Information Is Beautiful » Guardian Datablog

Hacking India Is Beautiful

david — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:58:32 +0000

This week, I was lucky enough to accompany UK Prime Minister’s delegation to India as part of contingent of ‘hackers’ and civic-minded dataheads. We did a hack day with some of India’s leading developers and visualizers.

Check out their great, ingenious work in this post for The Guardian.

Here’s the full bus-heatmap mentioned in the piece.

Poll Dancing: How accurate are opinion polls?

david — Thu, 06 May 2010 08:32:01 +0000

It’s voting day in the UK General Election today. Here’s a hackerly look at the accuracy of opinion polls for The Guardian Datablog. See if you can spot any patterns.

(They’ve run the image a bit small. Here’s a hi-res on my Flickr)

Here’s the data http://bit.ly/polldancing too. It has a load of extra info going back to 1987.

Happy voting!

DESIGN: David McCandless
RESEARCH: David McCandless, James Key
ADDITIONAL DESIGN: Matt Hancock, Joe Swainson
SOURCES: Guardian/ICM Poll Results, YouGov Trends (PDF), Ipsos MORI Research
DATA: Explore in this Google doc

UK Political Parties: Do They Cut It?

david — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:00:11 +0000

Here in the UK, the election campaign has switched to economic matters. So that means a wave of abstract figures, jargonization and economic word-salad from the main three political parties.

This infographic for the Guardian datablog visualizes measures suggested by the parties to plug the enormous black hole in the UK’s finances. That deficit currently totals Â£167bn ($255bn) – more than the Â£152 bn ($237bn) the UK government earns from income tax every year.

See the graphic
Explore more detail, data and sources here: http://bit.ly/dotheycutit

DESIGN: David McCandless
RESEARCH: David McCandless, James Key, Matt Hancock
SOURCES: Institute Of Fiscal Studies, Guardian Datablog
DATA: Explore in this Google doc

The BBC-o-Gram

david — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:14:27 +0000

Recent controversy about the budget of the BBC here in the UK made me curious about its spending. Here’s the BBC-o-Gram, a visualization I created for the Guardian Datablog, exploring the costs of running one of the biggest broadcasters in the world.

See the visual. Explore the data.

Do they provide good value?

source: The BBC Annual Report (PDF)
data: in this Google spreadsheet
research: David McCandless, James Key
additional design: Joe Swainson

The Billion Pound o Gram

david — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:36:46 +0000

My latest visual piece for The Guardian, The Billion Pound O Gram, is a British cousin of The Billion Dollar Gram. It reveals the scale of the budget deficit in the centre of the British economy. SPOILER: It’s a big one..

Link to the Guardian piece.

Afghanistan: The Information Is Not Beautiful

david — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:11:04 +0000

I took a visual look at the casualty figures coming out of the Afghanistan war for The Guardian. It’s part of my effort to understand what’s going on there. It’s not easy reading. But I think it helps to give some context. See what you think.

You can explore the data and sources in this spreadsheet.