Naval Gazing in Annapolis

Gilded footballs from every victory against Army are enshrined behind glass, including the one from the first confrontation in 1890.

I recently visited Annapolis to attend Tableau Software's Tapestry conference on data visualization. I’ll post details about the conference when the links to the presentations are in place.

I had some time before my scheduled return to New York, so I grabbed a tour of the U.S. Naval Academy.

First stop was Lejeune Hall where we got to size up the 33’ platform, off which every midshipman must jump in order to graduate.

Above, you can see half of the Olympic-size swimming pool. The other half lies beyond the moveable bulkhead at the far end.

What might be mistaken for Marimekko carpeting, is the floor of the wrestling room.

Campus architecture is dominated by the Beaux-Arts style of Ernest Flagg. In addition to Dahlgren Hall, below (2), and the Naval Academy Chapel, he designed Bancroft Hall which houses all midshipmen and is the largest dormitory in the world.

Bancroft Hall on a frigid Annapolis morning.

The entire second floor of the naval museum in Prebel Hall is devoted to ship models. Displayed on the first floor is the original flag from the Battle of Lake Erie bearing the "dying command" of Captain James Lawrence, "Don't Give Up The Ship." 

Beneath the Naval Academy Chapel, lie the remains of John Paul Jones in a massive, ornate marble sarcophagus. Above ground, in addition to a sumptuous Tiffany window, there are water and sea-themed stained glass windows representing passages from both the old and new testaments.

The many antique shops along the charming streets of historic Annapolis abound with Naval Academy memorabilia.

Wealth Distribution For Dummies, AGAIN

In November 2010, I posted the original “Wealth Distribution for Dummies.” As the election approaches, an updated version, reflecting the shift in wealth ownership since the end of the recession, seemed appropriate. Also, given how the distribution has become even more skewed, I figured a remedial session couldn’t hurt.

This is very straightforward. I’m going to let 100 people represent 100% of the U.S. population, and $100 represent the country’s wealth. One person will represent the top 1% of the population. The next 19 people are the rest the top 20%. The other 80 folks are the bottom 80%. Now let’s distribute $100  accordingly.

One person (above), gets $35.60 all to him/herself.

Ouch! That's quite a jump. That's one-thirteenth of what the super-rich guy has! No wonder regular rich folks don't think they should pay more taxes. Together these 19 people own $51.60. That's about half of the $100. The top 20% as a whole, owns $87.20 of the $100.

But wait! Here’s something to make them feel better. 

As a group, their total share of the $100 is $12.80. The 19 rich folks each have 17 times the wealth of each of these 80, and for the super-rich guy, it's a factor of 223. (So when Romney wanted to make a $10,000 bet with Rick Perry at the debate between the Republican candidates, it was the same as a regular guy offering to wager $45.)

New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof recently wrote about the topic of wealth distribution and very effectively had us imagine 100 kindergarteners sharing toys according to how wealth in the U.S. is actually distributed.

One avaricious little boy is jealously guarding a mountain of toys for himself. A handful of other children are quietly playing with a few toys each, while 90 of the children are looking on forlornly — empty-handed. The one greedy boy has hoarded more toys than all those 90 children put together!

Naturally, I was curious to see what toys can be purchased at the $35.60, $2.72, and $0.16 levels.

For toys under 20¢ you are on the low end of party favors bought in bulk. So things like a tiny cupcake-shaped eraser, or a mini pencil is all you can hope for there. 

Even the $2.72-level is not really all that thrilling for toys. Think basic water gun or a yo-yo.

For $35.60, however, there’s tons of stuff. Remote-control helicopters, fancy super-soakers, electric guitars, microscopes, and in the $25-$50 range for Lego, look what’s for sale--a White House!

The $50 price tag is tad out of reach for poor little rich boy. He will have to use a line of credit, or borrow from the other kids to make up the $14.40 he doesn’t have.

Believe it or not, there is good news for the 80 kids with mini erasers. The one super-rich kid only has one vote, and the next 19 kids only have 19 votes. But the 80 kids have 80 votes. That's four times the votes, the 20 rich kids have. 

DON’T WASTE YOUR VOTE BY ...

