Mixed Feelings of Happiness and Meaning

When people are asked to score happiness and meaning throughout the day, like they were in the American Time Use Survey, scores tend to be higher, which is what you see in the averages. Generally speaking, people will say they are happy and what they do is meaningful.

However, while the averages give you a rough idea of how activities score, the distribution for an activity is often more mixed than just happy and meaningful. These charts show the distribution for 150 of the most common activities over the full range of scores.

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How to Make an Animated, Self-Sorting List

You have a list of things that can be ordered by different values. Let them sort themselves out.

Mapping With Shapefiles in R – Getting Started

Geographic data is often available as a shapefile, and there’s plenty of heavy software to get that data in a map. R is an open source option, and as a bonus, much of the work can be done in a few lines of code.

How to Make an Animated Map in R, Part 4

In the the last part of the four-part series, you make a longer animation with more data and annotate.

How to Make Unit Charts with Icon Images in R

Make the unit chart less abstract with icons that represent the data, or use this in place of a bar chart.

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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?

Pizza Place Geography

Most of the major pizza chains are within a 5-mile …

How Much Americans Make

Median income only tells you where the middle is. The distributions of income are a lot more interesting.

Who is Older and Younger than You

Here’s a chart to show you how long you have until you start to feel your age.