Nothing but a Number

One number, one poster, seven times

Over the next two weeks you will create one poster every other day.

On one day, find a single number from a different subject area that interests you and spend your time thinking about how the scale of that value could be communicated formally. On the next day, create a visual representation using one of the seven retinal variables defined by Jacques Bertin (position, size, shape, value, hue, orientation, texture) to encode its value—use a different retinal variable on each poster.

The poster must include a visual representation of the number and a reference to the data source. You can add additional text or formal elements (e.g., lines, shapes, gradients) if necessary, but refrain from using photography. The poster should be visually pleasing and should communicate well. Composition, form, typography, and color should fit with the subject matter. Each day, upload your design to the website. On Monday the 9th, bring your 7 posters to class and pin them up.

Be ready to discuss why you chose the number and subject area. For each graphic decision, think about why you are doing it. Is it the best way to display the number? Does it help the viewer understand the subject better than simply printing the number in 200 pt. type would?

Keep in mind that a number in isolation has no inherent meaning. Half of the task your posters need to accomplish is to communicate what the number represents (i.e., what it is). The second half is explaining how big or small or different that value is (i.e., compared to what?). So even if you're only attempting to communicate a single number, you will likely need to represent additional ones to provide context for that latter question.

This is an iterative warm-up exercise that will ultimately be useful in exploring subject areas for your final project. Consider a broad range of topics but move quickly and step lightly—there will be plenty of time for overthinking things later on!

References

BBC×365
Interactive Type

Details

Format: 7 × 7" (trimmed, full bleed).
Data: One number (and as many other values as are necessary to contextualize it) per poster plus a URL identifying your source.
Due: Online each day between 28 August and 9 September. Printed on 9 September.

Log into your account on the course website and create a new post. Give it a title along the lines of “7 Numbers” (it won't be displayed publicly—think of it more as a  filename). Type the word Wednesday into the main body text of the post. Try highlighting it and then selecting 'heading two' from the popup menu that appears.

Next, click on the gear icon in the upper righthand corner of the screen and find the text field labeled  tags. Start typing the text numbers into the field then select the "Nothing but a Number" item from the autocomplete menu—this allows for everyone's work to be seen on a single page.

Now close the sidebar and click the publish link just to the left of the gear icon. This will change the link's text to update and you can click it again to save your changes when you come back and add images of your posters every day this coming week. For now, try uploading a random image as a placeholder below where you typed “Wednesday” before. Once you've created your first poster you can swap it in for the placeholder image.

For each day, add a bit more content to your post with the following elements:

  1. The name of the day of the week
  2. A jpeg or png of your poster design (ideally try to scale it to 1,000–2,000 pixels wide)
  3. A line of text describing the data source where you found your number and a hyperlink pointing to it (type the description first, then highlight it and click the Link icon to add the URL).
Consult the Ghost Editor Overview for an explanation of how to include images, format your text, and include links.

Rebecca Lamm

Wednesday

A Podcast to Remember (How Memory Works) from Stuff You Should Know discussing how memory works and the capacity of the human brain to store the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes of digital memory. A closer look at the science behind memory, and how modern technology may be changing it.

Friday

Again sourcing from a podcast episode, The Unknown Brain from The TED Radio Hour. Although the human brain weighs only 2 percent of the body, it alone uses 25 percent or 1/4 of all the energy that your body requires to run per day.

Sunday

Another segment in the podcast episode, The Unknown Brain, from The TED Radio Hour. This speaker explores how cooking is the explainable reason for our unique brains and their ability to add more neurons. In comparison with a gorilla's 9 billion neurons in the cerebral cortex, humans have 16 billion.  

Tuesday

This podcast with Dr. Mayank Mehta on Brain Matters, examined how rodents and humans perceive space and time. Tests showed that when rats were placed in a Virtual Reality environment, that nearly 60% of the neurons in the Hippocampus shut down versus normal.

Thursday

A Brain Inspired, podcast episode discussing how sound waves get transformed into concepts in our minds. Gamma brain waves are <30 herz, and involved in heightened learning tasks while theta brain waves range from 3-8 herz and can be linked to a sleepy and tired state of being.

Saturday

Another segment in the podcast episode, The Unknown Brain, from The TED Radio Hour discussing how an elephant brain on average weighs 12 pounds, which is  four times the size of an average human brain weighing 3 pounds.

Sunday

For the final Nothing but a Number Series, I choose to depict the number of hours I have listened to podcasts (441 hours) which was my method of data collection during the two weeks. Translated into days this is equivalent to 18 full days.

version 2

Lila Meyer

Wednesday

Take-rate study of Uber and Lyft drivers, found on FiveThirtyEight's "Significant Digits For Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2019." Original study conducted by Jalopnik.

Thursday

35 Years of American Death, also from FiveThirtyEight. My number is the county with the highest mortality rate, Union County Florida compared with the lowest #.

Friday

From YouGov.com, a [crazy!] study that found 29% of Midwesterners would "connect more to a politician eating something unhealthy, compared with something healthy (13%)."

