✚ Misleading or Not? A Chart About How Couples Meet

If a chart is seen by enough people, someone will call it misleading. There are no exceptions. Tags: misleading | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

Happiness ratings, by country and age

The World Happiness Report, published each year since 2012, just dropped for 2024.… Tags: happiness, rank | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

Birding and data visualization

Jer Thorp has combined birding and data visualization into a unique course called… Tags: birds, Jer Thorp, learning | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

National identity stereotypes through generative AI

For Rest of World, Victoria Turk breaks down bias in generative AI in… Tags: AI, bias, midjourney, Rest of World | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

Flilpbook Experiment, like the Telephone game but visual

This looks fun. The Pudding is running an experiment that functions like a… Tags: loss, Pudding, Russell Samora, sketch | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

Visual guide to airfoils

Bartosz Ciechanowski is at it again with an in-depth explainer that makes heavy… Tags: airfoil, Bartosz Ciechanowski, flight | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

Mile-by-mile map along the path of totality

On April 8, 2024, the moon is going to completely block the sun… Tags: eclipse, satellite imagery, Washington Post | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

Language-based AI to chat with her dead husband

For the past few years, Laurie Anderson has been using an AI chatbot… Tags: AI, chatbot, Guardian, Large Language Model | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

✚ One Chart to Multiple Charts

Every chart type has its trade-offs. So instead of trying to show everything at once, use multiple views to show things separate. Tags: multiples, simplicity | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

Maps in the wild

For the New York Times, Eve Kahn describes the use of maps outside… Tags: decor, New York Times | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

Common Age Differences, Married Couples

How common are wide age gaps between spouses? These are the age differences through the lens of the 2022 five-year American Community Survey.Tags: age, marriage, relationships | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

Racial bias in OpenAI GPT resume rankings

AI is finding its way into the HR workflow to sift through resumes. This seems like a decent idea on the surface, until you realize that the models that the AI is built on lean more towards certain… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

Diversity in college admissions without considering race

For NYT’s The Upshot, Aatish Bhatia and Emily Badger model how colleges might promote diversity in admissions without (directly) considering race. A set of scatter plots show a theoretical st… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

Defining the greatest albums of all time

Rolling Stone published a list in 2003 that ranked the 500 greatest albums of all time. The list was updated in 2020, and there was a lot of change. For The Pudding, Chris Dalla Riva and Matthew Da… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 1 month ago

Mapping the crops with the most potential in a changing climate

The climate is changing, which means some crops will fair better or worse given new conditions. Stamen, in collaboration with Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils, mapped the potential shifts for a v… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

✚ Baseline Point of View

Welcome to The Process, the newsletter for FlowingData members that looks closer at how the charts get made. I’m Nathan Yau. The point of visualization is to understand what data is about, wh… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Analysis of when movies use their own names in the dialogue

A title drop is when a movie mentions its own name during the film. Dominikus Baur and Alice Thudt analyzed thousands of scripts to calculate when and how often title drops occur: Alright, so here&… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Why Line Chart Baselines Can Start at Non-Zero

There is a recurring argument that line chart baselines must start at zero, because anything else would be misleading. The critique is misguided.Tags: baseline, rules | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Tiny chip manufacturing, visually explained

Microchips have gotten tiny. Like smaller than a red blood cell tiny. Financial Times goes Powers-of-Ten to show the scale and process of manufacturing itty-bitty microchips. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Where to see the total eclipse

There’s a total eclipse (a real one, not of the heart) happening on April 8, 2024. The next one isn’t until 2045, so if you don’t want to wait two decades, now’s your chance… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

If we didn’t have leap years

For CNN, Amy O’Kruk and Kenneth Uzquiano asked what would happen if we didn’t have leap years. Without the extra day every four years, we’d eventually have seasons time-shifted by… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Rock map of Scotland

Harry Jefferies shared his grandfather’s 30-year project: My grandpa who is 85 started making this rock map of Scotland in 1992. He collected rocks during amateur geology trips over 30 years.… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

✚ Visualization Tools and Learning Resources, February 2024 Roundup

Every month I collect tools and resources that help you make better charts. Here's the good stuff for February.Tags: roundup | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Algorithmic road trip to visit a street named after each day of the year

Ben Ashforth set out to visit a street named after a day of the year for each date. He used OpenStreetMap to find the streets and then algorithmically routed a trip. Then he followed through and we… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

