Which state has the highest per capita marijuana use? Who has the most horses? Deer-collisions? What about suicides? Rice production? There will be some stats on this graphic by our friends at 1bog that will not surprise you, such as the state with the largest economy or the most wind farms, but some of the stats will likely blow your mind.
If you call Connecticut home, your standard of living and economic opportunities are almost two times better than that of someone in West Virginia. That basic inequality shouldn’t be news to any American who’s spent a day outside. But rarely has it been put in such a stark visual form. The images here are screenshots from a sweeping interactive data visualization by Rosten Woo and Zachary Watson for the American Human Development Project. The infographic maps something called the American Human Development Index — a rough, one-stop measurement of quality of life across America based on things like education, life expectancy, and income — and lets you compare it to a raft of other factors, from political activity to local homicide rates. Think of it as a medical chart from the nation’s annual physical — one that reveals some serious health problems.
Americans spend many hours in traffic each year, slowly crawling between work and home. And while most commutes are unpleasant, some are far more congested. Why? A new study by CEOs for Cities has found that what creates traffic jams isn’t more cars and fewer highways, it’s sprawl. This is a look at the 10 metropolitan areas whose citizens spend the most and least extra time in traffic due to sprawl, out of 51 cities studied.
SOURCE: Driven Apart by Joe Cortright for CEOs for Cities.
I take exception to Phoenix not being displayed, we have tremendous sprawl in the “Valley of the Sun”
The Gates Foundation has produced an online tool that every parent should see: The Education Nation Scorecard for Schools, which shows the performance of each and every school in the United States, and allows you to compare them across districts and states.
Gay Sex vs Straight Sex - A chart filled post from OK Cupid based on data from their 3.2 million users. Pictured above: the more red the more gay curious, the more blue the less gay curious.
The data-heads over at OK Cupid are at it again!
Every year, wars and natural disasters drive refugees from their homes, scattering them in far-flung corners of the globe. But where, exactly, do they go? Flight and Expulsion, an interactive infographic out of the Germany’s University of Applied Sciences, Potsdam brilliantly explores those mass migrations. What’s truly remarkable is how many useful cuts at the data there are — allowing you to see, for each of the last 20 years, where people fled from, where they went, and what countries have given the most succor in total.
Fun toy from Google.
How will the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans shake out after the elections on November 2? Many political experts and news sources track and revise predictions, but until now it’s been hard to compare perspectives. We’ve worked with some of the top names in politics — Cook, Rothenberg, CQ-Roll Call, and RealClearPolitics — to make it easier to track the daily changes in the political landscape.
(via forodreamland)
Imperium Fail.
Take that Spain! I’m not sure where this chart was made, but for pretty much every country who once had aspirations to be an Empire this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
This amuses me, reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw years ago that said something like “Portugal: World Power for 15 Seconds”
