Davis Vilums set a goal to cycle every street in London on his way to work (without being late). After four years, he accomplished his goal:

I am a passionate cyclist, and I love the streets of London. Most of my travels are daily 25-minute rides to work. Over time my route became boring. I decided to make it a little bit more interesting by taking the parallel streets on my way there. I bought a map of central London and started to colour in the streets to mark the routes that I have taken. And then I got obsessed with it.

R turned 20 last week. The first public release of R was on February 29, 2000. Jozef Hajnala with the look back:

The power of R comes by no small part from the fact that it is easily extensible and the extensions are easily accessible using The Comprehensive R Archive Network, known to most simply as CRAN.

My initial reaction was, “Wow, 20 years. R is old.” And then I realized, “So R was only… three when I started using it… wait a minute.”

Andrew Wang-Hoyer built over 200 animations on and off over two years. They are satisfyingly hypnotic. They also only use SVG, CSS, and HTML, and you can get the code on GitHub.

I feel like sans-JavaScript is becoming a thing. Is this becoming a thing?

With Super Tuesday on the way, there’s still a lot of uncertainty for what’s going to happen. FiveThirtyEight has their forecast, but even with results expressed as odds and probabilities, the outcome almost seems static and concrete. So FiveThirtyEight has a different way of poking at their forecast. Pick the winners in each state, note how the conditional probabilities change as you go, and see what might happen in the rest of the primary given your picks.

For each month in her child’s first year, Amanda Makulec took a picture of her baby and a pizza. Each slice represents a month. Hence, pizza baby.

For many, Gmail automatically categorizes incoming emails to the primary inbox, promotions, and spam. The Markup and The Guardian tested the categorization on presidential candidate emails:

Their results:

I don’t use Gmail, and I don’t get any of these emails, but I’m curious how these candidate emails differ. Does Buttigieg write more personal messages whereas Sanders’ is more like an advertisement?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made this graphic to show what beard styles work and do not work with a respirator. If there is hair in the way, the seal breaks. The CDC made it a couple of years ago for No-shave November, hence the playful tone, but with coronavirus concerns, it’s once again made relevant.

It reminds me of the trustworthiness of beards.

Also, wash your fingers.

Every month I collect useful tools and resources for visualization. Here’s the good stuff for February 2020.

From reddit user shoru_lannister, here is a pie chart of their living room corner.

Do we have another contender for best pie chart? I think the pyramid pie chart still has an edge.

While working on maps inspired by USGS maps from the 1800s, Sarah Bell made a typeface to match:

While making my own USGS-inspired maps, my search never returned the exact type of font I was looking for. The fruitless search was serendipitous however, because it provided the push to make my own. It was designed for map labels that are no larger than 80-100pt, but usually much smaller. I decided to name it BellTopo Sans with the plan to create a serif version.

She made it available here.

[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO9-dyYK3qQ” loop=”no” muted=”no” /]

We can download data as a single snapshot in a single file, but oftentimes that data is generated piece-by-piece. In the map above, NASA shows how they piece together rain data with a network of satellites:

The ten currently-flying satellites in the Global Precipitation Measurement Constellation provide unprecedented information about the rain and snow across the entire Earth. This visualization shows the constellation in action, taking precipitation measurements underneath the satellite orbits. As time progresses and the Earth’s surface is covered with measurements, the structure of the Earth’s preciptation becomes clearer, from the constant rainfall patterns along the Equator to the storm fronts in the mid-latitudes.

[via kottke]

xkcd crossed a rough age distribution of people becoming grandparents with people named “Chad” and “Jason” to highlight the dawn of a new era. The time is now.

With an animated side-by-side map, The New York Times shows canceled flights in efforts to slow down the spread of the coronavirus. The left map represents 12,814 flights within China on January 23. The right map shows 1,662 on February 13. Keep scrolling to see changes for flights leaving China to other countries.

The Map of Mathematics from Quanta Magazine explains key concepts with animated visualizations:

From simple starting points — Numbers, Shapes, Change — the map branches out into interwoven tendrils of thought. Follow it, and you’ll understand how prime numbers connect to geometry, how symmetries give a handle on questions of infinity.

And although the map is necessarily incomplete — mathematics is too grand to fit into any single map — we hope to give you a flavor for the major questions and controversies that animate the field, as well as the conceptual tools needed to dive in.

While we’re on the topic of Mike Bloomberg’s money, here’s another view from Mother Jones:

I guess he’s rich.

Welcome to a new segment where I try to put myself in the shoes of someone who made a bad chart and try to make it better.

Mike Bloomberg’s ad spending might not be that much relative to his own net worth, but compared to other candidates’ spending, it’s a whole lot of money. The Washington Post puts the spending into perspective with a long scroller. Each rectangle represents $100k, and there are “mile markers” along the way to keep you anchored on the scale.

Geographer Tim Wallace likes to look at old maps, and is particularly fond of the weird and forgotten types:

So, I slowly amassed a more complete list. And here it is. Most of these map types are silly or unusual, not forgotten. Many of them are even deliberately taken out of context to highlight their wackiness and how easily maps can be misread (I sure misread them all the time!).

It’s fun poking around the Internet Archive and HathiTrust, blowing the digital dust off of a volume with 0 views and having a look. You never know what you’ll find. Maybe a forgotten map type?

The above is the long forgotten but everlasting Gobstopper zone map.

Adobe Illustrator has charting functions that can be useful if you’re on a deadline. Make a quick chart, design, and publish. However, if you want to reuse the chart with new data or need to use a more complex chart type, it’s usually been better to use different software and then come back to Illustrator to adjust.

Datylon Graph is an extension that aims to make it easier to stay in Illustrator for your full workflow. It promises reusable charts, collaborative tools, and a growing visualization library.

It currently starts at €7.50 per month with a 14-day free trial. I’m skeptical about working completely in Illustrator, but I’ll have to kick the tires on this soon.