1.  NOT VOTING

2.  VOTING FOR SOMEONE

WHOSE ONLY INTEREST IS GETTING

HIMSELF INTO THE WHITE HOUSE

What got me started on trying to represent this disparity in wealth in the first place, was the study published a couple of years ago by Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely about just how clueless Americans are as to how wealth is actually distributed in this country. Kristof also refers to the study and wonders if “perhaps nothing gets done because, in polls, Americans hugely underestimate the level of inequality here.”

I will spare you my rant from the original WDFD post, but I place a fair amount of blame for the warped perception of the American public, on the conventional data visualization used for charting wealth distribution. Below is a version of such a chart from the Economic Policy Institute. 

The image we see (and retain) is of the gently decreasing bands of wealth from top to bottom.  But we must read (and mentally imagine) what is most dramatic about the chart, namely the vastly incomparable populations being pictured (1%, 4%, 15%, 80%).  You can read the original rant here.

A Nanosecond Made Visible

This clip of computer pioneer, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper visually explaining a nanosecond is so complete, that it needs no introduction, or summation. I have nothing to say except WATCH IT! 

I promise you a most satisfying data visualization experience.

via It's Okay To Be Smart

All Time Covers

No, there isn't a hyphen missing between “All” and “Time.” This image really is every cover of Time magazine, from the first issue in 1923 through the summer of 2009, 4535 covers in total. I uploaded the file at it's large size, so you can click to see the image bigger.

See more of the Mapping Time project by Jeremy Douglass and Lev Manovich of Software Studies Initiative, here.

Via La boite verte

Steve & Me

I cannot count myself among those lucky enough to have worked with, interviewed, met, or even to have seen Steve Jobs. The chart, above, is the closest I ever got to the man who changed forever how we think of design.

1n 2002, Fortune magazine’s Andy Serwer wrote a piece about Dell and it’s mounting domination of the PC market. To accompany the story was to be a fairly standard chart showing shifts in market share of the top ten U.S. PC makers.

I plotted the data in various chart formats. The fever chart was very dramatic. It showed Dell zooming from sixth position in 1994 to the number one position five years later. But the bar chart was impressive too. That showed how enormous a chunk of the market Dell owned, selling a quarter of all PCs, up from less than 5% in 1994. The problem was that the fever chart showed movement, but didn’t communicate the size of Dell’s share, while the bar chart showed size, but didn’t visualize Dell outpacing the competition.

Instead of choosing one, or showing both, I decided to try combining the fever and the bar chart. It might not seem like a big deal now, but at the time, what has become know as the “ribbon chart,” was a huge hit. I got lots of letters asking me what software I used, and the magazine got letters to the editor for once about a chart, which didn’t have to do with an error or other misrepresentation.

A few weeks later, I got a voicemail from our writer on the West Coast who covered the technology industry. Steve Jobs wanted to use the chart in a presentation and could I provide a PDF?

A couple of things struck me. One was how validating it is to have God (Gawker's claim not withstanding) ask to use your chart in a presentation. The other was that the CEO interested in using the graphic was certainly not using it to self-congratulate. By late 2001, Apple’s market share had slipped from third to sixth place—exactly where Dell had been when our chart began in 1994, and with the same 4.2% share. I guess the chart made Jobs see red (the color used was coincidental), and an opportunity to somehow “motivate” his audience.

And motivate, he did …

IN GRAPHICS Magazine

During my trip to Berlin in August, I visited with infographics specialist Jan Schwochow. Jan and his talented team at Golden Section Graphics had just recently published Volume 2 of his wildly ambitious, independently and beautifully produced magazine, IN GRAPHICS.

While the sections of the 90-page issue are completely familiar-- politics, technology, sports, entertainment, etc., IN GRAPHICS is no ordinary magazine. Instead of running text and occasional photos or illustration, the content is displayed entirely in the form of infographics. Text is in German and English.

The cover story of Volume 2 takes on the events and aftermath of 9/11. We are first presented with a spread of front–page coverage of over a hundred publications from around the world. The six spreads that follow use diagrams, illustration, timelines, and quantitative charts to digest data and information of the last ten years. They are all thoughtfully conceived, meticulously researched and exquisitely executed.

THE DAY THAT CHANGED THE WORLD


ATTACK ON THE WORLD TRADE CENTER


3RD TARGET: THE PENTAGON! AND THE WHITE HOUSE?


