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Data Vis Dispatch
December 3rd, 2024

Data Vis Dispatch, December 3

The best of last week’s big and small data visualizations

Vivien Serve
Vivien Serve

Welcome back to the 171st edition of the Data Vis Dispatch! Every week, we publish a collection of the best small and large data visualizations we find, especially from news organizations — to celebrate data journalism, data visualization, simple charts, elaborate maps, and their creators.

Recurring topics this week include car exports, World Aids Day, and blue.

For the last time this year, it’s the #30DayMapChallenge! Luckily, it says goodbye with a couple of playful visualizations:

Atlas Guo: “#Day 26 (Map Projection) – Continued: Since I already got fan-shape #ginkgo leaves, why not make a conic projection map, which naturally has a fan shape? Here comes a topographic map of North America, using Albers equal area projection,” November 28 (Bluesky)
Justine Vignat: “30eme jour du #30DayMapChallenge avec comme thème : #final #map. A la decouverte de Taïwan,” [Chart title: Discovering Taiwan] December 1 (Tweet)
Julian Hoffmann Anton: “Explore Gaudi’s World – A Tribute to Barcelona. For the #30DayMapChallenge, I experimented with the theme ‘Typography’ or ‘Micro(soft) map’ and couldn’t resist making it playfully of course, resulting in a creative cityscape map,” November 28 (Bluesky)
sensefromdata: “To celebrate the final day of the #30DayMapChallenge, I present ‘The final map’ – the star-shaped Berghaus projection in cookie form! If you have access to a printer, the STL is on Thingiverse […],” December 1 (Bluesky)

… and a couple of blue ones:

Joseph Benita: “Jour28/ Day28 – Planète bleue / Bonne journée de la Méditerranée,” November 28 (Bluesky)
Terence: “Day 28 · The blue planet. I’ve shared the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in shaded relief. And I’ve shared it in hexagons. Now see it in lines. #ggplot2 adventures, an #rstats tale,” November 28 (Mastodon)

Continuing in the blue theme — water flowing, flooding, and missing:

Dr. Dominic Royé: “Where do our rivers flow to? Frequency of flow direction of main European rivers. You can see interesting things caused by geological factors. #geography #dataviz,” December 3 (Bluesky)
theeuropeancorrespondent: “[…] Nearly 60% of the Dutch population faces high flood risk, which is more than double the proportion in Austria, the second most affected country in Europe […],” November 30 (Instagram)
El Mundo: La destrucción económica de la DANA, un mes después: Los ERTE, cuesta abajo y a años luz del escudo prometido por Sánchez [The economic destruction of DANA, one month later: ERTEs, downhill and light years away from the shield promised by Sánchez], November 28
Le Monde: Le paradis pillé des eaux ouest-africaines [The plundered paradise of West African waters], November 30
Financial Times: Caspian Sea on UN climate summit doorstep ebbs towards record low, November 29

Post-Thanksgiving: (bank) holidays and our favourite things to do during them: Eating:

FlowingData: Peak Thanksgiving Food, November 27
El Confidencial: Este gráfico demuestra que no tenemos por qué irnos de vacaciones todos al mismo tiempo [Chart title: When does Europe go on vacation?], November 30
图懂天下: 你一天吃了多少糖来算算看吧! [How much sugar do you eat in a day?], November 27

December 1st marked World AIDS Day:

Átlátszó: 70 százalékkal csökkentek az AIDS miatti halálesetek a 2004-es csúcspont óta [Chart title: Trends in AIDS incidence and mortality worldwide], December 2
mattxiv: “world AIDS day,” December 2 (Instagram)

We took look back at the course of the coronavirus pandemic in Germany:

Der Spiegel: Diese Phasen prägten die Pandemie [These phases shaped the pandemic], November 30

But it’s not only diseases that claim lives. In Russia and Ukraine, war casualties are high:

The Economist: How many Ukrainian soldiers have died?, November 26
Bloomberg: A Trump-Sized Hole Is Looming in Ukraine’s Defenses Against Putin, November 27
Reuters: Enter ‘Oreshnik’, November 28

Other war-related visualizations include Lebanon’s post-ceasefire destruction and warships’ long sea journeys to load missiles:

Le Monde: Après la guerre entre Israël et le Hezbollah, des destructions massives dans le sud du Liban [After the war between Israel and Hezbollah, massive destruction in southern Lebanon], November 27
Financial Times: Lebanon braces for power struggle after ceasefire, November 27
The Wall Street Journal: China Tensions Prompt U.S. Navy Race to Reload Missiles at Sea, December 2

What would a Data Vis Dispatch in 2024 be without election-related visualizations? Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party proposed a redrawing of Budapest’s constituencies, and the first round of Romania’s elections turned out surprisingly pro-Russian:

Átlátszó: Még jobban lejt a pálya: így változtatja meg az esélyeket a választási térkép átrajzolása [Chart title: The current and Fidesz proposed new constituencies in Budapest], November 26
Bloomberg: Election Chaos Is Engulfing Romania and No One Saw It Coming, November 30

China has become the world’s leading car exporter — though Toyota is fighting to maintain its position:

New York Times: How China Became the World’s Largest Car Exporter, November 29
Bloomberg: Chinese Carmakers Are Trouncing Once-Unbeatable Japanese Rivals, November 26

Finally, an explanation of Chinese names, rich and poor neighborhoods in France, and the best British employers:

RJ Andrews: “Fun Chinese name explainer by Liuhuaying Yang (杨柳桦樱),” November 26 (Bluesky, Project Website) Super Nice Project!
The Economist: The best British companies to work for to get ahead, November 26
Le Monde: Quartiers « riches », quartiers « pauvres » : une carte pour savoir si votre ville est particulièrement inégalitaire [“Rich” neighborhoods, “poor” neighborhoods: a map to find out if your city is particularly unequal], November 27

What else we found interesting

Le Monde: Un tissu enduit de nanoparticules pour avoir moins chaud au soleil [A fabric coated with nanoparticles to keep you cooler in the sun], November 29
Neil Halloran: “Love this. Interesting that Harry Potter seemingly did nothing at all to revive Harry, my father’s name,” November 26 (Bluesky, Tool)
Sarah L. Foss: Dataviz accessibility principles, demonstrated by the 2024 presidential election dashboards, December 2

Help us make this dispatch better! We’d love to hear which newsletters, blogs, or social media accounts we need to follow to learn about interesting projects, especially from less-covered parts of the world (Asia, South America, Africa). Write us at hello@datawrapper.de or leave a comment below.

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Vivien Serve
Vivien Serve
(she/her) is a working student on Datawrapper’s Communications team. She creates the Data Vis Dispatch to keep data visualization enthusiasts up to date on exciting new projects. When she’s not working, she studies interface design, and when she’s not studying, she’s planning a festival stage or soldering light installations. Vivien lives in Potsdam.

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