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Nathan Yau

@flowingdata.com

6.7K followers 270 following 190 posts

Playing with data, visualizing it for humans at flowingdata.com

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Feb 13

Dishonest charts are coming from all directions, and they're only going to hit harder. Unless we push back. So, an interactive guide: Defense Against Dishonest Charts 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

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · 6d

Tennessee is missing in the state ranks in the above. The state didn’t collect enough data to be included in the survey data. But in the year prior Tennessee was 50% for men and 39% for men. I’m guessing similar numbers year-over-year.

Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · 7d

Ha, I was about to say! Fine work

Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · 7d

Vermont, New Hampshire, and Montana, I was not familiar.

Bar chart showing percentage of adults, by state, who had alcoholic beverage in past 30 days. D.C., Vermont, New Hampshire, and Montana are around 60%.

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · 7d

How much alcohol Americans drink flowingdata.com/2025/10/02/a...

How Much Alcohol Americans Drink

Just under half of adults in the United States said they had an alcoholic beverage in the past 30 days. Does this change for various groups?

flowingdata.com

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Reposted by Nathan Yau

NPR @npr.org · 8d

Today marks the first day in public media’s history without federal funding. And we’re not going anywhere.

Listeners like you keep our mission alive. Protect one of the last places where America comes together to hear itself.

Stand with us today. Donate at this link: n.pr/46wamAj

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · 8d

Browser window with data.census.gov opened. Text reads, "Due to the lapse of federal funding, portions of this website will not be updated. Any inquiries submitted will not be answered until appropriations are enacted."

Reposted by Nathan Yau

Alex Ip 葉清霖 @alexip718.com · 10d

Got my first @flowingdata.com feature for my analysis at @thexylom.com! Thank you Nathan :)

Map of H-1B visa holders at research institutions

Most of the H-1B attention has been on companies, but many visa holders are at research institutions studying topics that might be of use to society. From Alex Ip for The Xylom: The Xylom’s analysi…

flowingdata.com

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · 10d

🙌

Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · 14d

For members, this month's visualization roundup is up flowingdata.com/2025/09/25/p...

Visualization Tools, Datasets, and Learning Resources – September 2025 Roundup

Here are tools you can use, datasets to poke at, and resources to learn from.

flowingdata.com

Reposted by Nathan Yau

Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 27d

Launch day 🚀

We’ve just released @chartlecc.bsky.social - a daily chart game!

Your job is to guess which country is represented by the red line in today's chart. You get 5 tries, no other clues!

Play today, come back tomorrow for a different chart with new data and share with your chart friends 📈

Chartle - A daily chart game

Guess the country in red by analysing today's chart

chartle.cc

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Sep 9

With our old friend the beeswarm, we get a bottom-heavy distribution with bumps at the round numbers, about every $20k up to $100k in median salary. Then the jobs grow sparse.

Beeswarm chart showing distribution of median salary by occupation.

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Sep 9

Salary and Occupation flowingdata.com/2025/09/09/s...

Salary and Occupation

Salaries vary by occupation. These charts show the spread.

flowingdata.com

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Aug 20

Still have this hanging out on the wall

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Reposted by Nathan Yau

Hannah Recht @hannahrecht.bsky.social · Aug 11

🚀 I made a tracker that shows when the Census Bureau adds or removes datasets from their APIs.
Dashboard at www.hrecht.com/census-api-d... and follow @censusapitracker.bsky.social for major updates.

I've been wanting to build this for years but now seemed an especially important time to keep track.

Tracking Census Dataset Changes

See when the U.S. Census Bureau adds or removes datasets.

www.hrecht.com

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Aug 14

The seven-year itch is more like the 1- and 5-year itch flowingdata.com/projects/202...

Multi-Year Itch

Is the seven-year itch, made popular by a movie from 1955, a real thing?

flowingdata.com

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Reposted by Nathan Yau

Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · Aug 6

"Call me old-fashioned, but I’d rather have a poorly-written, incomplete obituary from a loved one than a pristine-looking convergence of words from a machine" @flowingdata.com: flowingdata.com/2025/08/06/a...

Artificial obituaries

Drew Harwell, reporting for the Washington Post: Artificial intelligence tools are not just reshaping how we work, learn and live. They’re also changing what happens after we die, as families and f…

flowingdata.com

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Aug 4

The loved one would want the real voice, not some convergence of adjectives.

Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Aug 2

A petulant child who accuses you of cheating whenever he loses.

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Reposted by Nathan Yau

Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) @hansilowang.bsky.social · Aug 1

BREAKING: President Trump is calling for the firing of the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics hours after the federal statistical agency released a weaker-than-expected jobs report

I was just informed that our Country’s “Jobs Numbers” are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, who faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of Victory. This is the same Bureau of Labor Statistics that overstated the Jobs Growth in March 2024 by approximately 818,000 and, then again, right before the 2024 Presidential Election, in August and September, by 112,000. These were Records — No one can be that wrong? We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes. McEntarfer said there were only 73,000 Jobs added (a shock!) but, more importantly, that a major mistake was made by them, 258,000 Jobs downward, in the prior two months. Similar things happened in the first part of the year, always to the negative. The Economy is BOOMING under “TRUMP” despite a Fed that also plays games, this time with Interest Rates, where they lowered them twice, and substantially, just before the Presidential Election, I assume in the hopes of getting “Kamala” elected – How did that work out? Jerome “Too Late” Powell should also be put “out to pasture.” Thank you for your attention to this matter!

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Jul 29

My favorite bit is the stacks with a Sankey flourish and water lines to indicate flow. This could've easily been five simple stacked bar multiples, but this little part shows that they care.

Stacked bars posing as Sankey diagrams showing most surface water coming from forests

Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Jul 29

They went with the @scottreinhard.bsky.social flare, using 3-D elevation scottreinhard.com/Mapping-and-...

3-d elevation map by Scott Reinhard, in the style of the Statistical Atlas 1870, with modern data.

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Jul 29

Notes of the 1870 Statistical Atlas of the United States, especially in the titles www.loc.gov/item/05019329/

Mosaic plots showing state population. More area for more population in 1870. New York the biggest.

Population map from 1870, concentration in the (modern) eastern half of the United States.

Title of population map. Smaller description with title "Constitutional Population" in largest print. Center aligned text.

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Jul 29

Gold star for visuals.

Reuters Graphics @graphics.reuters.com · Jul 28

Congress has passed hundreds of laws protecting federal public lands over the past century through bipartisan efforts and with the support of local governments. Now, Trump’s administration is pushing policies and legislation that upend these protections.

www.reuters.com/graphics/USA...

Eroding protections for public lands

Trump policies reshape the role of federally owned land, against the tide of U.S. public opinion

www.reuters.com

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Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Jul 22

pure sadness

Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Jul 18

same!