To better understand race and poverty, MetroTrends maps where people live whose income is below the poverty line.

The history, geography, and politics of individual metro regions all matter profoundly, and any serious policy strategy must be tailored to local realities.

To help take the policy conversation from the general to the specific, we offer a new mapping tool. It lets you explore changes from 1980 to 2010 in where poor people of different races and ethnicities lived, for every metropolitan region nationwide.

Each dot, color-coded by race, represents 20 people. So when you slide between views for 1980 and 2010, you see how areas have grown more or less diverse, increased or decreased in covered areas, and perhaps areas in need of more attention.

Online mapping just got an upgrade:

Announcing Mapbox GL JS — a fast and powerful new system for web maps. Mapbox GL JS is a client-side renderer, so it uses JavaScript and WebGL to dynamically draw data with the speed and smoothness of a video game. Instead of fixing styles and zoom levels at the server level, Mapbox GL puts power in JavaScript, allowing for dynamic styling and freeform interactivity.

For the non-developers: Online maps are typically stored pre-made on a server, in the form of a bunch of image files that are stitched together when you zoom in and out of a map. So developers have to periodically update the image files if they want their base maps to change. It’s a hassle, which is why base maps often look similar. With Mapbox GL, making changes is easier because the development pipeline is shorter.

More details on the JavaScript library here.

Although California has perhaps had it the worst, drought also affects other states, mainly the southwestern ones. Mike Bostock and Kevin Quealy for the New York Times have been updating an animated map weekly. It shows the spread of drought severity, across the United States. But, be sure to scroll down to also see drought levels over time, shown as stacked area chart.

See also: NPR drought tracking from a couple of years ago.

To show the increased levels of drought throughout the state of California, Kyle Kim and Thomas Suh Lauder for the LA Times showed weekly change in drought levels with 188 color-coded California maps. There’s also an animated version, but why do that when you can scrollllll?

A couple of years ago, the New York Times did something similar, but with a two-category color scale and on a national scale.

By way of David Kennerr, something in this CNN frame seems off.

Adding on to their series of graphics to explain statistical concepts, Victor Powell and Lewis Lehe use a set of interactives to describe Markov Chains. Even if you already know what Markov Chains are or use them regularly, you can use the full-screen version to enter your own set of transition probabilities. Then let the simulation run.

Nice. Should be especially useful for educators.

Visualization on the Web can be tricky for those unfamiliar with code. The new JavaScript library p5.js, developed by Lauren McCarthy and collaborators, aims to make your first steps easier and less painful.

Using the original metaphor of a software sketchbook, p5.js has a full set of drawing functionality. However, you’re not limited to your drawing canvas, you can think of your whole browser page as your sketch! For this, p5.js has addon libraries that make it easy to interact with other HTML5 objects, including text, input, video, webcam, and sound.

The library follows some of the same philosophy as Processing — that is, straightforward to get up and running — and reimagines the implementation and approach for recent web technology. Even if you’re not into programming, it’s worth visiting if just to watch, listen, and interact with Dan Shiffman as he enthusiastically talks about the library.

Digital Ethereal is a project that explores wireless, making what’s typically invisible visible and tangible. In the piece above, a handheld sensor is used to detect the strength of Wi-Fi signal from a personal hotspot. A person waves the sensor around the area, and long-exposure photography captures the patterns.

Reminds me of the Immaterials project from a while back, which used a light stick to represent signal strength rather than a signal light.

A group of researchers from MIT, Microsoft Research, and Adobe Research are experimenting with seemingly inanimate objects as a proxy for sound in the vicinity. They call it the Visual Microphone.

When sound hits an object, it causes small vibrations of the object’s surface. We show how, using only high-speed video of the object, we can extract those minute vibrations and partially recover the sound that produced them, allowing us to turn everyday objects—a glass of water, a potted plant, a box of tissues, or a bag of chips—into visual microphones.

See the demo in the video above. It’s impressive. It’s also great that there’s another use for high speed video other than watching water balloons pop and guns fire on the Discovery Channel.

