I See What You Mean

"I predict that we will see a lot more visualization in journalism. A lot of stories are already about numbers, with language mostly telling readers the conclusions. Simple charts with some interaction can provide a bit more context, and more can be added very easily. I doubt that we'll see a big visual journalism revolution in 2011, mostly because of the lack of accessible and practical tools, but we will see a lot more experimentation. The increasing demand will lead to more journalism-focused services being provided by visualization websites, in particular ones that also provide the analytic capabilities (i.e., not just pretty charts)." -- from " The State of Information Visualization, 2011 ," by UNC Charlotte's Robert Kosara . Emphasis added, as this is exactly What We Do here at Synoptical Charts.

As a response to Kai Krause's Africa map , Jeffrey Winter shows us just how small Vatican City really is .  The True Size of Vatican City - xefer.com   [via The Power of Data Visualization ]

Designer Yakov Tsvetkov ( alphadesigner ) has a lovely series of maps depicting how various people around the world see their national neighbors. This is the view from the USA. The series conveys a lot about insularity, provinciality, metadata, and the human drive to categorize (based on whatever aspects seem most important to them). Is it shorthand, or is it prejudice, or both? Philosophical issues aside, this amusing series is definitely worth exploring. Bon voyage!

Sometimes people think the only purpose of an information graphic is to bust out some cool fonts and intersperse the words with some images that are more entertaining than just a table of numbers. Apparently Phil Gyford has had enough of these pikers. Sometimes it ain't in the way you say it, it's what you've got to say in the first place.

John Cole gets his infoviz on and illustrates the actual quantitative difference "between socialism and capitalist nirvana." His bar graph demonstrates that, political rhetoric notwithstanding, the proposed increase for top-bracket taxpayers doesn't exactly warrant the dreaded S word.

I was surprised to read this week that putatively educated Americans ( a Louisiana lawyer, a Colorado dentist , an ABC News reporter ) don't understand the concept of marginal tax rates. Because of this lack of comprehension, per ABC, the lawyer and dentist are vowing to keep their taxable income below $250,000 to avoid President Obama's proposed tax increase: "I've put thought into how to get under $250,000," said [the ill-informed dentist]. "It would mean working fewer days which means having fewer employees, seeing fewer patients and taking time off." Apparently some clarification is called for . Below is a US federal income tax table for 2009 ( source ). This does not mean that if you bring in more than $372,951, every single dollar in your entire pile of money is taxed at 35%. Only Dollar #372,952 (plus whatever additional money you may earn) is taxed at that rate. Dollar #372,950 is taxed at 33%. Meanwhile, Dollar #1 is taxed at 10%. Hence the ter...

Occasionally you don't need an image-driven graphic to convey a lot of data; sometimes a table of numbers alone can be quite illuminating. Here's a comparative table put together by ProPublica.org that shows how the House's version of the US stimulus bill stacks up against the Senate version (passed just moments ago). PP explains: Some highlights: The House version would spend $60 billion more on education. The Senate version adds more than $100 billion for tax cuts to individuals and families. The House would spend more to upgrade the country’s electricity grid. The Senate would spend more on medical research. The table's very clear and concise, but I do wish the numbers cited there were linked to the actual text of the proposed legislation (or, even better, some sort of graphic translation of it) so readers could see for themselves the exact details of each provision. Meanwhile, there's also a treemap of the late-January House version (made with ManyEyes ) over...

To illustrate the horrible unemployment numbers announced today ( "employers in the United States have shed about 3.6 million jobs since December 2007" ), the New York Times presents a series of graphics : 1 ) We have a perfectly nice bar chart here: clear, legible, professionally done, all that. This chart tells us two (2) things: what month it is and how many jobs were lost. Surely there is additional info about this two-year stretch that would add depth and meaning (and potentially even yield an epiphany or two!). One suggestion: The story says, "Manufacturers eliminated 207,000 jobs, more than in any year since 1982. The construction industry eliminated 111,000 jobs. And retailers, who were wrapping up their worst holiday shopping season in years, eliminated 45,000 jobs." Segmenting each bar by color to represent the various sectors would show at a glance where the biggest losses were coming from. 2) Again, a perfectly nice fever chart. (I don't mean to min...