Information is Beautiful
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infobeautiful.bsky.social
Information is Beautiful
@infobeautiful.bsky.social
7.2K followers 35 following 1K posts
Data visualizations & information graphics by David McCandless. Plus favourite finds & graphics from around the web. Making sense of the world - well, trying to - since 2009.

https://linktr.ee/infobeautiful
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infobeautiful.bsky.social
Alligator population by state... Good to know!

(via Reddit www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/co...)
A map of the United States displaying alligator populations by state, shaded in green to represent the numbers. The highest populations are concentrated in the southeastern states: Louisiana (2,000,000), Florida (1,300,000), Texas (400,000), Georgia (200,000), South Carolina (100,000), and Mississippi (70,000). Other states, including Alabama (32,000), Oklahoma (2,000), and Arkansas (100), have significantly smaller populations. Most other states are marked with a "0" population and are shaded gray, indicating no alligators.
January 18, 2026 at 7:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Deep truth

(creator: unknown)
Image depicting alignment chart with different monitor setups. Each setup corresponds to alignments like lawful good with three horizontal monitors, neutral good with two, chaotic good with one horizontal and one vertical, lawful neutral with one monitor and a laptop, true neutral with one monitor, chaotic neutral with one horizontal and one vertical, lawful evil with two stacked monitors, neutral evil with two side-by-side vertical monitors, and chaotic evil with an irregular stack of monitors.
January 18, 2026 at 3:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
2050: Where one in four people might be retirement age (double today)
A line graph showing the projected number of people aged 65 years and older worldwide from 2024 to 2054. The graph shows that the global population of people aged 65 and older is expected to increase from 830 million in 2024 to 1.7 billion in 2054. The graph also shows the projected number of people aged 65 and older in Asia, Europe, and Africa. The data is based on the UN's medium scenario.
January 17, 2026 at 3:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Some good UK deals on our beautiful books out there
📘 63% off Beautiful News- just £9! geni.us/BNEWS
📕 20% off Information is Beautiful geni.us/IIBbook
📙 25% off Knowledge is Beautiful geni.us/KIB25

Info bit.ly/IIB-Books
The cover images of three infographic books by David McCandless: Beautiful News, Knowledge is Beautiful and Information is Beautiful
January 16, 2026 at 12:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Countries where non-voters would be the strongest voting bloc / party
A map of Europe indicating countries where non-voters would have been the strongest political entity in the most recent parliamentary election between 2021 and 2025. Countries highlighted in red are those where the percentage of non-voters exceeded the vote share of the leading political party. Countries in green indicate that the strongest party received more votes than the number of non-voters. A few countries are shown in grey, likely indicating missing data.
January 15, 2026 at 12:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
“What a wonderful world it could be”… wait, CORRECTION: *is kinda already*
A different way of seeing the news

informationisbeautiful.net/beautifulnew...
A mockup of 'The New York Good Times' newspaper website, featuring positive news stories. The main headlines include 'Amazon Deforestation at a 9 Year Low' with a split image showing lush forest next to dry land, 'STUDY: Zero Cases of Cervical Cancer Seen in Women Vaccinated Against HPV as Girls' with a microscopic image of the virus, and '13,370 Children's Deaths from Preventable Disease Prevented Today' accompanied by a medical syringe image. Other stories include 'A 5th Person Has Been Cured of HIV' with a photo of a hand holding a red AIDS awareness ribbon, positive headlines about wind power in Europe, dog cancer vaccines, and women in parliament. The layout mimics The New York Times website design, with navigation sections for U.S., World, Business, Arts, Lifestyle, and other categories at the top.
January 13, 2026 at 5:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
% of world population with colour-blindness:
Deuteranomaly (green-weak) 4.6%
Deuteranopia (green-blind) 1.3%
Protoanomaly (red-weak) 1%
Protanopia (red-blind) 1%
Tritanopia (blue-blind) ~rare

This condition affects 1 in 12 men, 1 in 200 women, so more than 350m worldwide. 1 in 22 people.
Four images of tomatoes showing how different types of color blindness affect vision: normal, deuteranomaly, protanopia, and tritanopia. Each image displays varied tomato colors and sizes.
January 13, 2026 at 3:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Rubbish? Fine? Brilliant? British superlatives graded and ranked.
yougov.co.uk/society/arti...