TERROR TRACES
How the terrorists prepared themselves for the attacks in the USA


TERROR IN NUMBERS


CIVILIAN CASUATIES


THE NEW WORLD TRADE CENTER

In addition to his technical expertise and years of experience, Jan has a great knowledge and interest in information graphics history. His ability to incorporate design solutions from the past, with cutting edge visualization techniques, creates work that is rich and sophisticated with plenty of fresh visualization surprises.


Even the contents page is a visual display.

Both volumes of IN GRAPHICS are available for shipping throughout Europe from Amazon.de. For shipping to the U.S., you can order from the Golden Section online shop directly.

A handful of bookstores in Germany, Amsterdam, London and Vienna also sell the magazines. If you are traveling in Europe, I suggest you use this list as a general resource for the coolest bookstores there are.

Ryoji Ikeda: Data Jockey

Once again, the Park Avenue Armory makes the most of its vast drill hall for a commissioned work of art. In ‘Transfinite,’ Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda programs data from sources such as NASA and the Human Genome Project to create a mesmerizing, immersive, “visual and sonic environment …” Hey isn’t that what they used to call a sound & light show? Read more here.










The black, white, and gray of the Ikeda installation felt even more stark to me, having come directly from a very lively and colorful kids’ art show.
'French Toast' was one of the visual-pun sculptures fifth graders created.


Fourth graders all made collage self portraits
ala Stephen Kroninger.
There was a ‘sonic’ element to this art show too. I got to hear the school band perform a few numbers. They did an excellent rendition of Mercy, Mercy, Mercy. (Link is for the Cannonball Adderley original.)

Du Bois Charts: Twittered, Tumbld, Stumbled, fffound

African American women on the steps of a building at Atlanta University, 1899 or 1900. Photo by Thomas E. Askew (Du Bois archive, Library of Congress)

Two weeks ago ( I know, that's a bout a decade in internet time), I posted the awesome charts that W. E. B. Du Bois and his students at Atlanta University produced for the Paris Exposition in 1900. I still haven’t quite processed the overwhelming response to this work. Not only has the massive amount of tweeting and reblogging, sent my page views through the roof, but the charts have gotten attention way beyond the infographic and design communities. They have been posted on political blogs and have sparked some lively debate.

So if you were one of the scores of viewers smitten by these infographics, know that you were/are not alone. And much thanks to all who passed them along. The networked enthusiasm created so much visibility for the Du Bois chart, that John Pavlus of Fast Company featured them on FastCo Design as Infographic of the Day. They were also posted by David McCandless as Vintage Infoporn on Information is Beautiful.


Here are some highlights from the bloggesphere:

Adam Serwer of the Prospect observes that “…you can get a hint from this of the days when teachers at black schools were among the best in the country -- Jim Crow was funneling the most educated black minds into a very limited set of professions.

Yglesias of Think Progress picks up from Serwer, “As you can see here, a staggeringly high proportion of Atlanta University graduates were becoming teachers… This and the parallel set of facts for women is, I think, an unduly neglected trend in recent American life. A related point is that you tended to see relatively high-performing K-12 education systems in Communist countries. Jim Crow, patriarchy, and the economic policies of Fidel Castro are all ways to artificially increase the appeal of a teaching career relative to other options … When teaching was the only thing many classes of smart ambitious people could do, it was easier to run a high-performing school. 33 comments followed that post.

Derek Attig at HASTAC considers the display of these charts in Paris, a political act. For him, they were more proof of “…how important circulating information transnationally could be for civil rights struggles. As Ida B. Wells had demonstrated just seven years earlier, with her anti-lynching speaking tours of Britain [PDF], getting information out of the South, and indeed, out of the United States, could be a vital part of such campaigns. (Abolitionists in the antebellum period frequently made similar transatlantic tours, as well.) …

Given the language-barrier problems that could confront Americans at a global exposition in Paris, the highly graphic (and lightly textual) nature of so many of the posters indicates some careful thought about the politics of communicating information and capturing attention, which are so central to freedom struggles of all kinds.”

Jacob Alonso, of Seeing Complexity, also sees visualizing information as a political act: “Du Bois’ students made a radical decision when they visualized the economic plight of a group explicitly excluded from statistical analysis and thus hidden from international attention. …the simple act of disseminating information can, in itself, be a radical and potentially transformative act.”


And then there was the ultimate indication of how important these charts are—an anonymous reader commented that the graphics were obvious fakes!