Whimsy

Part of a recent conversation. (via churchjanitor)

Walk in New York - Vintage - Postcard - NYC The Wonder City

Kahnawake Mohawk iron worker atop a column in NYC in the 1960s. (source)

This visualization from The New Yorker has gotten a great deal of press in the past week, and the attention is well deserved.  It breaks down New York City’s distribution of wealth along each subway line, using the visual structure of the subway map and translating it into a line graph to represent data extracted from the US Census.  Carpendale’s “Evaluating Information Visualizations” posits that the three tenets of generalizability, precision, and realism are key for an effective visualization.  In this case, each of these criteria are well represented.  The graphs represent a general look at NYC residents’ income levels, covering the millions of people that live along the various subway lines, and they could be relatively easily replicated using data from other urban areas.  Because the data used for the visualization was gathered by the Census Bureau, it can be assumed that it will be as precise as possible.  In addition, the results seem to be realistic based on a general understanding of NYC demography.  Overall, this particular set of graphs serves as a solid, effective example of data visualization.

Regardless of the limited scope of the interaction design, this elegant infographic remains useful for analyzing income trends at a glance, particularly within one subway line, which was, after all, the intent of the visualization.

Image Source(s)

From André Kertész