Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!
In this week’s newsletter we have charts on more common heatwaves, America’s exceptional exceptionalism and weather comparisons across cities.
But first … a deep dive into Australian bushfires
With months to go in the bushfire season, hundreds of thousands of hectares and hundreds of homes have already burned across the state of Victoria. We took a look at the devastating fires that broke out in the first week of January:
Click through for the animated version of this wind/temperature map (based on one of our favourite visualisations), as well as other maps and photos showing how the fire spread and the extent of the devastation.
While we’re talking about fires, our colleagues in the UK have a series of maps showing how wildfire is consuming more and more of the world’s forests (thanks to climate change). The ABC also had an interesting piece about the different data sources that they wrangle together to create real-time bushfire data. Turns out everything isn’t just satellites.
Charts from the fortnight summer
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1. You’re seeing suffering from it more and more
The severe heatwave that hit south-eastern Australia in early January was made five times more likely due to climate change, according to analysis by climate scientists. But five times what, exactly? The ABC had a very simple but effective graphic to make this a bit more tangible:
And on heatwaves, here’s an illustrated ABC story about why they are so dangerous, from a few years ago.
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2. Executives who write a lot of emails love AI
First, take this one with a grain of salt or two – this chart is based on a survey from an AI company made to spruik their consulting services, and we haven’t been able to find anything on the methods involved in the survey beyond “we surveyed 5,000 knowledge workers from 1,000(+-) person companies in the U.S., U.K., and Canada”.
However, that said the results feel right and are also bleakly funny in their own way.
The results, charted here by the Wall Street Journal, show a huge disconnect between workers and C-suite managers on time saved with AI:
Workers were also far more likely to say they were “anxious or overwhelmed” by AI in comparison with people in C-suite positions, who were more likely to say they were “excited”.
My (Nick) take on this is that if your job involves writing a lot of emails, making presentations and you’re not too concerned about losing your job to a robot then you’re probably way more excited about AI in the workplace.
The other issue highlighted in the WSJ article is that when accuracy matters, any time saved using AI may be offset by workers having to correct errors.
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3. Oh, to be so exceptional
It turns out America isn’t just exceptional for an often myopic view of its own exceptionalism. Amanda Shendruk – a Guardian alumna – has a really nicely designed series of charts showing the many ways America is, in fact, an outlier:
Shendruk shows a bunch of different metrics, from a lack of nationally mandated parental leave, to trust in government and life expectancy.
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4. Stacks on stacks on stacks
Trump has pocketed a truly staggering amount of money since retaking the presidency – 16,822 times the median US household income – according to the New York Times:
This is a graphic you need to experience on a big screen. Each stack of bills raining down represents US$83,730 – the median US household income. The torrent of money – from things like media settlements and crypto sales – is so large the graphic has to repeatedly pan out. It’s a really lovely design touch.
Also, NYT graphics wizards – if you’re reading this – Nick would very much like to know the maths and tricks involved in getting falling cash physics to work at various screen sizes while also ensuring that the money pile lines up with the threshold chart lines at the side.
Bookmarks
A beautifully illustrated piece showing a changing Singapore
After Brigitte Bardot’s passing there are just three people who remain alive who were name-checked in Billy Joel’s song We Didn’t Start the Fire
Alberto Cairo and collaborators are launching a “free and open source knowledge repository” for data visualisation
An industrialising India is electrifying much faster than China and America at equivalent points in industrialisation
The US is seeing a truly staggering measles outbreak
Off the Charts
This 3D weather chart was generating a lot of discussion in a few datavis places on the internet, so we thought it would be an interesting one to include this week.
Arthur Juliani has made this weather visualiser that essentially renders weather data as a line chart, but in a 3D space:
A few people responded to Juliani’s post on X.com, suggesting the data would be better displayed as a conventional line chart or a polar/radar plot.
Juliani said he finds this format easier to read, as it still has temperature on the Y axis (up and down), and also has a continuous curve where conventional line charts don’t.
For comparison, here’s a quick polar chart I (Nick) made of temperature averages in Sydney and Melbourne:
If you have strong opinions about weather chart formats, please let us know, either in the comments on the website version of the newsletter or just reply on the newsletter email! We may publish the best ones.
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