When you look up directions with a mapping application, there are algorithms that run to find the shortest route. Jan Pánek made an interactive map that animates the search with various algorithms. Click the map for an origin and destination, and then watch it play out.

The map sold for $239,000 at a Christie’s auction, but it was misdated and is a couple of centuries older than previously thought:

It’s the fourth oldest surviving portolan chart of Europe, the oldest being the Carta Pisana from the late 13th century, which is held by the national library of France. The asking price now is $7.5 million, another category of collecting altogether and one that will likely remain framed on Clausen’s office wall until a university or museum decides to take ownership of it.

Excuse me while I pivot this site to historical chart collection.

In the land of what-if and what-about, it’s surprisingly easy to get stuck staring at your work, thinking about how your audience will hate it. You have to let it go.

muted.io is a set of visual tools to help you learn music theory. Learn about notes, chords, and scales through a playful and colorful interface.

Google Fonts now provides two open source fonts by Dmitry Ivanov that let you make simplified, small to medium line and bar charts based on data: Linefont and Wavefont. These might come in handy when you want to embed small charts in body text.

The Washington Post looked at the many satellites orbiting our planet. A globe shows a dot for each satellite, which are mostly there to show that there are a lot. I always appreciate dot transitions.

Using a combination of weather reports, videos, and 911 calls, The New York Times uses mixed media to show the events leading up to the wildfire in Lahaina, Maui.

Firefighters had rescued dozens of people from the seawall by 2 a.m. The fire continued spreading into the next morning. To the north, more residents, unsure of the risk to them, were roused from their homes when flames suddenly reached their streets. The fire also spread to the town’s southern edge, where the police worked to evacuate residents.

The inferno ultimately consumed thousands of buildings, stretching across more than three miles of Lahaina’s waterfront.

For The Washington Post, Nitasha Tiku, Kevin Schaul and Szu Yu Chen demonstrate how AI generators lead to biased images. The systems use data slurped up from the internet to guess what pixels to show based on the text (i.e. a prompt) that you provide. So the images are often the result of calculations that look for the most common pixels in the source data rather than a real-world representation.

To most people, the bias probably seems harmless with an assumption that the systems will improve. And that might be the case. But just you wait until an AI chart generator, based on the inputs of visualization critiques scraped from the internets, only produces bar charts with obscene amounts of white space no matter what you try. Then you’ll be sorry you didn’t care sooner.

Maybe you’ve run into the rare situation/blessing of too much space, and you’re not sure how to fill it. There are options.

Denise Lu, a superfan of Pavement, an indie rock band, examined the set lists from years past. I didn’t know anything about the band going in but came out with an appreciation of their art and some curiosity.

Mostly, I enjoy these pieces where someone loves something and takes you down the data rabbit hole with them.

As Disney and its stock price struggles with streaming, Reuters looks at how Disney overcame previous challenges in its 100-year history. One of the first challenges was making animation that was believable:

He obsessed over quality and poured money into producing cartoons that would resonate with his audience. He wrote that observing the real world was key and animation must have, “a foundation of fact, in order that it may more richly possess sincerity.”

The studio formalized 12 principles of animation which transformed static sketches into lively characters on a screen. Veteran animators taught the principles to each of the new artists who joined the studio to ensure consistency.

When you score a reservation at a busy restaurant, it can feel like you just won a modest lottery. However, getting a reservation is not just randomness. You’re up against others vying for the same seats, and you have to work within the seating arrangements of the restaurant. You need a strategy.

For The New York Times, Priya Krishna, Umi Syam and Aliza Aufrichtig frame strategies in the context of getting a reservation at Semma, a restaurant in New York City. They documented their reservation quest through the service Resy.

I enjoyed the pixel view and game metaphor. All it needed was some 8-bit music.

Bloomberg estimates that Taylor Swift reached billionaire status with her recent touring and music releases. Swift achieved the milestone mostly with music. Bloomberg provides the visual splits with bracelet beads.

Insects are dying at a high rate every year, but it is difficult to estimate an accurate number, because it is a challenge to gather data for millions of species around the world. In a new-to-me series, Reuters broke it down:

The world has lost 5% to 10% of all insect species in the last 150 years — or between 250,000 and 500,000 species, according to a February 2020 study in the journal Biological Conservation. Those losses are continuing, though estimates vary due to patchy data as well as uncertainty over how many insects exist.

Here is the good stuff for October 2023.

There are food shortages in Guatemala. For Reuters, Cassandra Garrison, Clare Trainor and Sarah Slobin used a height chart to show stunted growth as an indicator.

A few tortillas and a half bowl of reheated beans were all Maria Concepcion Rodriguez had to feed her six children in the isolated village of El Aguacate, one day in August.

Only her three-month-old breastfed baby had height commensurate with her age. The others were stunted by undernourishment. They looked too young for their years.

Data for the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, from the Federal Reserve Board, was made available recently. It comes out every three years, so you can see how income and savings have changed over time, broken down by demographics.

For example, the above shows that net worth increased, across age groups, since the last release in 2019. The chart is from the SCF’s “chartbook,” which isn’t the most elegant thing in the world, but it works.

Mike Breen is a well-known NBA basketball announcer. When a player hits a big three-pointer, Breen often uses his catchphrase, “Bang!” Someone counted all the times he yelled the phrase for each player, because sure why not. Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson are a cut above the rest.