The last two weekends have found me writing about data analysis and data storytelling, so I thought I’d continue the trend tonight with a look at some of the fun and interesting data visualizations I have come across recently.
Let’s start with the “Map of Literary Roadtrips” (hat tip: Flowing Data). Richard Kreitner catalogued road trips taken around North America in twelve works of literature and then mapped them all using Google Maps. This involved cataloging more than 1,500 entries from all of the different works. You can single out individual trips to examine, or you can look at them all mapped on top of each other. Click on the image below for a link to the website with the interactive map.
Elsewhere at Flowing Data we have a map of “sandwich place” geography around the contiguous 48 states. The map shows where 19 national and regional chains are located, and then calculates the nearest sandwich place within a 10 mile radius of locations all over the country. Not surprisingly, Subway (with 27,000 locations nationally) is the most dominant, but there is also a map without Subway which displays a bit more regional variety.
Perhaps you’d like some coffee to go with your sandwich? Well, if you’re willing to hop across the pond, Information is Beautiful has created a Taxonomy of Hipster Coffee Shop names in and around London. The graphic is designed in shades of brown and cream, with dark brown circles representing the classifications, and the size of each circle reflecting its popularity. It turns out that the most popular group of names in London is names designed to sound like a Victorian establishment, such as Browns of Brockley, London Particular and St. David Coffeehouse. The next most popular group of names appears to be the names that communicate brewing/production/craft, such as Tap, Artisan, and Grind.
Meanwhile, over at Visualizing Data, we have a post from just over two weeks ago, highlighting many great examples of data visualization from all over the web in May 2015. One entitled “Endangered Safari” is particularly striking in its use of colors and animal images (facing either right to reflect stable or increasing population, or left to reflect decreasing populations) to reflect endangered status. Click on the image below to go to the web page.
Perhaps you are interested in doing more with data visualization yourself. Well, as it turns out, at Visualizing Data, I also found a particularly helpful resource/collection post from late May of 298 data visualization resources.
Have you seen any particularly interesting or inspiring examples of data visualization recently? If so, please feel free to share the links below.
Retrieve and Herd 