Monday

From the New York Times online, the final scores at the US Open between Naomi Osaka and Belinda Bencic. The score was 6-4 (for one of the two matches).

Tuesday

A study from YouGov.com that "Millennials are the loneliest generation." I focused on the number of those who said they had "zero" friends - 22% of total surveyed.

Wednesday

From FiveThirtyEight, "Our Guide To The Exuberant Nonsense Of College Fight Songs." I focused on how many said the word "Rah" (18) out of the total songs analyzed (44).

Thursday

From BBC News, "Brexit: Tory MP defects ahead of crucial no-deal vote." The final vote was 319-320, with the conservatives losing one vote.

Avishi jain

Wednesday

An article about tricks to use in order to increase the battery life of iPhones. My number is 10.               Low Power? How to extend your iPhone's battery life

10

Friday

Debating the myth surrounding eating post 6pm and analyzing the health-related impacts.                                                                                                                                          Is That ‘Don’t Eat After 6 P.M.’ Rule Legit or Nah?

Sunday

A study by The World Health Organization on the average availability of drinking water and sanitation in the world.                                                                                            

Tuesday

A study from FiveThiryEight on gender pay gap. My number is 82%.                                                                   The Pay Gap Is Way Too Entrenched To Be Solved By Women Alone

Thursday

An nbc news source that highlights the dire state of student debt among college students in America. My number is 1.5 trillion which is the total amount of money owed.  These five charts show how bad the student loan debt situation is.              

Saturday

An article from FiveThirtyEight that shows which Democratic Presidential Candidate's name was mentioned most in the news over the last week.

Monday

A study by The New York Times that discovered that Diet Soda or artificially-sweetened beverages are 26% more likely to cause people to die prematurely than any other beverage. Death by Diet Soda?

Daniel Salomon

Wednesday

A recent report from Hitwise states that in the US mobile search is roughly 58 percent of all search query volume.

https://searchengineland.com

Friday

World internet usage by June 2019

https://www.internetworldstats.com

Sunday

Most-watched sport events in the history of television.

Tuesday

eSports had over $492 million in revenue in 2016. It topped $696 million in 2017. And it is expected to increase over 32% by 2020 with an estimated revenue of $1.48 billion in the U.S. alone.

https://muchneeded.com/esports-statistics/

Thursday

Countries with wide economic gaps between rich and poor are four times more likely to experience violent crimes than other countries.

https://www.worldatlas.com

Saturday

The New York subway is the world’s longest rapid transit system and also the largest in terms of the number of stations. An average of 5.65 million riders use the system on a daily basis.

https://www.worldatlas.com

Monday

On average in the US, direct indoor water use adds up to about 138 gallons per household per day, or 60 gallons per person per day.

https://www.watercalculator.org

Anna Maguire

Wednesday

Of the many important reasons to worry about the thousands of fires raging in the world’s largest rainforest, oxygen supply is not one of them.

Thursday

AAA conducted a separate survey on red light running and found that about one-third of drivers who responded admitted to having sped through a red light in the past month, despite the majority of respondents saying red light running represents a serious safety concern

Friday

Last year, violent crime against abortion clinics hit a record-high, according to the National Abortion Federation, a Washington D.C.-based abortion rights group. Providers reported 1,369 violent acts against their clinics in 2018, up from 1,081 in 2017

Tuesday

Trump's visit to Trump National marked the 289th day he has spent at a Trump property and the 227th day he has spent at one of his golf clubs as President

Wednesday

The entire island, 60 percent of the entire island is underwater.

Thursday

the pinyon jay, whose population has plummeted 85 percent since 1970.

Sunday

April found that 91% of farmers and farmworkers said financial issues are affecting their mental health. About 87% of those surveyed said they fear losing their farms.

Lila Meyer

I'm focusing on my poster from last Wednesday, from a FiveThirtyEight article titled "Our Guide To The Exuberant Nonsense Of College Fight Songs." The number is not significant, which is what I like about it; it's a chance to explain a concept something no one ever really thinks about, but is ultimately interesting information. I'm going to focus on the number 44, the number of songs (out of 65) that use the cliché "Fight."

Size

Value

Texture

Shape

Hue

Orientation

Position

Rebecca Lamm

I choose to continue pursuing my subject matter of the human brain however instead of selecting a number from my original poster series, I was more intrigued by the amount of neurons in the brain, 86 billion. Although, initially intimidating I was intrigued by the largely incomprehensible quantity, and how I could implement the retinal variables to express this number.  

position

size

hue

lightness

orientation

texture

shape

Sejin Park

Size
Lightness
Position
Orientation
Hue
Texture
Shape

Anna Maguire

This week I focused on Trumps days in office spent golfing. During his time in office (980 days) he has spent 227 days golfing. This number has significantly increased in the past year, where he has spent a total of 110 days golfing.

Color

Orientation

Scale

Hue

Shape

Texture

Position