Exploring Formula 1 Through Data: Insights Inspired by My Son
Policy Viz Blog
by Jon Schwabish
1w ago
Some of my data interests are spurred by my work at the Urban Institute, others by things I’m personally interested in, like sports or politics. But sometimes, my kids inspire my work. My son inspired my exploration of timing of goals in NHL when he kept scoring in the last minute of periods when we played hockey on the Xbox. Today, he has inspired me again. A couple of years ago, my son got really into Formula 1 (F1) racing. And when I say “got into” I really mean it—do you know a lot of 14-year-olds who will wake up at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning to watch a race in Bahrain or Qatar? Yeah, tha ..read more
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Is a Graph Worth a Thousand Words?
Policy Viz Blog
by Jon Schwabish
1M ago
I’m sure you’ve heard it said that a graph needs to be “immediately recognizable” or “understood at the snap of your fingers.” After all, “a graph is worth a thousand words,” right? But is this assumption true? Can you simply glance at a graph or chart and immediately understand it? Let’s do an experiment. Sure, you see bars going up and going down. Maybe you noticed the gap where the fifth bar should be. But what is it showing? Different countries? States? Years? Months? You can’t tell—we need some labels along the horizontal axis. Okay, that’s better. Now I know the data start in 2000-01 a ..read more
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Survivorship Bias in Stroke Care
Policy Viz Blog
by Jon Schwabish
2M ago
Late last year, I presented my work on the Urban Institute’s Do No Harm project to analysts at a state department of health. (I’ve changed specific numbers in this post and am not naming the state or hospitals to keep the information confidential.) Following my presentation, one of the analysts who works on stroke care across the state told me about some of the data that had caused a bit of a stir in their data community. At an early 2023 meeting, the department’s data team presented information about a worrying trend in stroke care at a specific rural hospital in the state. Hospital ..read more
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Graph Labeling Strategies
Policy Viz Blog
by Jon Schwabish
2M ago
“Where should I place the labels on my graph?” It’s question that comes up in many data visualization discussions. Although the decision about where to place your labels is largely an aesthetic preference, I do think there is an objective logic you can follow. Let’s start with this simple line chart of the share of people in the labor force by generation—a graph that I saw in Axios and in Philip Bump’s newsletter. In this basic chart, we have a legend at the top of the graph. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using a legend, but it’s disconnected from the data. As I argue in my Better Dat ..read more
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Do No Harm Guide: Collecting, Analyzing, and Reporting Gender and Sexual Orientation Data
Policy Viz Blog
by Jon Schwabish
4M ago
The fight to recognize and respect the dignity and rights of LGBTQIA+ people has raised the visibility of multiple dimensions of gender and sexual orientation, expanding conception of these identities beyond the binary definitions of man or woman, straight or gay. The fifth guide of the Urban Institute’s Do No Harm Project was released this week and explores the current state of data around gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation. The collection of demographic (or identity-based) data is often complicated by the evolution and nuance of language; words or phrases used yesterday may not ..read more
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Bringing Data to Life: Physical Data Projects at Urban
Policy Viz Blog
by Jon Schwabish
4M ago
In today’s Data at Urban blog post, I detail my ongoing Data Physicalization at Urban (what I call “DPAU”) project with my colleagues at the Urban Institute. This page provides updated descriptions and photos from the weekly project series. If you would like to learn more about creating your own data physicalization project, please reach out and let me know how I can help. I’ve also created this Amazon list of tools and materials you might need for your own projects. DPAU Week-by-Week Sankey diagram of french fry consumption. For the first DPAU project, I wanted to create a Sankey diagram (or ..read more
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Policy Translation Workshop Summary
Policy Viz Blog
by Jon Schwabish
4M ago
At last month’s Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) annual meeting in Atlanta, GA, I teamed up with four others to offer a four-hour workshop on effective research communication skills. Our goal is to help those working and studying policy, public management, public affairs, economics, health policy, political science, and data science be better data communicators. Researchers aim to communicate to wide audiences, but we don’t typically receive substantial communication training in graduate school. Workshops like these play an important role in building skills to comm ..read more
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Ending the “Thank You” Ending Slide
Policy Viz Blog
by Jon Schwabish
4M ago
One of the presentation techniques I totally and vehemently oppose is the “Thank You” and “Questions?” ending slides. They are a hugely wasted opportunity and in this post, I’m going to show you a better way to end your presentation. Let’s take a simple example and say you’re the author of this Brookings Institution report about how educating girls in developing countries is a great investment for families, communities, and countries. You go through your argument, presenting the data, facts, and statistics to drive home your message and call to action. You get to the end of your pre ..read more
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No More Conference Presentation Templates
Policy Viz Blog
by Jon Schwabish
5M ago
In-person conferences are definitely back. I attended the Government & Public Sector R Conference at Georgetown last week and was in Indianapolis for a total of 20 hours last Friday-Saturday for the American Evaluation Association (AEA) annual meetings. It’s what I saw at the AEA meetings that reminded (and inspired) me to write this post: Why, conference organizers, do you insist of having slide templates? In case conference presentations are not your cup of tea, here is the basic way it works. You submit a paper proposal—you might submit on your own or as part of a larger ..read more
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Better Data Visualizations at Work: A Guide to Winning Over Your Boss
Policy Viz Blog
by Jon Schwabish
6M ago
One question that I regularly hear in my data visualization talks and workshops goes something like this: “How do I get my boss/manager/colleagues to prioritize better data visualizations?” It’s a common conundrum: you have some interest in data visualization, but your organization is not as motivated as you are. You might hear something equivalent to, “The data is there and that’s good enough.” In my experience working in and with teams and organizations seeking to improve their data visualization processes, I have found four strategies that help bring managers and colleagues on board to unde ..read more
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