Society to map every recorded meteorite impact going all the way back to 2,300 BCE. The interactive visualization allows the viewer to zoom to any location on Earth to see if a meteorite has fallen near there, when it fell and its size. Fascinating stuff!
[Information Design] Pop-up Budapest Infographics
Livia Hasenstaub combined simple paper-folding techniques with basic charts to create this delightful little pop-up book which visualizes data about her home city, Budapest.
[Tools] Word Tree
This handy web app takes your pasted text and generates a word tree. There is even a bookmarklet that allows you to transform any webpage into a rich word-based visualisation. Neat!
[Article] Visualization Makes Things Real
In this short read, Robert Kosara of Eager Eyes explains the importance of choosing the right visualization method to represent numbers and statistics — and how easy it can be to mislead the viewer by choosing the wrong one.
[Article] Pies vs. Slopes
Pie charts may be an attractive form of data presentation, but it’s certainly not the most efficient or useful. VizWiz takes a brief look at the benefits of using slope graphs as an alternative to the classic pie for ease of understanding and comparison.
]]>Producer Chris Marple outlined JESS3’s simple strategy: “plaster any available surface.” Forget fancy media formulas and effective frequency models — JESS3 took exposure back to its purest form at SXSWi 2013 with postering.
JESS3’s street team met at the convention center in Austin every morning to hand out supplies (JESS3 branded posters, shirts, stickers, candy) and then got to work in pairs. The street team would make a quick lap around the convention center’s high traffic areas (to reposter anywhere signage had been covered up from the day before) and then expand their zones “in every direction.”
The simple strategy was effective. We grabbed Mashable’s attention with our “old school” approach, and one of our stickers found it’s way into the backdrop of a TechCrunch interview.
Then there were the Twitter mentions. Some of our favorites:
“You can’t turn around in Austin without seeing a @JESS3 logo…”
“You guys are famous in Austin”
“@JESS3, you are the masters at #sxsw tagging. You are everywhere.”
Below, scope out our posters, swag, and photos our team caught over the weekend.
Producer Chris Marple outlined JESS3’s simple strategy: “plaster any available surface.” Forget fancy media formulas and effective frequency models — JESS3 took exposure back to its purest form at SXSWi 2013 with postering.
JESS3’s street team met at the convention center in Austin every morning to hand out supplies (JESS3 branded posters, shirts, stickers, candy) and then got to work in pairs. The street team would make a quick lap around the convention center’s high traffic areas (to reposter anywhere signage had been covered up from the day before) and then expand their zones “in every direction.”
The simple strategy was effective. We grabbed Mashable’s attention with our “old school” approach, and one of our stickers found it’s way into the backdrop of a TechCrunch interview.
Then there were the Twitter mentions. Some of our favorites:
“You can’t turn around in Austin without seeing a @JESS3 logo…”
“You guys are famous in Austin”
“@JESS3, you are the masters at #sxsw tagging. You are everywhere.”
Below, scope out our posters, swag, and photos our team caught over the weekend.
From antique cartography to personalized logs, lots of beautiful connections mapped out this week! We also found visualizations that make sense of mythological relationships, suss out the virality of content, and a font like none other. Find out more below and then catch up on past weeks here.
[Cartography] Big Map Blog
During research for a film he was working on, The 59 King came across thousands of old, beautiful maps that would normally have been kept away from public viewing in archives or government FTP sites. With Big Map Blog, he aims to provide better access to each of these fantastic examples of cartography 5 days a week.
[Visualization] Women’s Political Rights Around the World
To mark International Woman’s Day last Friday, The Guardian created this timeline-based map to track women’s political rights throughout the last 150 years. It is startling to see that in some parts of the world, women are still not allowed to vote.
[Visualization] Zeus’s Affairs
Zeus was a promiscuous fellow, forming many relationships during his existence and procreating left, right and center. This visualization helps to demystify Zeus’s genealogy as described by a number of authors.
[Tools] Map Font
This font, created by UX designer Ben Markowitz, allows the user to create simple data maps of the U.S. by just typing out a few letters. The font acts in a similar way to Webdings, where each letter represents a state, and is easily styled with CSS. It’s also free to download!
[Social] Tweeted Trips
Want to record your travels on a map, post photos and comments? Then look no further than this handy web app. Tweeted Trips allows you to share your journey without the need for GPS equipment. All you need is your Twitter account!
[Social] Alongside.co
Ever wondered if your Foursquare friends are near you whilst you were checked in to a place? Now you can find that out with alongside.co, a web app that visualizes the proximity of your Foursquare relationships with colourful lines. Anyone at SXSW this week should definitely log in with their Foursquare account!
[Visualization] Average Commute Times
A mind-blowing amount of data has been crammed into this map, which visualizes the average commute times across the entirety of the U.S., allowing you to zoom right into your town, no matter where you live.
[Visualisation] ViralSearch
Developed by members of the Microsoft Research team, ViralSearch analyzes billions of pieces of information on Twitter news, videos and photos to determine whether something has, in fact, gone viral. Watch the short intro video here.
]]>
From antique cartography to personalized logs, lots of beautiful connections mapped out this week! We also found visualizations that make sense of mythological relationships, suss out the virality of content, and a font like none other. Find out more below and then catch up on past weeks here.
[Cartography] Big Map Blog
During research for a film he was working on, The 59 King came across thousands of old, beautiful maps that would normally have been kept away from public viewing in archives or government FTP sites. With Big Map Blog, he aims to provide better access to each of these fantastic examples of cartography 5 days a week.
[Visualization] Women’s Political Rights Around the World
To mark International Woman’s Day last Friday, The Guardian created this timeline-based map to track women’s political rights throughout the last 150 years. It is startling to see that in some parts of the world, women are still not allowed to vote.
[Visualization] Zeus’s Affairs
Zeus was a promiscuous fellow, forming many relationships during his existence and procreating left, right and center. This visualization helps to demystify Zeus’s genealogy as described by a number of authors.
[Tools] Map Font
This font, created by UX designer Ben Markowitz, allows the user to create simple data maps of the U.S. by just typing out a few letters. The font acts in a similar way to Webdings, where each letter represents a state, and is easily styled with CSS. It’s also free to download!
[Social] Tweeted Trips
Want to record your travels on a map, post photos and comments? Then look no further than this handy web app. Tweeted Trips allows you to share your journey without the need for GPS equipment. All you need is your Twitter account!
[Social] Alongside.co
Ever wondered if your Foursquare friends are near you whilst you were checked in to a place? Now you can find that out with alongside.co, a web app that visualizes the proximity of your Foursquare relationships with colourful lines. Anyone at SXSW this week should definitely log in with their Foursquare account!
[Visualization] Average Commute Times
A mind-blowing amount of data has been crammed into this map, which visualizes the average commute times across the entirety of the U.S., allowing you to zoom right into your town, no matter where you live.
[Visualisation] ViralSearch
Developed by members of the Microsoft Research team, ViralSearch analyzes billions of pieces of information on Twitter news, videos and photos to determine whether something has, in fact, gone viral. Watch the short intro video here.
]]>