Category Archives: Visual Journalism

The BBC-o-Gram

March 1, 2010

The BBC-o-Gram

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

Also posted in Data Journalism, Guardian Datablog, Infographic, Media |
 5 Comments

When Sea Levels Attack

February 22, 2010

When Sea Levels Attack
It’s difficult to keep track of all this shifting information on sea level rises.

It doesn’t help that in climate change reporting, a consistent but bewildering assumption is repeatedly made: that we understand what a 1 metre sea level rise actually means.

A “1 metre sea level rise” is in the same domain as “1 ton of carbon” or “£1 billion”. That is, it’s meaningless without context or some link to our everyday lives.

So, in this latest diagram for The Guardian Datablog, I’ve tried to sum up all the current research on sea level rises. What will happen, when it will happen, and where all that sea water will come from. And to suggest what cities will flood When Sea Levels Attack!


source: Sea Level Rise Explorer, Global Sea Level Linked To Rising Temperature (Vermeer, Rahmstorf 2009, PDF), New Scientist, Future Sea Level Rise (Rahmstorf 2007, PDF), IPCC, Telegraph.co.uk
data: in this Google spreadsheet

Also posted in Climate, Data Journalism, Sustainability |
 15 Comments

What Does China Censor Online?

January 14, 2010

What does China censor online? The Great Firewall Of China
The Great Firewall Of China.

Oops. I guess we can add a certain beautiful infographics website to that ban list.

Data here.

Update 1: There’s a more detailed, annotated version on The Guardian Datablog.


:: source Wikipedia/Words_censored_by_search_engines_in_the_People’s_Republic_of_China, Wikipedia:Notable_websites_blocked_in_the_People’s_Republic_of_China, ConceptDoppler.org, GreatFirewallOfChina.org,
:: Data on Google Docs

Also posted in Data Journalism, Political, Tag cloud, Web |
 85 Comments

The Climate Deniers vs The Consensus

December 7, 2009

Climate Skeptics vs Climate Consensus

A visual map of the arguments for and against human-caused global climate change.

I’m fascinated by climate deniers. How could anyone deny the climate change is happening?
What evidence is there? Surely it’s unambiguous?

Curious, I investigated the key statements made by climate denialists and sought out the counter-views, as presented by climate research scientists. The result is this image.

(This a new and updated version of the spread on Climate Skepticism from my book The Visual Miscellaneum)

Method

I researched this subject in a very particular way. I deliberately chose not speak directly to any climate experts or leading scientists in the field. I used only publicly available web sources.

Why? Because I wanted to simulate what it’s like for people trying to learn about climate change online.

My conclusion is “what a nightmare”. I was generally shocked and appalled by how difficult it was to source counter arguments. The data was often tucked away on extremely ancient or byzantine websites. The key counter arguments I often found, 16 scrolls down, on comment 342 on a far flung realclimate.org post from three years ago. And even when I found an answer, the answers were excessively jargonized or technical.

Most of the info for this image is sourced from Realclimate.org. It’s an amazing blog staffed tirelessly by some of the world’s leading climatologists.

Unfortunately, the majority of the writing on there is so scientific and so technical, it makes the website nigh on useless to the casual, curious reader.

This has got to be one of the reasons why scientists and leaders are struggling to convince sections of the populace that the threat of climate change is real. Because they’re doing such a terrible job explaining it.

(Saying all that, I would like to express my gratitude to Gavin A Schmidt, one of unsung heroes of the web IMHO. His sterling and patient replies to comments, on RealClimate.org in understandable English, have really helped this process.)

Runaway Feedback

This image was a mammoth undertaking, especially for someone like me, unschooled in climate science. So I appreciate your understanding if any errors have crept into the process. If you spot any, please get in touch and I’ll will correct them on the double.

In every case, wherever possible, I went back the original data. (I’ve included a ZIP of all the data I’ve collected plus a spreadsheet of all the sources). And all the graphs in the image are generated from the original temperature records and other data sources. Feel free to rifle through and check everything.

RealClimate.org are (now) keeping an archive of all the data – if you want even more!
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/

UPDATE 1 (12th Dec 09): There have been a few complaints about the legibility of the image. So I’ve created a version on white instead of black.


Climate Skeptical Sources: The Myth Of Human-Caused Climate Change (RM Carter), Is The Earth Still Recovering From A Little Ice Age (Syun-Ichi Akasofu ), The Deniers, Laurence Solomon

Consensus sources: Realclimate.org, NOAA Satellite and Information Service, Nature.com, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre

Explore the sources In this Google doc
Here’s all the climate change data I used to create the graphs

Also posted in Climate, Comparison Chart, Data Visualisation, Environment, Political, Skeptics vs Believers, The Visual Miscellaneum, X vs Y |
 226 Comments

The Billion Pound o Gram

November 27, 2009

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.

