The Billion Dollar-O-Gram 2009. The latest version of our fabled treemap of billion dollar amounts.

All the data and more billion dollar amounts: http://bit.ly/bndollar

A little context

This image arose out of frustration with media reporting of billion dollar amounts. That is, that they’re meaningless without context. But they’re continually reported as self-evident facts. 500 billion for this war. 50 billion for this pipeline. Literally mind-boggling amounts of money.

So here we’ve scraped reported figures from The New York Times, The Guardian, and other news outlets and visualized them as a treemap (?). So you can see in one place figures that would otherwise be scattered across multiple news reports.

(**Sorry it’s taken me so long to update this image from the original version. I’ve revised and updated all the figures. Sourced some new numbers. And researched new ideas suggested by visitors. Thanks all!**)

The Appliance Of Science
How much energy does a microphone use? Or a blender? Or a sateillite dish? And how much does that add up to over a year, money-wise and planet-wise? A lovely playful app from Pentagram team of Lisa Strausfield and Mike Deal (of Charting The Beatles fame). (It’d be nice to change the currency though).

The Four Seasons Visualized!
Beautiful synaesthesic bubble trip through Vivaldi’s classics. An experiment by MotStudio [Via DataVisualisation.ch]

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Die Hard Index
I don’t understand this beautiful map because it’s about sports. Apparently it depicts baseball’s most ardent fanboys. But it looks so great. It’s like information ice-cream. You know, for your eyes. Ice cream man Russ Maschmeyer.

Still hungry?

• How much gas? This is a neat approach at visualising stats for states (Thanks to Felix Sherrington-Kendall for sending)
• What Alleviates Depression? Not the most upbeat design – perhaps intentionally? – but an interesting subject and interesting way to research the data.
• All 91 Cover Designs For Information Is Beautiful Hey – we got there in the end. Just be glad you *never* have to work with me.

As ever, if you come across any tasty information designs you’d love to share with us, please send them over.

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 £167bn ($255bn) – more than the £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

Attitude to punctuality

Problem Solving

[via BrainPickings and @BBHLabs]

: InfoGraphic About InfoGraphics Does he mean us?
: The Trustworthiness Of Beards I am “threatening” apparently (Thanks @McKellier)
: Women In The Boardroom Where is the glass ceiling the highest?
: Every Time Zone Pretty, interactive jet-lag tracker

As ever, if you come across any tasty infographics or visualizations, please send them over.

Much was proclaimed about how these new laws would protect musicians and artists revenue and livelihoods.

But how much money do musicians really get paid in this new digital marketplace?

This image is based on an excellent post at The Cynical Musician called The Paradise That Should Have Been about pitiful digital royalties. (Thanks to Neilon for pointing that out). I’ve taken his calculations and added a few more.

As ever, this was incredibly difficult to research. Industry figures are hard to get hold of. Some are even secret. Last.Fm’s royalty and payment system is beyond comprehension. (If you can explain it to me, please get in touch)

Note: these figures do not include publishing royalties (paid to composers of songs). The full spreadsheet of data does though. You can see all the numbers and sources here:http://bit.ly/DigitalRoyalty

If you have any experiences, data or royalty statements to share, please post below!

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?

My lovely book, Information Is Beautiful, is out in the UK (Amazon).

To celebrate, I’ve teamed up with HarperCollins to give away five signed copies.

All you have to do to enter the prize draw is become a fan on our much-neglected-but-soon-not-to-be-so-neglected Facebook fan page.

We’ll choose five members of the group at random on Monday 15th February and contact them via email. It’ll be my pleasure to write a personal message in each copy.

Here’s the link to the Facebook group. See you on there.

The Book

Information Is Beautiful is a collection of infographics, data visualisations and information designs, covering everything from pop to philosophy – all with the minimum of words. Inspired by the experience of clicking through the web, it has no chapters, no overt structure – it’s just beautifully random.

The UK version essentially the same book as the US copy, The Visual Miscellaneum. Except it’s a true hardback book and it’s printed on uncoated (matt) paper, rather than coated (shiny) paper of the American version. Personally I think it makes for a more ‘arty’ book. Plus it has *that smell*. One I’m, in fact, huffing right now.

Please note: Since the US and UK versions were printed at the same time (last year), so the first edition of the UK version has the same minor printing errors. They affect 12 of the 256 pages. Really sorry about that. I’ve uploaded an errata. It’s passworded. The password is the last word in the bottom right hand corner of page 159 of the book CASE SENSITIVE. Thank you.

Some more screenies to savour.

Link to the Facebook fan page. Order the book on Amazon.co.uk. American version here. Advert over.

I especially like this one. It tracks the keys of Beatles’ album tracks. You can see at a glance their poppier, more harmonic albums.

The project is an offshoot of an ongoing kaleidoscopic project at chartingthebeatles.com and on Flickr.

If it grabs you, head on over and take part. See you there!

The Skeptical side claims at least 31,486 dissenters in their ranks, according to the PetitionProject.org. That sounds like a lot. But is it?

Of course, not all 12 million US scientists therefore agree with ‘The Consensus’. But this puts the PetitionProject’s 31,486 signatories in some kind of context.

Our maths here is somewhat coarse. Some better data suggests the ‘consensus’ figure is around 97.5% of publishing climatologists and around 90% of all publishing scientists supporting the human-induced climate theory. See this study for more details (PDF – Doran And Zimmerman 2009)

Actually, here’s how some of it looks:

Skeptical Field

Among the climate skeptic scientists, we wondered which fields of science were most represented. We expected climate and earth sciences. But we got…

In fact, when you adjust the PetitionProject’s odd categorisation – they filed ‘chemical engineers’ as chemists and physical engineers as ‘physicists’ – the total number of engineers who signed the petition, by our reckoning, jumps to 49%

Why so many engineers?

And on a similar theme – the undiscovered country, Antarctica, grokkable for size.

(Apols. I lost the original link for this image. If anyone knows where it comes from, please let me know so I can credit)

Mark Coleran – Visual Design for Film
An “INCOMING EMAIL” alert in 200 point text suddenly flies across your monitor. Only the movies eh? This talented dude, Mark Coleran, is responsible for many movie infographical displays. Normally you only see them fleetingly reflected in Denziel Washington’s anxious glasses. But today they are in unveiled in their full glory for a long, proper look.

Why Are Europeans White Skinned?
North Europeans are the palest humans in the world. Why? Here’s a clue: Blame Alpen. Explore this fascinating theory and nice story on skin colour.

(Thanks to Peter Ayres) Knol, “Google’s Wikipedia”, rules BTW.

Mind Mapping A Mind Map
Lunchbreath’s amusing dig at Mind Mapping (which I personally find rubbish)

There’s a bunch more hand-drawn infographical goodness on LunchBreath’s Flickr Stream.

Hmmm, strangely map themed this time. If you’re still hungry for more infographical morsels, check out the last selection.

In the meantime, if you come across any visual delights, please send them through.