Infographics  /  ,

Immigration in the United States visualized as rings of tree trunk

Jul 5, 2018

Pedro M. Cruz, John Wihbey, Avni Ghael and Felipe Shibuya from Northeastern University used a tree metaphor to represent a couple centuries of immigration in the United States:

Like countries, trees can be hundreds, even thousands, of years old. Cells grow slowly, and the pattern of growth influences the shape of the trunk. Just as these cells leave an informational mark in the tree, so too do incoming immigrants contribute to the country’s shape.

Feels real.

Become a member. Support an independent site. Make great charts.

See What You Get

Learn to Visualize Data See All →

How to Make a Contour Map

Filled contour plots are useful for looking at density across two dimensions and are often used to visualize geographic data. It’s straightforward to make them in R — once you get your data in the right format, that is.

Calendar Heatmaps to Visualize Time Series Data

The familiar but underused layout is a good way to look at patterns over time.

Drawing Circles and Ellipses in R

Whether you use circles as visual encodings or as a way to highlight areas of a plot, there are functions at your disposal.

The Baseline and Working with Time Series in R

A big part of statistics is comparisons, and perhaps more importantly, to figure out what to compare things to. Perspective changes with the baseline.

Favorites

Years You Have Left to Live, Probably

The individual data points of life are much less predictable than the average. Here’s a simulation that shows you how much time is left on the clock.

How the American Work Day Changed in 15 Years

The American Time Use Survey recently released results for 2018. That makes 15 years of data. What’s different? What’s the same?

Watching the Growth of Walmart

The ever so popular Walmart growth map gets an update, and yes, it still looks like a wildfire. Sam’s Club follows soon after, although not nearly as vigorously.

Redefining Old Age

What is old? When it comes to subjects like health care and retirement, we often think of old in fixed terms. But as people live longer, it’s worth changing the definition.