10 excellent visualizations from NY Times
The members of The New York Times’s interactive news collaborative must be a bunch of very lucky (read: talented and hard working) people. They come up with the most excellent interactive visualizations every now and then and seem to refine their skillset in the meantime to exceed any benchmark. We present here a subset of the accomplishment by the team, striving to make information more easy understandable for the reader.
Gabriel Dance, Matthew Ericson, Steve Duenes, Aron Pilhofer and Andrew DeVigal
05-2005 How Class Works
Different ways of looking at a person’s class based on the factors occupation, education, income and wealth. The visualization is divided in four tabs each presenting a different visualization method and providing a different perspective.
How Class Works on NewYorkTimes.com
06-2006 Election Guide
The Election Guide for 2006 let’s you scan through the Senate Race, House Race and Governor’s races. The interactive map can be modified using filters and different levels of information and more in-depth information about the people involved can be revealed. There’s furthermore an outcome calculator included that let’s you visualize different scenarios for the result of the election.
Election Guide on NewYorkTimes.com
11-2007 50 Years since Sputnik
The components of the Sputnik get’s revealed using an explosion diagram. As a bonus there’s a Space Exploration timeline with details-on-demand for the small photo gallery.
50 Years since Sputnik on NewYorkTimes.com
10-2007 Climbing Kilimanjaro
Multimedia visualization using text, images, audio & videos to describe the process of the climbing of the Kilimanjaro by Tom Bissels. A 3-dimensional visualization of the Kilimanjaro serves as a backbone to the different phases. During the climb several different visualizatios represent data to the correlating phase synchronously.
Climbing Kilimanjaro on NewYorkTimes.com
11-2007 A Map Of The Oil World
World map with the amount of oil production, oil consumption and oil supplied to the U.S.A. plotted as bubbles on the countries the data is representing. A tab interface let’s the user skip between the different views with ease and a zoom interface provides the needed accuracy.
A Map Of The Oil on NewYorkTimes.com
11-2007 Republican Debate: Analyzing the Details
Interactive Transcript to the Republican debate. A timeline let’s the user scan through the questions and answers both on a macro (jumping from speaker to speaker) as well as on micro (skimming through the phrases themselves) level. Hovering over the timeline reveals the text and hovering over the participants highlights the speaking times.
Republican Debate: Analyzing the Details on NewYorkTimes.com
12-2007 Milestones: Barack Obama
Lifeline with all the relevant milestones in the live of the 44th president of the U.S. Barak Obama documented with text and video coverage. There is a series going on with lifelines for more people with public interest. See Rudolph Giuliani, John McCain or Sarah Palin for example.
Milestones: Barack Obama on NewYorkTimes.com
02-2008 The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 — 2008
Interactive Visualization explaining how movies have fared at the box office between 1986 and 2008. The visualization focuses on the relation between longevity and weekly revenue.
The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 — 2008 on NewYorkTimes.com
04-2008 The Monty Hall Problem
The Monty Hall Problem, named after the host of the long-running game show “Let’s Make a Deal,” is a statistical puzzle that seems counterintuitive. A recurring deal on the show featured contestants choosing one of three closed doors, with a big prize behind one of them and something else, like a goat, behind each of the others.
The visualization let’s the user experience statistical truth. rather than completely understanding the math behind the choice the user can simply go through a few example games and see his winning percentage.
The Monty Hall Problem on NewYorkTimes.com
05-2008 Home Prices Across The Nation
The interactive Map let’s the user choose the city to investigate and a barchart shows the growth of the home prices over the years in perspective to the whole U.S.A. There’s a actual rate as well as a inflation-adjusted version available for the data.
Home Prices Across The Nation on NewYorkTimes.com
Conclusion
There are a lot more interactive visualization on nytimes.com so be sure to have an eye open for the things coming from the Interactive News Collaborative. The New York Times seems to be a fertile ground for visualization projects so let me recommend the Visualization Lab from The New York Times and Many Eyes from IBM where you can create visual representations of data and information.
