Information is beautiful

Every month we pick and share some of our favourite infographics, visualisations and data stories. Here’s what we found in our work folders and around the web.

» The most controversial moderation decisions made by Facebook’s “Supreme Court”
» Why the US Senate’s military aid boost for Ukraine is so crucial for its war with Russia
» Definitions of marriage, morphing from 1600 to the present day

Chip and PIN card, phone passcode, hotel safe – how predictable is your chosen PIN number?

3.4 million data points visualized from several data breaches.

Created by the late great Nick Berry of Data Genetics (redesigned and used with permission). He wrote a great data story around this which is also worth a read.

Published in our book, Knowledge is Beautiful.

» See the visualisation

Plastics are deeply woven into our societies, our supply chains, our lives, our possessions, even our bodies. Runaway plastic pollution and waste is the other great environmental crisis facing our civilisation.

Unlike most plastics, it’s actually possible to break this global problem down into its constituent parts. Here in infographical form.

That way, you can at least start to see the actions and choices that might make a difference.

» The Problem with Plastic Recycling isn’t working
» The 7 Main Types of Plastic Known your frenemy
» The Myth of Biodegradability None of the major plastics breakdown in nature
» Can’t We Just Use BioPlastics instead? Kinda. Sorta. Maybe?
» Our Routes for Solving the Plastics Crisis We CAN do this
» What Can *You* Do About Plastics in Your Daily Life? Simple, effective actions

Taken from our book Beautiful News: Positive trends, uplifting stats, creative solutions

» See all our data and research

It’s our 15th anniversary this year and we’d love to hear about you: who you are, why you follow us, what you like, what you don’t, what you value and how you interact with us and anyone else in the infosphere.

Yes, it’s a survey but a quick two minute one. Plus every 100th participant will win one of our beautiful books. We thank you!

» Take the 2 minute survey

We are announcing special workshops and trainings to celebrate our 15th anniversary. 

Coming up: A rare in-person session in LDN with IIB founder David McCandless (we do these once a year). A virtual workshop running on two half days and the regular full day session.

Learn how to turn numbers, ideas & data into beautiful charts, graphics & stories. This year we’re adding a new “data storytelling” element so you can begin to learn how to shape and present powerful data stories and narratives.

Next dates:

In-person
» Mon 8th July

Every month we pick and share some of our favourite infographics, visualisations and data stories. Here’s what we found in our work folders and around the web.

» Two Years of the Russia-Ukraine War – Key numbers. Casualties. Military spend. Foreign aid.
» $$$Trillions – Vast spending figures plucked from news headlines. Updated for 2024.
» Drugs – All of them. In one graphic. Easy to swallow? (Bluesky)
» Vaccines work – Especially for Measles. (Mastodon)

» Ever heard of the Butter Line? and the somewhat related Scone Map?
» A dazzling interactive graphic on the most important tech in the world (ft.com)
» Everybody is crazy for Protein? Here’s why. (Reddit)

» Getting USA to Net Zero by 2050 – Not easy. Not impossible.
» Things Going Up! Up! Up! – Stuff that’s improving substantially, globally.

» Two Years of the Russia-Ukraine War – Key numbers two years into the conflict (data)
» Facebook’s “Supreme Court” –  The major cases of Meta’s oversight board in one sheet (data)
» The A24 Movie Browser– Every movie, everywhere, all at once (data)
» UPDATED Ransomware Attacks – Biggest. Most recent. Notable. 630+ entries. (data)
» UPDATED Data Breaches – World’s worst hacks. Curated since 2016. Now 450+ entries. (data)

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We’ve updated our interactive LLM tracker with 30 new and notable LLMs including Anthropic Claude 3, Twitter’s Grok, all Mistral’s offerings, Google Gemini Pro, Apple’s MM1 (finally!) and Chinese LLMs like DeepSeek, GLM-4 and Xinghuo 3.5.

We’ve also flagged up soon-to-be-released LLMs such as OpenAI’s rumoured open source model G3PO, Amazon’s mighty Olympus, Meta’s Llama 3 and of course ChatGPT-5.

» See the visualization
» Review the data
» Here’s a great source we used with many most LLMs listed

Made with VizSweet

To celebrate 15 years of Information is Beautiful this June, we’re hosting a series of rare and exclusive live performances in London, San Francisco, LA and potentially other cities – plus some virtual events for global timezones.

IIB founder and TED speaker David McCandless will start the festivities by hitting the stage at the prestigious Royal Institution in London on Tue 25th June 2024. Look forward to 90 minutes of fun, surprise, aha’s and Eurekas as David shares his funniest, and most insightful and revelatory visuals and data stories. All performed in his unique style of “performance journalism” he’s refined by speaking at over 200 festivals and events.

Come as you are and leave – we hope – a little smarter.

Current LIVE in-person shows
»

Two years into the conflict this infographic data story reveals some of the harsh, hidden numbers around casualties, military budgets and foreign aid in the Russia-Ukraine war.

In times of war, data is difficult to validate, information hard to find. We polled a variety of sources – institutes, traditional media, independent media, civic groups – to find credible estimates and answers to key questions.

How many combatants have been killed and wounded?
What % of territory has been won or lost?
How much money is being spent on the war – and where does it come from?
How important is the USA’s continued support for Ukraine? (Short answer: very).

We hope this data brings a little clarity and shows, at the least, how ongoing international support for Ukraine against the Russian war machine is essential.

The securing of this support is Ukraine’s second front line in the war. The enemy? Other countries’ national interests, political controversies and upcoming elections…

» Explore the visualisation
» Check out the dataset

Sources: Kiel Institute, Mediazona, Ukraine Losses, Le Monde, CSIS, SIPRI, New York Times.

Some elements made with VizSweet

An interactive visualisation of all the cases and decisions Meta’s Oversight Board has taken between 2020 and today. 

The semi-independent ‘Supreme Court’ deals with controversial content-moderation issues on Facebook and Instagram. Hate speech. Promotion of dangerous organisations Misinformation on important topics. The 20 members of the board have selected just 78 cases from over 1.3m submitted per year. See where they over-ruled or upheld Meta’s decisions – and whether you agree.

Beyond Facebook, content moderation is a complex dilemma for many tech platforms, raising complex issues and edge cases that neither free speech absolutism nor ultra-rigid censorship can easily solve.  The decisions in this dataset could set precedents for future content moderation everywhere.  And, at the least, highlight the dynamic, subtle and often hyper-granular minefields of speech, censorship and governance in the digital age.

» Explore the interactive visualisation

» Check the dataset

Source: Meta

Made with VizSweet.