Knowing the path can help you delegate. Knowing the steps makes it easier to help the rest of your team. Knowing what’s next can help you work through a tedious step, because you know it’ll be worth it. Become a member for access to this — plus tutorials, courses, and guides ..read more

A deeply insightful map from xkcd. See also: 19 maps that will blow your mind and change the way you see the world. Tags: humor, xkcd ..read more

Based on estimates from the Crowd Counting Consortium, the Washington Post shows the increasing number of protests on college campuses over the past few weeks. A set of maps show the locations, and a set of packed-circle charts show the increase of three weeks. Larger circles indicate larger crowd size. Darker yellow and black border indicate police presence. Tags: college, protest, Washington Post ..read more

Reddit user ChangsManagement mapped where NHL hockey players were born, based on data from Hockey Reference. As someone who knows next to nothing about hockey, except the bits I picked up while living in Buffalo, I’m surprised that the distribution is so far north, but it makes sense. Tags: birth, NHL ..read more

Daniel Shiffman, who you might know from his enthusiastic YouTube channel The Coding Train, updated his book The Nature of Code. The original version from 2012 focused on Processing. The new version uses p5.js, while still focusing on “understanding the mathematical principles behind our physical world.” You can find the free-to-read online version here. Tags: Daniel Shiffman ..read more

The Pudding ran an experiment that asked people to trace a shape. They would string together the sketches to make a flipbook to see where a single line or a circle would end up. They published the results: Every shape devolved into a scribble, which I feel is a metaphor for information on the internet. They also ran a sidequest that tested anonymity and the tendency to draw inappropriate things online. While the results were underwhelming, I appreciate the effort to see how many times a phallic sketch appears. Four times out of several thousand. See also the Aaron Koblin works — a collaborati ..read more

Hong Kong banned single-use plastics often used for food takeaway containers. For South China Morning Post, Kaliz Lee and Davies Christian Surya describe the ban and the scale of the waste. It’s a lot of plastic. Tags: garbage, plastic, scale, South China Morning Post ..read more

I’m Nathan Yau, and this is The Process, the newsletter for FlowingData members that looks closer at how the charts get made. Every month I collect tools and resources to help you make better charts. Here’s the good stuff for April. Become a member for access to this — plus tutorials, courses, and guides ..read more

The Marshall Project highlights research on excess mortality in U.S. prisons: The slowdown in admissions meant that prison systems reduced the number of younger people exposed to COVID, while the older people already inside were left there. That’s because incarcerated people are generally older than those likely to be sent to prison. By the end of 2020, Bureau of Justice Statistics data shows the number of people in state prisons under 55 fell by 17%, while the 55 and older population was down by 6%. Prison deaths spiked almost everywhere across the country, varying in magnitude from state t ..read more

When we’re young, we tend to have fewer responsibilities, which means we can sleep and wake up later. Then work and parenting come along, and our schedules grow more structured. We can see the shift in the percentage of people who are sleeping, given their age. Read More ..read more