Nathan Yau
@flowingdata.com
Playing with data, visualizing it for humans at flowingdata.com
Traveling salesman problem in disguise as a lawnmower game to see how efficiently you can cut grass > pudding.cool/2026/06/mow/ The game is fun. The analysis of gameplay and decision-making is better.
Why some people mow a lawn better than others
We analyzed 132,003 attempts to mow a virtual lawn efficiently.
pudding.cool
Datatype, a variable font that turns text to charts > franktisellano.github.io/datatype/ Maybe useful for small charts inline with text and tables?
Datatype — variable font that turns text into charts
An OpenType variable font that turns simple text expressions into inline charts. No JavaScript, no images — just type.
franktisellano.github.io
Hand-drawn, retro video game guides, like a map for Ninja Gaiden > www.handdrawngameguides.com Fills every single checkbox from childhood.
Less natural gas, more expensive fertilizer. So higher cost food > www.reuters.com/graphics/IRA... The parallax effect as you scroll and the treemap reveal at the end are tops.
The Iran War threatened a food crisis. The next Gulf conflict could do the same.
Modern farming depends on cheap fertilizer. The war made that disappear, with ships trapped, fertilizer plants shut down, farmers panicking and world food production thrown into peril.
reuters.com
A geography game, so you can see how bad you are at pinning locations around the world > maptap.gg I am not very good at this game.
NEW: The century-old device choking the AI push Transformers are fundamental to the flow of electricity and are essential to powering our modern lives. But the largest and most powerful transformers are facing bottlenecks, driving up prices and putting the relentless race for AI expansion at risk.
Plan your visit to US national parks with data: www.bloomberg.com/graphics/ame... I'm into the bulls-eye-looking charts that show visitor volume, temperature, and precipitation in a one-year span. Red border is where it's at.
Looking for the most "ethical" NBA championships pudding.cool/2026/06/ethi... Always fond of the traditional pile-o-heads method to visualize missed games and player importance.
Really cool to see my little charts in @flowingdata.com's newsletter! Here's our full story: projects.propublica.org/why-carbon-c...
Play the violins. The AI-inflated salaries of many San Francisco workers are not enough because other AI workers are also making high salaries. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/t...
In San Francisco, Even $180,000 Tech Salaries Are No Longer Enough
nytimes.com
The Burning Money candle shows how much money you've burned as it melts down to the nub. Love it when visual metaphors are taken literally. driesdepoorter.be/product/burn...
Burning Money
Candle marked from 1 to 30 EUR, priced at 30 EUR. The candle is made in Belgium from real quality beeswax. Each one carries a hand written edition number. Shipping worldwide!
driesdepoorter.be
Really cool that Google as an earthquake alert system based on accelerometer data from Android phones and good to see data used for something other than feeding bots www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
How Phones Alerted Millions Before Quakes Shook Venezuela (Gift Article)
Millions of people in Venezuela and surrounding countries received early warning alerts to their phones up to two minutes before back-to-back earthquakes on Wednesday.
nytimes.com
The sixth installment of "How The Heck" is live! This one is all about synths. perthirtysix.com/how-the-heck...
How The Heck Do Synthesizers Work? (An Interactive Exploration)
An interactive exploration of how synthesizers work: from additive sine waves and ADSR envelopes to resonant filter sweeps.
perthirtysix.com
Both totally unnecessary and extremely funny that the Guardian has an interactive graphic for you to change the color of the US flag's blue to the color of the Reflecting Pool from 8 to 19 June and counting
Careful planning is Washington’s whole thing: symbolic sightlines; monuments that speak to one another; columns, rooflines and axes aligned just so. The whole city is supposed to be a work of civic art. Trump’s projects test this 235-year-old idea: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Washington Has Been Carefully Planned for Two Centuries. Now Trump Has His Own Designs. (Gift Article)
The city is unlike any in America for its accumulation of intricate details, a whole that is a work of civic art.
nytimes.com
Ahead of SpaceX’s planned initial public offering this month, The New York Times analyzed statements that Elon Musk has made about his businesses on social media or during investor calls over the last 15 years. Here’s what we found.
Elon Musk Laid Out 602 Goals. We Counted How Many He Hit.
The billionaire has stated many plans for his businesses, but has delivered only some of what he said he would, when he said he would, according to a Times analysis.
nyti.ms
All name-based visualization is welcome in this timeline.
Erin Da(ta)vis@erindataviz.bsky.social · 2mo agoComing out of my cave to share a new blog post: erdavis.com/2026/05/29/w... Still banging on about names. This time, I found the oldest name (as determined by average age of living people with that name) is... Myrtle! Included is a li'l interactive to look at your own name ☺️
Prediction markets are a lot like regular gambling in that you're more likely to lose your money. But prediction markets have little regulation and it seems easier for insiders to interfere. Probably no biggie. Nice zoom out on the heatmapped distribution of gains and losses on this one.
We’ve calculated your chances of winning money on Polymarket
A Washington Post analysis found that only a few users have won the majority of all the profits on the prediction market platform.
washingtonpost.com
Divorce, by occupations: flowingdata.com/2026/05/07/d... Actuaries, professional estimators of risk and very on brand, are the outlier with the lowest rate.
We've just launched the Atlas of Global Development, an online publication presenting interactive stories and data visualizations (95 of them!) on key global trends In this thread I give some background and highlight some parts of the Atlas that I find noteworthy data360.worldbank.org/en/atlas/ 1/n
Researchers estimate that a third of new sites use AI-generated text: > ai-on-the-internet.github.io That's one year ago. Not great, but I wonder what percentage of those new sites have any traffic and if the chatbots and AI-generated sites are just eating themselves.
It's getting a lot easier to connect digital fingerprints to a person www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/int...
Opinion | Will AI end anonymity? I tested it.
AI can echolocate authors through their prose. Your digital fingerprint is at risk.
washingtonpost.com
Are companies really granting access to AI bots to just go to town on their codebase and data? I barely trust myself with that power on my own computer.
Classic Descriptor behavior with just words, no facts flowingdata.com/projects/dis...
Defense Against Dishonest Charts
This is a guide to protect ourselves and to preserve what is good about turning data into visual things.
flowingdata.com
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 4mo agoRFK Jr: "President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that's a 600% reduction."
NBC/Peacock live player and shot tracking during games is pure distraction, terrible design, and somehow makes it harder to track basketball.
Job turnover and tenure, by occupation, looking for who stays and who leaves the most flowingdata.com/2026/04/16/j...
