I See What You Mean

I have been running across some incredible infomaps recently. Result: A new feature here on ISWYM. Here's today's Cool Map, created by  Stephan Hormes .  

From the Center for Public Integrity comes this interactive map showing greenhouse gas emissions from many of the world's largest economies. Lots of data is packed into this simple interface, and the map itself is blessedly clear. Note, though, that when it comes to infoviz issues, even these pros needed a do-over. Check out the message in the lower left corner. In an earlier version they made the common mistake of comparing circles based on radius, instead of by area. It's to their credit that not only did they fix the mistake, but they also owned up to it and made the change. The larger problem, though, is that distinguishing the relative size of circles is not easy for the average viewer; rectangles are clearer, and would probably have made this cool map even stronger. Note also that stats are from 2005. Since then there's been substantial economic growth in China (for example), so the current numbers are likely to be even higher than what's shown here. Diffe...

A sobering look at U.S. social conditions, circa 150 years ago. Notice how concentrated slave ownership is in the areas surrounding the major rivers (the Mississippi Delta is one obvious example) and near the largest ports (Houston, the Chesapeake region, Charleston). If you want more detail, there's a full frame version  courtesy of the New York Times .

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 ]

Belated kudos to this fascinating infoviz item from mid-May. Mr. Booth had set out to discover how many people were living in poverty, to determine why and what could be done to help them. As well as proving that there was much more poverty in London than the official statistics suggested, his research revealed the nuances of an increasingly complex city with different degrees of hardship, where the rich often lived alongside the poor. Still seen as landmarks of sociological research, his maps are to be exhibited in the new Galleries of Modern London opening Friday at the Museum of London. “Booth’s Maps are important documents of mass poverty, but by drilling down and giving huge amounts of detail, they do more than analyze it statistically,” said Beverly Cook, curator of social and working history at the Museum of London. “Many writers and artists of the time saw London as a divided city, split between rich and poor, but these maps show its complexities. In many respects, they give a...

Eloquent yet immediately comprehensible. A dead-simple concept that illustrates a great truth. Because it is based on extremely solid data -- geographic size, which is as close to actual fact as we can get -- the result is inarguable. Exemplary.

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!

See it now. Based on the recent Wikileaks release of military documents , Mike Dewar and Drew Conway created this animated month-by-month infographic showing the number and location of engagements over five years in Afghanistan. Beautiful work and very sobering. Animated Heatmap of WikiLeaks Report Intensity in Afghanistan - Zero Intelligence Agents

I highly recommend this animated infographic , in which Latoya Egwuekwe gives us a quick and crystal-clear history of US unemployment levels from January 2007 to October 2009. This is a great example of how infoviz can tell a story efficiently and in a way any viewer can understand. Thanks, Latoya.

Based on a common and surprisingly versatile visual metaphor, this subway map of the cinematic universe was recommended by some film critic friends.

Brought to our attention by Synoptical simpatica MCL , this gorgeously rendered space map is even deeper than it looks at first glance. The number of rings around each planet depicts how many spacecraft have orbited that planet (most visited: moon), while each imperfect circle represents a capsule's precise path around the planet. National Geographic has a Flash version here . (I kinda hate Flash. Who's with me?) If you want to see or have a static version, you can do both of those here .

Created by a couple of UK computer science students, this newly upgraded aggregator/search engine delivers results that are both broad and deep. Tags are used extensively and to good effect, but the infoviz applications are where the action is. The Network widget is probably my favorite. To use, hover over a small graphic image to highlight its connections with other items in the network. Hover over bits of text for pop-ups providing additional information. Double-click a node if you want to drill down. If you're looking for news from a certain region, click the Hot Spots map widget and drill down from there. You can further refine the search by filtering the topic of the news stories. Unfortunately, the Trends app is buggy, poorly explained and therefore far less useful. And Silobreaker's collection of pre-set topics (global issues, tech, science, business, energy and world) is certainly incomplete. Even so, the site's dashboard-style interface provides lots of entry p...

As thousands and perhaps millions take to the streets in Tehran to protest Iran's (alleged) election fraud, the UK's Guardian goes nitty-gritty, posting a data set of polling results. * The paper ends its report thus: "Can you do something with this data? Please post us your visualisations and mash-ups below or mail us at datastore@guardian.co.uk ." Its story also links to data maps from Fivethirtyeight.com and Iran Tracker. (Elsewhere at Fivethirtyeight, Nate Silver considers the statistical analysis that ostensibly proves the election was rigged -- in other words, the basis of the protestors' unrest.) Here's the direct link to the election data, in case anyone out there feels like having a go at it; I hope I'll have some time to muck around with it myself. DATA: Full Iranian election results by province including turnouts and 2005 results. Download them as a spreadsheet. *Per the story: "The figures we've uploaded are, as far as we can work...

The proprietor of Complex Diagrams , Noah Iliinsky, delivers an astute critique of two Seattle-area bicycle maps. The discussion illustrates (no pun intended) how even something as simple as a map legend can be rendered confusing or unhelpful through careless design.

A new map of Travel Time to Major Cities - developed by the European Commission and the World Bank - captures this connectivity and the concentration of economic activity and also highlights that there is little wilderness left... accessibility is relevant at all levels, from local development to global trade and this map fills an important gap in our understanding of the spatial patterns of economic, physical and social connectivity. The creators of this map went beyond simple considerations of road mileage and cities' distance from the coast to calculate a more complex measure of "friction surface" — in other words, how long it really takes to cover a given mile of terrain. Among the other factors that add to travel time (i.e., friction) are topography, national borders (the crossing of which can cause delays), and land cover. (Check out the data sources page to see where all that information originated, and what the data's parameters are.) Kudos to the mapmakers ...