Also posted in Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, Economics, Guardian Datablog, InfoVisualisation, Political, Statistics |
 15 Comments

Visualising the Guardian Datablog

November 6, 2009

I’m doing a regular weekly visualisation for the excellent Guardian Datablog, the front-end for an amazing library of statistics and data, lovingly hand-gathered by The Guardian.

My first post is about Deadly Drugs.

There’s been a furore over here in the UK about the dangers of illegal drugs. The Government has sacked its most senior drugs advisor, Dr Professor Nutt, after he claimed cannabis was no more harmful than alcohol. And that horse-riding, and specifically ‘equasy’ (Equine Addiction Syndrome) was riskier than taking ecstasy. (Statistically he’s correct. His study here.).

Anyway, digging at the numbers behind his statements and how drugs are reported in the popular press, I found some stuff I didn’t expect about drug harms.

Check out the article on The Guardian blog for detail and data. You want both right?

Also posted in Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, De-Hyping, Drugs, Health |
 84 Comments

The Visual Miscellaneum

October 22, 2009

Would you consider pre-ordering my book? That way I can get it into more bookshops. And we can spread the good news about the amazing ALL-GRAPHIC FUTURE OF CIVILISATION THAT AWAITS US!

It’s out in the US 10th November. And in the UK on the 4th February.

Here’s a Visual Miscellaneum US pre-order link

Cover design by DesignWorksGroup

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Cover
I received my first copies this week – a joyful and agonising experience. Joyful because yay it’s my book! Agonising because, inevitably, I keep seeing things I want to change or tweak or improve.

Overall though, I think it’s pretty good. Ultimately, I wanted to explore a whole range of subjects as visually and beautifully as possible, with the minimum of text. I hope I managed it and I hope you enjoy it.

Here are some pictures to give you a sense of it.

(Sorry about the awful framing of some of these. I’m a designer, not a photographer yeah?)

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Inside Cover

Bubble contents. I think that’s the most text you’ll see on a page

The Visual MIscellaneum by David McCandless: Contents

Ah I love this page. See theonline version

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Mountains Out of Molehills

Excellent work from Laura Sullivan

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Colours

The old stand-by. Check out the online version

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: The Billion Dollar Gram

Great work from Jez Burrows

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Carbon Aware

THE SPIRAL!

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Spiral

This will be online soon

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Creationism

Awesome work from Always With Honor

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Creation

This is the visual index

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Index

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Backcover

Here’s that Visual Miscellaneum US pre-order link again.

Enjoy! And let me know what you think. Thanks! david.

(p.s. if you want review copies, please email
USA: Meredith.Rusu@harpercollins.com | UK & EUROPE: Katherine.Patrick@harpercollins.co.uk)

Also posted in Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, Fun, Great Visualizers, My Book |
 146 Comments

Great Visualizers: Good Magazine

September 2, 2009

Good Magazine Infographics
Good Magazine is good. It’s a non-profit mag with a powerful eco-sustainability-we-can-do-this-together vibe. And when you subscribe, they give your money to charity!

They’ve been quietly championing infographics and visual information in their ‘Transparency’ section for a few years now. Many of their images are America-centric. But a lot highlight global concerns. Here are some of my favourites.

Read More »

Also posted in Data Visualisation, Environment, Great Visualizers, Infographic, Media, Sustainability |
 11 Comments

The Billion Dollar Gram

August 12, 2009

The Billion Dollar Gram

Billions spent on this. Billions spent on that. What does it all look like? Hopefully The Billion Dollar Gram will help.

This image arose out of a frustration with the reporting of billion dollar amounts in the media. That is, they’re reported as self-evident facts, when, in fact, they’re mind-boggling and near incomprehensible without context. But they can start to be understood visually and relatively, IMHO.

(This is one of the first images I created for my book. So a lot of the figures are from 2006/07. I’ve also visually cheated slightly here and there to make everything fit)

I hoping this will be a “living image” that I’ll keep updating all the time. So if you find any interesting, juicy or eye-popping billions, please comment below (with a source). Let’s see how high we can make this image!


source: New York Times, The Guardian, Fortune and others. See this Google doc for all details.
Also posted in Comparison Chart, Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, Economics, InfoVisualisation, Infographic, Media, Political, Treemap |
 146 Comments

Patterns in the Group Mind

August 7, 2009

I’ve been playing with Google Insights. It’s a great toy. It measures ’search intensity’. The number of searches being made for a certain term.

Off the back of the recent timeline of global media scare stories, I got curious about what searches actually look like.

For example, the search “violent video games” reveals a very distinct pattern.

Google Insights search:

Why that distinct pattern? If you add the dates, it clarifies things:

Google Insights search:

Every April and November the issue flares up. Why?

April 20th is the anniversary of the Columbine Massacre. Though dimishing, the echoes of that event still reverberate through the group mind.

Not sure about the November peak? Maybe because Christmas video games are announced?

Read More »

Also posted in Comparison Chart, Data Journalism, De-Hyping, Fun, Graph, Group MInd, Media, Timelines |
 33 Comments