Reference - Chart Porn

Reference Archive:

12 Jan 2012

Some of the data points here are interesting, but I think it throws together too many different data types. Mass fatalities count as “Human Gatherings”?!? The colors are beyond drab, and the spiral just adds to the confusion. In summary: Ick.

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Gold

In: Global Economy Maps Reference

12 Jan 2012

Some pretty interesting facts about gold.

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Worst Times to Drive

In: Reference

16 Nov 2011

We could probably critique a few things here, but it’s so nice to see an infoposter where they actually put in a lot of useful data – in charts! – that I think we can let those slide.

(2) Comments

Used Car Prices

In: Innovative Reference

22 Jun 2011

Daniel Rathbone created this tool to aggregate used car prices from Craigslist. Besides being a useful way to shop for cars, it’s also interesting to see how different brands and models hold up in value over time. For example, check out the Accord vs Corvette below.

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Dance Music Frequency Map

In: Reference

11 May 2011

Here’s one for all you DJs out there. A map of where different instruments fall on the sonic scale.

Not quite as comprehensive as the version we posted in 2009 below:

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Human Development Index Tree

In: Global Economy Innovative Interactive Reference

27 Apr 2011

Visualization of several United Nations indices on education, income, and health. I’m not quite sure what the point of using a “tree” is, but they obviously put some thought into it: The height of the tree trunk is proportional to the total value of the HDI. The size of the three branches are proportional to each sub-indicator. The branches are ordered in increasing order from left to right. The color of the trunk is the average of the color of the components.

Here’s a tree “legend”:

and a comparison of the United States and China:

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Hipmunk Hotels

In: Innovative Maps Reference

18 Mar 2011

I’ve praised Hipmunk’s slick airline reservation interface before. Now they’ve added hotels – and it’s awesome. Besides mapping out locations and allowing filtering on prices and amenities, you can also overlap heatmaps for food, tourism, shopping, nightlife, and “vice”. The map below is for Washington DC’s nightlife, and is pretty damn accurate.

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Rational Discussion Flowchart

In: Humor Reference

17 Mar 2011

Useful reading if you are a human being:

(via)

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Flags of the World

In: Interactive Maps Reference

2 Feb 2011

Roll over any nation on this map of the world to see that country’s flag, as well as an explanation of the symbolism of its design. For example, the colors in Egypt’s flag represent oppression (black), overcome through bloody struggle (red), to be replaced by a bright future (white) – a timeless design, apparently. Thanks to Jack Lucky for the link!

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Fun and Games with Airline Ticket Prices

In: Interactive Maps Reference

27 Jan 2011

The Wall Street Journal has a nice article about the weekly ebbs and flows of airline ticket sales. If you want to dig deeper, farecompare.com has done some longer period analysis of this topic.

Flipping the typical fare question on it’s head, below is a very cool interactive map where you input how much you want to spend and it will show you where you can fly for that much money:

Kayak.com has also graphed a few charts of average ticket prices, and provides downloadable data:

Finally, since we’re on the topic, I want to give a Chart Porn graphic design gold star to Hipmunk’s flight reservation site. It’s what selecting a flight should look like: