Other Graphical Sites

As I run across other sites or graphic images that are aligned with the goals of this blog I’ll update this post. As of today (early September 2009) here’s a sample.

New York Times occasionally runs some good graphs
	Levels of the pollutant Atrizine across the US. The bubble chart isn’t working for me, but the percent of the population chart below it is much more useful.
	How the “average” person spends their day. It’s beautiful and interactive. One complaint is that the thin areas are impossible to see on the full chart, but they rectify this when you click on an area for more detail. They provide handy links to the previous and next bands on the mother chart. For example, TV is watched by the average person for 2 hours 46 minutes per day. While Relaxing and Thinking (the previous band) is only 16 minutes per day.
	Murder statistics by geographic region in NYC. It’s interactive too. To hear the murder rate in NYC is one thing, to see where there’s murder “hot spots” and “cool spots” is quite another.
	A ”cute” way to depict an olfactory tour of NYC.

Below are some other sites that are not necessarily focused on putting out news oriented graphics on a regular basis, but that nevertheless have the occasional excellent graphic.

	How much land area is required to power the world in solar power. Website is called “land art generator” so keep your eye on this one.
	If you’re curious how many hours per week or year people work in different countries, this chart will help. Also, BillShrink.com’s blog occasionally has some good graphics.
	IndexMundi.com has lots of useful info and much of that is rendered in graphical form. Their current commodity chart graphs several commodities over 17 years and it clearly shows the effects of the recent recession.
	An interesting study of life span vs national income per person. Interesting to look at but there’s no real revelation there.
	Nucleus Medical art produces some fascinating medical images. This appears to be their business but they give some away for free. One such is this animation of a baby being born. Even though it’s a computer generated movie, it’s not for the faint of heart.
	This page has has many images and movies of the earth’s polar ice caps. The most interesting item is a movie of the arctic sea ice over the past 6 years. The link to it is near the bottom of the page. It’s practically day by day and thus shows the seasonal change (eg fall to winter). It’s hard to glean the season to season change from this (eg winter 2005 to winter 2006) but the minimum sea ice extent in September 2007 is pretty easy to see.
	This image is a wonderful side-by-side comparison of several different things, so it bears some study. Waterfalls (top). Islands of the world (left middle), lakes of the world (right middle). The bottom panel has mountain peak heights and on the right and left sides of the peaks are river lengths. It appears to be an old map so there are some obvious missing entries, but also note it’s also of the “western hemisphere” so there are some intentional omissions too.
	May as well end this installment on a “sour” note. Here’s an example of bad graphics. The article may well be worth while, but the associated image… ghastly. It practically proves my point that “word guys” are running news organizations these days.

Other sites are engaged in compilation activities.

VisualComplexity seems to be a compilation site others’ work.

StrangeMaps is aimed at map oriented graphics. Interesting read.

InformationIsBeautiful is another compilation site of news oriented graphics. Some graphics are generated by the site owner.

CoolInfographics is a blog about, well, cool infographics.