Find more details on the project here.

In celebration of John Venn’s 180th birthday, today’s Google Doodle produces a Venn diagram with the two O’s in Google’s name. Click the play button for a little bit of entertainment.

For more Venn fun, see also Muppet name etymology, the Venn pie-agram, and what makes a platypus playing a keytar.

A group of researchers used where “notable individuals” were born and place of death, based on data from Freebase, as a lens into culture history. The video explainer below shows some results:

From Nature:

The team used those data to create a movie that starts in 600 bc and ends in 2012. Each person’s birth place appears on a map of the world as a blue dot and their death as a red dot. The result is a way to visualize cultural history — as a city becomes more important, more notable people die there.

Before you jump to too many conclusions, keep in mind where the data comes from. Freebase is kind of like Wikipedia for data, so you get cultural bias towards the United States and Europe. There are fewer data points just about everywhere else.

Therefore, avoid the inclination to think that such and such city or country looks unimportant, focus on the data that’s there and compare to what else is in the vicinity. From this angle, this is interesting stuff. [Science via Nature | Thanks, Mauro]

I don’t know about you, but I like my bagel as two roughly cut, congruent linked halves. I usually use a fork, aluminum foil, and some duct tape. No more. George Hart demonstrates a better way to do it. It’s a good thing too, because I was running low on duct tape.

Statistics has an image problem. To the general public, it’s old, out of touch, and boring. It’s a problem because we place stock in a younger generation who we (1) want to be more data literate and (2) eventually lead the way, or at least participate, in all data-related realms. It’s beneficial for everyone.

This is Statistics is a new push by the American Statistical Association to provide a new perspective that doesn’t dwell on sheets of equations.
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Vax, a game by Ellsworth Campbell and Isaac Bromley, explores how a disease spreads through a network, starting with just one infected person. It’s a simple concept that works well.

When you start the game, you have a network of uninfected people. The more connected a person is, the more chances that person can infect others upon his or her own infection. Your goal is to strategically administer a limited supply of vaccinations and to quarantine people to prevent as many infections as you can.

Fun and educational. Woo.

Lazaro Gamio and Richard Johnson for the Washington Post cover civilian deaths in the recent Gaza conflict, namely child civilians. Red icons represent children.

Similar to a previous piece on the death penalty in the United States, the icons provide more focus on individuals while maintaining a zoomed out view of the situation. However, this piece brings an interactive component that shows deaths over time and more information in tooltips on the mouseover.

All Things Considered on NPR ran a fine series on how we interpret probability and uncertainty. It came in five bits (plus one follow-up), each five to ten minutes long. They explore explanations of risk in different areas such as national security, health, and the daily weather and how people interpret the numbers and words.

A recurring theme was experts who use alternative descriptions for the seemingly concrete numbers.

Doctors, including Leigh Simmons, typically prefer words. Simmons is an internist and part of a group practice that provides primary care at Mass General. “As doctors we tend to often use words like, ‘very small risk,’ ‘very unlikely,’ ‘very rare,’ ‘very likely,’ ‘high risk,’ ” she says.

Not that words always makes understanding numeric probability easier. From the social scientist for the National Weather Service:

And it’s not just a numbers game — words used to describe weather can be just as confusing. Take “watch” and “warning,” for example.

“‘Watch’ means that conditions are ripe for something to happen. ‘Warning’ means that it is happening — it is imminent,” Brown says. “It’s easy to get them confused.”

Both the doctor and the social scientist agree that a combination of numbers, words, and a visual explanation could be the best route.

Some people think we should forgo trying to explain uncertainty to a general public that doesn’t understand, but the rejectors themselves don’t recognize the importance. Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean you should ignore it.

Listen to the full series. [via Dart-Throwing Chimp]

Numbers is a short film by Robert Hloz where some people see numbers appear above others’ heads. What the numbers are varies by the person with the ability, and it turns out knowing can be a blessing and a curse. Worth your nine and a half minutes of undivided attention: