Chart Porn » Maps

Coin World

Dustin — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:38:21 +0000

An art project map of the world crafted from each countries coins.

Evolution of a Political Map

Dustin — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:50:33 +0000

A nice progression of intermediate steps in preparing a newspaper map of Santorum’s campaign, using R.

Zombie Apocalypse Map

Dustin — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:19:00 +0000

Use this interactive google-mashup-map to locate emergency supplies in the event of a zombie outbreak. This should help you not walk past guns and supplies like in that stupid Walking Dead show.

Lakes and Oceans

Dustin — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:04:05 +0000

Another beautiful stylized map from xkcd

Augusta Then and Now

Dustin — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 17:03:50 +0000

A nice look at how each hole has been modified over the years from Historyshots.

Tornados (1950-2011)

Dustin — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:03:02 +0000

Explore tornados by location, size, cost and other factors.

Tableau version:

Tornado History Project’s version:

and NOAA has a number of beautiful tornado and storm visualizations on it’s site (from which the other two get their data):

DC Terrorist Nuke Attack

Dustin — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:13:40 +0000

A government report analyzed the impact of a ground 10-kiloton explosion in Washington DC. Turns out it wouldn’t be quite as bad as you might think (well, compared to what it would have looked like during the cold war when the scenario was multiple megaton air bursts). The full report contains a number of nice map visualizations of the severe fallout threat. The bad news? I live and work within the “severe damage, lifesaving not likely” region. Oh well…

Geography of Government Benefits

Dustin — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:26:00 +0000

Share of income that comes from government programs, broken down by type of benefit. (related article)

Why Gas Prices Vary Across the USA

Dustin — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 19:08:42 +0000

James Hamilton takes a crack at explaining why gasoline prices vary so much across the country. I think he’s right that taxes, regulations, and transportation explain most of it, but I suspect that refinery shenanigans also play a role. Brad Plumer over at WashPost has additional insights.

(the original version of this map over at Gasbuddy is fun to zoom around in)

New Washington DC Metro Map

Dustin — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:56:23 +0000

Not much difference from the old one. Some font and icon changes, and split coloring to indicate rush hour schedule changes.

CityMaps

Dustin — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:22:34 +0000

CityMaps is an interactive going out map service– something like a crowdsourced cross between google maps and yelp. Personally I found it to be a disturbing reminder of how surrounded we are by corporations and logos. For a fun game, see how many Starbucks logos you can fit in one screen – my record is eight, below. Currently available for NYC, San Francisco, and Austin.

Map of the US Melting Pot

Dustin — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:11:21 +0000

Bloomberg created this interactive map of heritages according to the 2010 census. You can select any two and see how they compare across the country. It struck me a bit odd that neither “native american” nor “african american” is included – it’s probably some strange dataset problem.

Country Tenure

Dustin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:07:00 +0000

How long do country leaders stay in charge, on average?

2012 Economic Freedom Map

Dustin — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:17:00 +0000

I’m not a fan of the Heritage Foundation, and the one time I dug into the data of their Economic Freedom Index I found that they occasionally compare apples and oranges to get around data scarcity – BUT: they do put a large research effort into the report each year. The below interactive map is well executed – but you should drill down to country level data to get a feel for what is really being measured (click on a country, then the “learn more about this country” link that pops up in the lower left. Why this requires two steps I have no idea).

Improving on Minard?!?

Dustin — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 17:48:23 +0000

How dare they! Well, actually, it’s a fun exercise. Declared by Tufte to be one of the best statistical graphics ever drawn, Joseph Minard’s graph of Napoleon’s march on Russia is definitely a classic (a copy hangs in my bathroom).

John Boykin recently took a crack at redesigning the classic, and goes into quite a bit of detail on his website about the choices he made:

John links to a series of other re-creations and re-interpretations of Minard’s dataset, as collected by Michael Friendly:

3D:

I particularly like this googlemap version:

And then there’s the executive summary version. Bwahahahahaha!

(via JunkCharts)