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August 27, 2008
Recent infographic goodness
- Stefanie Posavec creates beautiful, sometimes abstract images from data in her "On the Map" project.
- The NYT renders Olympic medal counts by country, also enabling the user to navigate through time. (Tossing it around too freely, I managed to blow up Safari.)
- "UFO sighting convincibility" is on the rise, thanks to Photoshop. [Via Rob Corell]
- xach.com offers a cool way to visualize 2008 box office results. [Via]
- I think I should chart my mood on a line stretching from "Earnest" to "Scurrilous*," as Vanity Fair does with the content of their Blogopticon. [Via Tom Hogarty] It's similar to New York Mag's Approval Matrix.
*Defined as "grossly or obscenely abusive... characterized by or using low buffoonery; coarsely jocular or derisive." Hells yeah.
Comments
I love infographics like these, though it's interesting to note that the [American] NY Times ranks the US higher in the medal tables. Despite both countries scoring exactly the same no of points if you give 3,2 or 1 point for each medal. But as China won far more Golds and thereore won more events, I'd say they beat the US into second place. Then again, as some of their wins seem a little iffy with some Chinese 16 year old gymnasts possibly being only 14.....it also reminds one of the 'glory' days of East Germany.
The UFO sighting graphic had me laughing out loud.
John,
The stuff by Stafanie Posavec is mind blowing. I have all of Edward Tufte's books and I don't think even he has anything quite like her work.
I again commend you for the stuff you post. Keep it up.
If you've got staff helping you wade through all the stuff you're sent, give them a pat on the back too. If not, extra kudos to you for all the backroom work.
[Heh--it's just me, shirking my actual work duties. ;-) --J.]
There was a lot of controversy over that NY Times ranking. Here in Brazil, it's sorted by gold medals, AFAIK the others are only used in case of a tie. Assigning equal weight to every medal seems to diminish the winner's accomplishment: "Hey Mr. Phelps, nice job! But second place would be just fine, a medal is a medal, you know?"
Giving 3,2,1 points for each medal seems fair and would put the two countries close to a draw:
(51*3)+(21*2)+28=223 China
(36*3)+(38*2)+36=220 US
As for the doubtfulness of some of their wins... well the mysterious disappearance of the Brazilian athlete's pole was a little hard to accept.
"During the finals, one of the poles which Brazilian Fabiana Murer would use disappeared, causing her to spend 10–15 minutes trying to get it back.[3] The lost time and having to use another pole led her to bad results. Murer complained about the organization and said she'll never return to China"
ha ha Who the eff is Rob Correll?
That's my graph!