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Data Vis Dispatch
February 8th, 2022

Data Vis Dispatch,
February 8

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

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Rose Mintzer-Sweeney

Welcome back to the 32nd edition of Data Vis Dispatch! Every week, we’ll be publishing 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 the presidential election in France, poverty in the U.K., and the start of the Winter Olympics.

It’s the Olympics again? It’s the Olympics again!

The New York Times: Men’s Figure Skating Highlights: Nathan Chen Is Halfway to Gold, February 7
Matthias Stahl: “8 times. This is how often the 🇩🇪 speed skater Claudia Pechstein took part in Olympic Games. We @derspiegel looked at her historic performance and compared this weekend’s olympic 3000m run against all others in her career,” February 7 (Tweet, Article)
Star Tribune: Why the Olympic sprint course Jessie Diggins will face is so challenging, February 7
The Wall Street Journal: Team USA Doesn’t Have a Starting Goalie. That’s By Design, February 5

Of course, the biggest event in both seasons is medal count visualization:

The New York Times: Beijing Olympics: Who Leads the Medal Count?, February 7
FiveThirtyEight: Which Countries Are Doing Better — Or Worse — Than Expected At The Beijing Olympics?, February 4
Bloomberg: Beijing Winter Olympics Medal Count, February 7
Axios: The Winter Olympics medal tracker, February 6

Meanwhile, the situation in Ukraine remains tense:

The Washington Post: Wetlands and radioactive soil: How Ukraine’s geography could influence a Russian invasion, February 4
Neue Zürcher Zeitung: Der Ukraine-Russland-Konflikt visuell erklärt, February 5
Süddeutsche Zeitung: Wo Putins Truppen stehen, February 4
The Wall Street Journal: Europe’s Insatiable Thirst for Russia’s Gas, February 3
El Mundo: El gas, el ‘arma’ de Putin para maniatar a Europa en la crisis de Ucrania, February 3

The upcoming French presidential election was this week’s major political topic. Candidates are racing to secure the 500 signatures needed to appear on the ballot:

The Economist: Will Emmanuel Macron win a second term?, February 2
Nicolas Mondon: “Macron vient de franchir la barre des 500 parrainages validés par le Conseil constitutionnel,” February 3 (Tweet, Article)
Les Echos: Parrainages : où en sont les candidats à la présidentielle ?, February 2
The Economist: How we forecast the French election, February 5

The U.S. needs to fill a seat on its Supreme Court, a process which seems to be breaking down:

FiveThirtyEight: It’s Harder Than Ever To Confirm A Supreme Court Justice, feb
Pew Research Center: Up until the postwar era, U.S. Supreme Court confirmations usually were routine business, February 7

And congressional redistricting continues as well:

Bloomberg: Redistricting Is Taking the Swing Out of U.S. Swing States, February 6
The Washington Post: Opinion: Growing urban areas were supposed to save the Democrats. Here’s why they won’t, February 3

In economic charts, this week’s spotlight shone on poverty in England:

The Guardian: Levelling-up: some wealthy areas of England to see 10 times more funding than poorest, February 2
The New Statesman: Rishi Sunak’s help comes far too late for Britain’s fuel poor, February 3

And economic forecasts in the U.S.:

The Wall Street Journal: Consumer Pessimism Grows as Inflation Accelerates, February 1
The Washington Post: U.S. added 467,000 jobs in January despite omicron variant surge, February 4

Behind it all is still the pandemic. The U.S. death toll is rising faster than any time since last winter:

The New York Times: U.S. Covid Death Toll Surpasses 900,000 as Omicron’s Spread Slows, February 4
The New York Times: U.S. Has Far Higher Covid Death Rate Than Other Wealthy Countries, February 1
Süddeutsche Zeitung: Lockern oder Lockdown?, February 4
La Nación: Estadísticas sesgadas: cómo el cambio de criterio para hisopar altera las cifras oficiales de casos de Covid, February 1

Finally, other charts and maps covered everything from tsunamis to the Africa Cup to headlines about women:

The New York Times: The Tsunami Could Kill Thousands. Can They Build an Escape?, February 7
FlowingData: When There Were More Deaths Than Births in the U.S., February 3
Al Jazeera: Senegal vs Egypt: What you need to know about the AFCON final, February 6
Newsworthy: Läget på elmarknaden i Skåne i januari i fyra punkter, February 7
The Pudding: When Women Make Headlines, February 2

What else we found interesting

South China Morning Post: Sealed off winter games: The “closed loop” system explained, February 4
Reuters: The long road to electric cars, February 7

Applications open for…

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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Rose Mintzer-Sweeney
(she/her, @rosemintzers) is a data vis writer on Datawrapper's communications team. She likes words, numbers, pictures, and all possible combinations of the same. Rose lives in Berlin.

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