Posts Tagged ‘graphics’
“Yet in opinions look not always back, / Your wake is nothing, mind the coming track”*…
One of ten trends to watch in 2018
From North Korea’s nuclear tests to global refugee flows, the rise or fall in numbers signals where the world may be headed in 2018. To help visualize what’s on the horizon, CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] editors asked ten of our experts to highlight the charts and graphs to keep an eye on in the coming year…
Ten charts and the short essays that explain their importance to our future: “Visualizing 2018: The Essential Graphics.”
* Yet in opinions look not always back,
Your wake is nothing, mind the coming track;
Leave what you’ve done for what you have to do;
Don’t be “consistent,” but be simply true.
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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As we monitor the gauges, we might send underwhelming birthday greetings to Millard Fillmore; he was born on this date in 1800. The last member of the Whig Party to serve as President, he was a Congressional Representative from New York who was elected to the Vice Presidency in 1848 on Zachary Taylor’s ticket. When Taylor died in 1850, Fillmore became the second V.P. to assume the presidency between elections.
Fillmore’s signature accomplishment was the passage of the Compromise of 1850 passed, a bargain that led to a brief truce in the battle over slavery– a package of legislation so ill-conceived (it contained the Fugitive Slave Act) and unpopular that Fillmore failed to get his own party’s nomination for President in the election of 1852, which he sat out. Unwilling to follow Lincoln into the new Republican Party, he got the endorsement of the nativist Know Nothing Party (dba, the American Party) four years later, and finished third in the 1856 election.
Matthew Brady’s photo of Fillmore
“There are three types of lies — lies, damn lies, and statistics”*…
In today’s world, we are constantly bombarded with averages and medians: the average temperature in New York in April is 52 degrees; Stephen Curry averages 30 points per game; the median household income in the United States is $51,939.
But the concept of taking many different measurements and representing them with one best number is a relatively recent invention. In fact, there are no historical examples of the average or median being used in this manner prior to the 17th Century.
So how did the concept of averages and medians develop? And how did the average triumph as the measurement of our times? The supremacy of the average over the median has had profound consequences about how we understand data. In many cases, it has led us astray…
More at “How the Average Triumphed Over the Median.”
* Benjamin Disraeli
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As we average it out, we might recall that it was on this date in 1913 that employees of the City of New York held a “Parade of Statistical Graphics,” replete with large graphs on horse-drawn floats, and a photograph with people arranged in a bell-shaped curve. The crowd’s favorite was the float devoted to the decline in death rate due to improvements in sanitation and nursing.
“Make things as simple as possible but no simpler”*…
Botticelli, “The Birth of Venus”
Posters promoting the Masters and their masterpieces: From Sydney-based designer Nicholas Barclay, a ten classic works of art, reduced to their essences…
Peruse each of them (about half-way down the page), and check out his other distillations, on Barclay’s site .
* Albert Einstein
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As we wonder what the docent will make of these, we might recall it it was on this date in 1979 that The Clash played the Harvard Square Theater on the first leg of their first American tour, “Pearl Harbor ’79.”
The band, backstage, with their idol (and opening act on the tour), Bo Diddley
“Data is the new oil? No: Data is the new soil”*…
Eleanor Lutz, a designer in Seattle with a Bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from the University of Washington (where her research was in teaching mosquitoes to fly through mazes), has turned her talents to scientific visualization. Her wonderful site, Tabletop Whale, features a weekly animated GIF illustrating both the principles and the beauty of a scientific phenomenon.
Watch them move: more (and larger) animated GIFs at Tabletop Whale.
[via Visual News; TotH to Erik Kuhne]
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As we wonder at the working of the world around us, we might recall that it was on this date in 1810 that Crown Prince Ludwig (later to become King Ludwig I) invited the citizens of Munich to help celebrate his marriage to Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen with horse races and a feast lubricated liberally by beer. The festivities were held on the fields in front of the city gates, named Theresienwiese (“Theresa’s meadow”) in honor of the Crown Princess, although the locals have since abbreviated the name simply to the “Wiesn.” The event was such a success that the Crown Prince decided to repeat it the following year– and so the tradition of Ocktoberfest was born. The current version of celebration begins in late September and runs through the first Sunday in October, and involves the serving of over 1 million gallons of beer.
“Illusion is the first of all pleasures”*…
Not sure where this is from, but feel that tingle in the back of your head? That’s the feeling of your mind blowing up.
* Voltaire
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As we dwell on duality, we might recall that it was on this date in 1920 that Mary Roberts Reinhart’s The Bat opened at the Morosco Theatre in New York.
Reinhart, often called “the American Agatha Christie,” invented the “Had-I-But-Known” school of mystery writing; and while she never actually seems to have written it, is widely-credited with the phrase “the butler did it.” The Bat was one of her successes: it ran for over two years, was revived twice, novelized (see below), filmed three times… and perhaps as importantly, was cited (in one of its film adaptations) by Bob Kane as an inspiration for his creation, Batman.
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