US version here ('quite' interesting comparison)
today.yougov.com/society/arti...
A stacked area chart shows gradations of British superlatives from Abysmal (1.21) through terrible (1.75) and rubbish (2.17) to average (5.09), fine (5.8), and topping out at "very good" (7.9) and excellent (8.95)
January 13, 2026 at 12:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Most generous countries.

Often, nations who’ve suffered massive instability are among the most generous. Haiti. Liberia. Iraq.

(source: Charities Aid Foundation)

part of our Beautiful News project
informationisbeautiful.net/beautifulnew...
Scatter plot showing the relationship between generosity and wealth among various countries. Nations like Indonesia, Myanmar, and Kenya, which are marked as poorer, appear highly generous. Richer countries such as the USA and Ireland also exhibit significant generosity. The x-axis represents wealth, and the y-axis illustrates generosity levels. Circle size indicates the scale of the economy. The chart highlights that some of the world's poorest nations are among the most generous.
January 13, 2026 at 9:55 AM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Boomers OK? Proportion of wealth owned relative to other generations (millennials etc) source: New York Times
A treemap shows the proportion of wealth owned by Baby Boomers ($78 trillion) in the US relative to other generations like Gen-X ($47 trillion) and Millennials ($14.2 trillion)
January 12, 2026 at 7:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Love this idea for quick reference travelling

(By Frank Okay www.frankokay.com @frankokay)
This is a map of New York overlaid on the map of Chicago, titled "A New Yorker's Guide to Chicago" by Frank Okay. New York's boroughs (Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bronx, Staten Island) are placed over corresponding areas in Chicago.
January 12, 2026 at 3:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Yet another reason to tut at the Mercator map projection
brilliantmaps.com/mercator-vs-...
World map using a Mercator projection, but with the true relative sizes of countries overlaid in a darker shade. This illustrates how the standard Mercator projection distorts the size of landmasses, particularly those further from the equator, by showing the actual size differences. For example, Canada and Russia appear much smaller in their true relative size compared to their depiction in a standard Mercator projection.
January 10, 2026 at 3:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Damn ... how far Bilbo and Frodo actually walked

(If the Shire is Kansas, Mordor is Jacksonville)

(by reddit user fussomoro)
bit.ly/BilboFrodo
A weathered fantasy map of Middle Earth from The Lord of the Rings, showing two different journey routes marked in contrasting colors. The red line shows Frodo and Sam's path from the Shire to Mordor, while the blue line shows Bilbo's earlier journey as depicted in The Hobbit. The map includes familiar locations like the Shire, Rohan, and Mordor, with mountains and forests illustrated in a classic Tolkien-style cartography. The map appears aged with sepia tones and includes text labels in stylized fantasy font. A compass rose and scale bar are visible in the lower left corner, and the title reads "The Map of Middle Earth.
January 9, 2026 at 5:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
The world's greatest novels, according to 15+ book polls, awards, prizes & lists. How many have you read?

interactive bit.ly/IIB-Novels
poster bit.ly/Novels-Poster
A word cloud aggregates over 150 books most mentioned in book polls, awards and top ten lists such as the Pulitzer Prize, Times Literary Supplement, Good Reads etc. Clear winners of this consensus are The Catcher in the Rye, Crime and Punishment, 1984, Catch 22 and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
January 8, 2026 at 5:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
The movement of the magnetic North Pole over 400 years
www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/s...
A map titled 'Heading North' showing the movement of Earth's north magnetic pole from 1590 to 2019. The map displays the Arctic region, including parts of Canada, Greenland, Russia, and Svalbard. A blue line traces the magnetic pole's path from southern Canada in 1590, meandering northward through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago until 1900, then continuing as a dotted line toward Russia through 2019. The geographic North Pole is marked with a black square. The map illustrates that the magnetic pole is moving about 35 miles closer to Russia each year.
January 8, 2026 at 3:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Python slithers to the top of the programming language leaderboard
Ranking graph showing top programming languages on GitHub by contributor count from 2014-2024. Python rises to #1, followed by JavaScript and TypeScript, with shifts in popularity of languages like Ruby, Go, and C.
January 7, 2026 at 5:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Asking for a friend?
A stacked column chart shows how long certain street drugs remain detectable in blood and urine. Cannabis, by far, is the most detectable with 336 hours in blood and 30 days in urine. The average is 24 hours and 4 days.
January 7, 2026 at 3:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Hmmm. Greenland possesses significant, largely untapped, mineral resources, inc. rare earth elements, graphite, lithium, and other critical minerals.

