Posts Tagged ‘Time Zones’
“Torture the data, and it will confess to anything”*…
Add movement to a bar chart, and you’ve got yourself an audience-pleaser. These so-called “bar chart races” are not popular with data visualization experts– but what do experts know?…
I’m not a betting man. But I do enjoy a good bar chart race — a popular way to visually display and compare changing data over time. Bars lengthen and shorten as time ticks away; contenders accordingly hop over each other to switch places in the ranking. Will your favorite keep their lead? Look at that surprise challenger rush to the front! Meanwhile, furious battles are waged for the middle and even the lower spots on the list.
Bar chart races are a spectacular way to animate certain types of information, but the so-called dataviz community is skeptical. Many data visualization specialists complain that bar chart races are like a sugar rush: a lot of entertainment, but very little analysis. Big on grabbing attention, small on conveying causality. Instead of good seats at the data ballet, you get standing room only at the information dog track.
Well, all that may be true. But when is the last time you’ve been glued to a statistic about global coffee production? Bar chart races are fun to watch, not least because you can pick a favorite early on and get to see them win — or lose. In other words, you’re emotionally invested in the animation in a way that’s lacking from static stats.
Bar chart races are used for just about any dataset that can be quantified over time: best-selling game consoles, most trusted brands, highest grossing movies…
Any dataset that can be quantified over time can be turned into a contest that is both exciting and (a little bit) enlightening: from @VeryStrangeMaps, 10 examples of “Bar chart races: short on analysis, but fun to watch,” for example…
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As we ruminate on representation, we might check our watches: it was on this date in 1918 that the Standard Time Act (AKA, the Calder Act) became effective. Passed by Congress earlier in the year, it implemented across the U.S. both Standard time (the creation of time zones anchored in UTC, the successor to GMT) and Daylight Saving Time.
“I told my doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to stop going to those places.”*…
The “Hanoi Street Train”
As we depart the 2010s, a period that gave rise to influencers and forced us to grapple with our carbon footprints, and set sail for the ’20s, we at Fodor’s are asking ourselves a simple question: How can we be better travelers in the decade to come?
We’re hardly alone in asking it. We all desperately wish to see and experience this wonderful world, but how can we do so responsibly? Ultimately, we must each, individually, come to our own conclusions. And that’s how we view this year’s No List.
Every year, we use the No List to highlight issues—ethical, environmental, sometimes even political—that we’re thinking about before, during, and long after we travel. For this year’s No List, as we do every year, we highlight places and issues that give us pause. The underlying issues are ones that we’ll certainly be grappling with in the decade to come…
Fodor’s explains why we might NOT want to visit a baker’s dozen famous tourist destinations in 2020– their “No List”: “Thirteen places to reconsider in the year ahead.”
* Henny Youngman
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As we move off the beaten path, we might recall that this date, January 1, debuted in 46 BCE with the advent of the Julian calendar. It became the first day of the year in 1622; that honored had previously belonged to March 25.
January 1 is both the furthest away and closest day to December 31st. Because of time zones, the first person born in a year can be born before the last person of the previous year.
Happy New Year!
“It isn’t that they cannot see the solution. It is that they cannot see the problem.”*…
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From Zogg from Betelgeuse , “Mathematics: Measuring x Laziness²,” the latest entry in the Earthlings 101 series– a beginner’s guide for alien visitors.
* G.K. Chesterton
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As we dazzle ’em with differentials, we might spare a thought for Sir Sandford Fleming; he died on this date in 1915. A Scottish engineer who emigrated to Canada, Fleming designed much of the Intercolonial Railway and the Canadian Pacific Railway; was a founding member of the Royal Society of Canada; founded the Royal Canadian Institute; and designed the first Canadian postage stamp (the Threepenny Beaver, issued in 1851), But he is best remembered as the man who divided the world into time zones– the inventor of Worldwide Standard Time.
The Daily Grind…
German photographer Michael Wolfe has compiled a compelling collection of portraits of Tokyo subway commuters.
As Phaidon points out, while Wolfe’s earlier series “Architecture Of Density” was reminiscent of Andreas Gursky, this series evokes the iconic work of Walker Evans…
See more of Wolfe’s “Tokyo Compression” series at Phaidon, and even more of that series– plus more of his other wonderful work– on his site.
As we reach for our tokens, we might recall that it was on this date in 1883, precisely at noon, that North American railroads switched to a new standard time system for rail operations, which they called Standard Railway Time (SRT). Almost immediately after being implemented, many American cities enacted ordinances, thus resulting in the creation of “time zones”– eastern standard time, central daylight time, mountain standard time, and Pacific daylight time. Though tailored to the railroad companies’ train schedules, the new system was quickly adopted nationwide, forestalling federal intervention in civil time for more than thirty years, until that dark day in 1918, when daylight saving time was introduced.
Plaque commemorating the Railway General Time Convention of 1883 in North America
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