The Daily Viz » illustrator

Charting U.S. Gun Manufacturing

Matt Stiles — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 00:01:52 +0000

More than 5 million guns were made in the United States in 2010, according to the latest data available from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, among the highest in recent history. See the trend in this quick column chart:

Download the data

Charting Olympics Participation

Matt Stiles — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 17:19:33 +0000

The summer Olympics begin in just over two weeks. The quadrennial event has continued to grow over the years, with more than 200 countries and 10,000 athletes competing in 2008. Here’s how participation has changed over time:

As the event continues to grow, women are being included at higher rates. The last time the Olympics were held in London, about 10 percent of participants were female. In 2008, they made up more than 40 percent. Here’s the trend over time:

Source: Sports Reference LLC

How Common Is Your Birthday?

Matt Stiles — Sat, 12 May 2012 21:14:55 +0000

UPDATE: I’ve written a clarification about this post here. Please read it.

A friend posted an interesting data table on my Facebook wall yesterday, which was my birthday. The data listed each day of the year with a ranking for how many babies were born in the United States on each date from 1973 to 1999. Some interesting trends are evident in the data. Apparently, people like to make babies around the winter holiday season because a large proportion of babies are born in September (ours is due Sept. 24, btw).

Sept. 16 was most common. Feb. 29* was least common. This heatmap is an effort to visualize the trends, with darker shades representing more births:

Data source: NYTimes.com, Amitabh Chandra, Harvard University

* A previous version of this post incorrectly listed Jan. 1 as the least common birth day.

Which European Soccer Leagues Have The Most Per-Match Goals?

Matt Stiles — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 05:03:00 +0000

Has European football gotten increasingly boring over the years? If you like offense, perhaps.

Since the mid-1950s, fewer and fewer goals on average have been scored per match. The trend is evident among the major national leagues (Spain, Italy, England and Germany) and also the Champions League, in which the best teams from each country compete for a European title.

Goals per match in the latter championship, formerly known as the European Cup, are down the most (-39%) since 1955 — followed by Spain’s La Liga (-30%), England’s Premier League (-14%) and Italy’s Serie A (-9%). Per-match goals in Germany’s Bundesliga are down 21% since 1964, the earliest data available.

This chart, made in Adobe Illustrator, attempts to the visualize the trend:

Data Source: worldfootball.net

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Charting NFL Receptions

Matt Stiles — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 19:16:00 +0000

Another Sunday, another NFL viz — this one showing the growth in total receptions by the league’s top receiver each season:

Top receiver by yards:

Data Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com