Autor: Nathan Yau

Tree of Life

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Nathan Yau

From Evogeneao:

This Tree of Life diagram is based primarily on the evolutionary relationships so wonderfully related in Dr. Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale, and timetree.org. The smallest branches are purely illustrative. They are intended to suggest the effect of mass extinctions on diversity, and changes in diversity through time. This diagram is NOT intended to be a scholarly reference tool! It is intended to be an easy-to-understand illustration of the core evolution principle; we are related not only to every living thing, but also to everything that has ever lived on Earth.

Design-wise, there are many things that could’ve made the graphic more readable, but something about it makes me like it just the way it is.

Tags: evolution, life

Simulation shows how your mouth works when you talk

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Nathan Yau

You have a mouth with a bunch of tissue in it and manipulate your tongue, lips, throat, and other pieces so that somehow words come out. A lot of variables figure in, which can make the whole process of talking a complex process. Neil Thapen makes it more understandable with a fun simulator he calls Pink Trombone. Turn your sound on, and click and drag any of the words to see how voice changes when you modulate parts of the mouth.

Tags: simulation, talking

Dialect book of maps

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Nathan Yau

Speaking American Book

In 2013, Josh Katz put together a dialect quiz that showed where people talk like you, based on your own vocabulary. Things like coke versus soda. It’s a fine example of how we’re often talking about the same thing but say or express it differently. Speaking American is the book version of the dialect quiz results.

It’s a fun coffee/kitchen table book to flip through casually. It’s not just a book maps. It’s a highlight of the interesting bits and provides some short explanations for why the differences exist. I’ve been enjoying bits and pieces on the occasion my son takes an unreasonable amount of time to finish his dinner.

Get it on Amazon.

Tags: book, dialect, language

Air transportation network

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Nathan Yau

Transportation clusters

Flight pattern maps are fun to look at and reveal the complexity of air transportation on a daily basis. But, there are other angles to look at this data from. Martin Grandjean used a force-directed graph to focus less on geography and more on volume and connections. Color represents continent, circles represent airports, and circle size represents number of routes.

Major observations: India is more connected to the Middle East than to South and East Asia. The Russian cluster is very visible, connecting airports in Russia but also in many former Soviet republics. Latin america is clearly divided between a South cluster and a Central American cluster very connected with the U.S.

Be sure to catch the animation version.

Tags: airport, flights

National drug overdose epidemic

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Nathan Yau

Drug overdose epidemic

Nadja Popovich for the Guardian delves into America’s drug overdose epidemic, starting with an animated map that shows changes from 1999 to 2014.

On initial look, the map looks like your standard county map, but there’s a small wrinkle in the design that makes the geographic spread over time much easier to see. The switch in the top right corner, to toggle between 1999 and 2014, looks like any other. But instead of just a quick flip between 1999 and 2014, the map shifts with annual data, so you can see a smooth transition instead of an abrupt contrast.

Other options, like small multiples or a scroll bar might have worked as an overview, but this route brings focus and eliminates much of the guesswork.

Very nice.

Tags: animation, drugs, Guardian, health

Spiraling global temperature chart

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Nathan Yau

Global temperature is on the rise, as most of us know. Ed Hawkins charted it in this spiral edition of temperature over time.

Spiralling global temperatures from 1850-2016 (full animation) https://t.co/YETC5HkmTr pic.twitter.com/Ypci717AHq

— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) May 9, 2016

See also the Quartz chart that uses a standard coordinate system but stacks lines on top of one another.

Tags: temperature, time series, weather

Spiraling global temperature chart

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Nathan Yau

Global temperature is on the rise, as most of us know. Ed Hawkins charted it in this spiral edition of temperature over time.

Spiralling global temperatures from 1850-2016 (full animation) https://t.co/YETC5HkmTr pic.twitter.com/Ypci717AHq

— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) May 9, 2016

See also the Quartz chart that uses a standard coordinate system but stacks lines on top of one another.

Tags: temperature, time series, weather

Sponsor: AnyChart →

Nathan Yau
Thanks for AnyChart for sponsoring the feed this week.

AnyChart

We may not be as old as the Rosetta Stone, but picking the right tool to decipher your information is just as important now, as it was back then. AnyChart – the right tool to bring your data to life. Our development team of experts has been building charting libraries for over 14 years. Providing customers with the production software, proven and tested in almost every environment. Our flexible JavaScript (HTML5) based charting solution will fit any need for data visualization – graphs, maps, stock and Gantt charts and beautiful dashboards. Make your data come alive.

AnyChart is used by 1000’s of companies to create interactive dashboards used by Executives, Management, and Employees to view the reports across their working environment, empowering them to better understand and improve the quality and efficiency of their jobs. AnyChart solution includes rich documentation, API, live playground and exhaustive gallery of live examples – it makes it easy for developers to set up interactive charts in their projects. Also we have a collection of business dashboards with downloadable source code for inspiration.

Download the latest release and see what has sprung up at AnyChart: treemaps, themes, context menu, ten new chart types, technical indicators for stock charts, data grouping, drill-down feature, 13 new map projections and many more.

Music timeline plays through decades of top songs

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Nathan Yau

Billboard top songs over the years

The Year that Music Died from Polygraph is an animated timeline that shows the Billboard top 5 songs since 1956, all the while playing the top song during a given week.

The visualization itself is fairly straightforward, but I like how everything shifts so smoothly. Artist thumbnails move up and down matching their position on the music chart, the number one songs play without sounding jerky, and a counter on the right keeps track of total weeks at number one per artist. [via Waxy]

Tags: Billboard, music, ranking