(source: Wall St Journal)
A map of Greenland showing the locations of various mineral resources. The map is color-coded to indicate different types of minerals, including iron, gold, uranium, zinc, copper, and others. Key locations like Qaanaaq (Thule Air Base), Kangerlussuaq (International Airport), Nuuk (Capital), and Isukasia (London Mining Site) are marked. The map highlights the potential for mineral wealth in Greenland.
January 6, 2026 at 5:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Who lived when? Some surprises here
A timeline infographic titled "The Big Map of Who Lived When?" showing notable historical figures across various fields from 1200 to 2000 CE, categorized by profession and era.
January 5, 2026 at 3:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Vibrations / frequency / cycles / waves / rates

data geni.us/IIB-PerSecond
Chart showing frequency ranges for various phenomena, from 1 Hz (resting heart rate) to 30 sextillion Hz (gamma rays). Includes human senses, electronic devices, and electromagnetic spectrum. Scale spans from cycles per second to trillions of Hz.
January 3, 2026 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by Information is Beautiful
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Oil
Voronoi chart visualises the % of world's proven oil reserves by country, divided by OPEC (70.4% of reserves) and NON-OPEC nations (30.6%). Venezuela has the largest reserves at 18% with Saudi Arabia (17%) and Iran (9%) in 2nd & 3rd. Of the NON-OPEC nations, Canada has the largest at 10%, followed by Russia 6% and USA (4%)
December 16, 2025 at 11:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
We are here

(by Dan Meth www.danmeth.com)
Bar chart lists the years in which various sci-fi film and TV shows were set. From Clockwork Orange (1995) and Solyent Green (2022) to The Matrix (2199), Star Trek (2387) and Logan’s Run (2500). A large marker saying “You are here” highlights 2024 in this timeline
January 2, 2026 at 5:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Ikigai - that interesting self-development concept & prism from Japan - and it's (more realistic?) opposite (by @adamgrant)
An Ikigai diagram showing overlapping circles in pink, yellow, blue, and purple on a dark background. The circles represent 'what you are good at', 'what earns you money', 'what the world needs', and 'what you love'. Where they intersect are concepts like 'profession', 'mission', 'calling', with 'ikigai' (purpose/dream job) at the center where all circles meet. Created by Information is Beautiful, original diagram by Mark Winn/Dan Buettner. A humorous empty Venn diagram titled 'Venn Diagram of my life' showing three disconnected circles labeled 'Things I like to do', 'Things I'm good at', and 'Things that make money', with no overlapping sections, implying these aspects of life don't intersect. By @adamgrant
January 1, 2026 at 7:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Pain is temporary, tattoos are forever
A heatmap overlaid over two human figures, facing front and back, reveals zones where receiving a tattoo are most to least painful. Forearms, back, upper chest, thighs and calves are least painful. While feet, shins, stomach, face and genitals are most painful.
January 1, 2026 at 3:55 PM
infobeautiful.bsky.social
Oh no! Are we heading into Games of Throne finale territory? 😬
Stranger Things rating chart showing episode scores from seasons 1 to 5. Most episodes are rated 'Awesome' or 'Great,' with scores predominantly in green, except season 3, episode 7 scored 6.0 (orange), and season 5, episode 7 scored 5.7 (red). Overall average ratings range from 8.2 to 8.8.
December 31, 2025 at 3:55 PM