McDonald’s Locations vs. Golf Courses

There are thousands of McDonald's locations, but there are still more golf courses in the United States. This seems surprising, but some maps make it clear.Tags: golf, McDonald's | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Interactive LED basketball court

During the 2024 NBA All-Star weekend, the basketball court was essentially a giant LED screen on the second day. The company behind the panels talked about the technical side for a WTHR news segmen… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Map of most common domesticated animals

Based on data from the USDA Census of Agriculture, this map by John Johnson shows the predominant domesticated animal in each county in the United States. It nonchalantly includes humans. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Feeling Rested with Age

How much you sleep each night matters, but more importantly, it's about the quality and if you feel rested when you wake up.Tags: age, rest, sleep, well-being | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

✚ Looking for a Denominator

To decide if values are high or low, sometimes you have to divide the numbers for a relative comparison instead of an absolute one.Tags: comparison, denominator | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Love: math or magic?

This American Life tells the tales as old as time: When it comes to finding love, there seems to be two schools of thought on the best way to go about it. One says, wait for that lightning-strike m… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Data-driven running journal

K.K. Rebecca Lai ran her first marathon. She recounts her training and the day of the event with a series of maps and charts. It reads like a data-driven journal entry, which I am always up for. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Rise of Caitlin Clark, scoring machine

Caitlin Clark, a basketball guard for the University of Iowa, has been steadily adding to her point total over the past four years. Clark broke the NCAA record this past week. But as we all know, i… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Race and Occupation

Asian workers are more than three times more likely to be physicians. What other jobs jump out? What's it like for other races and ethnicity?Tags: race, work | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

✚ Better or Less Bad

People like to judge charts by pointing out all the things that are wrong, which is limiting in practice.Tags: criticism | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

BrailleR, a R package to improve access for blind users

From CRAN: Blind users do not have access to the graphical output from R without printing the content of graphics windows to an embosser of some kind. This is not as immediate as is required for ef… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Diva-ness of national anthem renditions

You’ve probably heard various renditions of The Star-Spangled Banner, and sometimes singers put a little extra something in the anthem. A bit of flourish. Some attitude. For The Pudding, Jan … | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Consumer confidence in current economic conditions

For NYT Opinion, Nate Silver compares consumer confidence between two surveys. The University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment focuses more on personal spending, whereas the Conferen… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

When and How Many Super Bowl Wins, by Team

How does the modern Kansas City Chiefs compare to teams who won previous Super Bowls over the past 58 years?Tags: football, Super Bowl | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Your body as a processing plant, digesting a hot wing

Your body goes through a special process to digest spicy food. The sting, the sweating, the sting afterwards. For the Washington Post, Bonnie Berkowitz, Aaron Steckelberg, and Szu Yu Chen illustrat… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 2 months ago

Investor expectations for interest rates compared to reality

This chart by Eric Wallerstein for the Wall Street Journal shows expectations against reality. They often don’t match up. See also: how rate projections change over time. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 months ago

✚ Organizing Data

This week's topic comes through a FD reader who asks how I manage and organize data from analysis through visualization.Tags: organization | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 months ago

Highest Education Level by Age

Education paths start to diverge towards the end of high school and after.Tags: age, education | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 months ago

Speed puzzling times and strategies

There are competitions where people complete jigsaw puzzles as quickly as they can, and some teams take it very seriously. Because of course. For the Washington Post, Chris Alcantara shows the time… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 months ago

Evolution of the scrollbar

Sébastien Matos used a straightforward view to show the evolution of the scrollbar, dating back to the Xerox 8010 Information System from 1981. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 months ago

Researchers might have found Amelia Earhart’s crashed plane

For NPR, Juliana Kim reports: Deep Sea Vision, an ocean exploration company based in South Carolina, announced Saturday that it captured compelling sonar images of what could be Earhart’s air… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 months ago

Decline of the school bus

For WP’s Department of Data, Andrew Van Dam notes the decline of the school bus and the rise of the private vehicle to bring kids to school. The estimates are based on responses to the Nation… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 months ago

Infinite Craft with large language model

Start with water, fire, wind, and earth and see what you can craft by combining elements. Neal Agarwal made a game, Infinite Craft, that uses Llama 2, a large language model, to build just about an… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 months ago

✚ Long Information

There was a time when big infographics ruled, and then their popularity faded as quickly as it came. It wasn't because of their size though, which might have been the only thing right about them.Tags: analysis, depth, size | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 3 months ago