Days of the year when Americans are most drunk, visualized(washingtonpost.com)
washingtonpost.com
Days of the year when Americans are most drunk, visualized
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/20/the-days-of-the-year-when-americans-are-most-drunk-visualized/
6 comments
People drinking more in the winter should surprise no one. Bad weather displaces other pastimes, and people simultaneously feel more depressed because of the lack of sunlight.
And a few drinks will keep you warm, or give you the illusion thereof.
The main chart in this article is horribly designed.
Quick: try to find July 4th on the chart. The extra whitespace between each month invites you to scan down the left for July and then go over to the fourth cell, which is incorrect.
The chart starts on Sunday, Nov 3, and since each month is given either 4 or 5 full weeks on the chart, the only easy way to find a particular date on the chart is to start counting day-by-day from Nov 3.
Quick: try to find July 4th on the chart. The extra whitespace between each month invites you to scan down the left for July and then go over to the fourth cell, which is incorrect.
The chart starts on Sunday, Nov 3, and since each month is given either 4 or 5 full weeks on the chart, the only easy way to find a particular date on the chart is to start counting day-by-day from Nov 3.
It's week-based. Which make sense, since saturday and sunday have such a strong correlation with drinking. Seems fine to me.
Most wall calendars are also week based and they make it much easier to find a particular date (even if they didn't number every cell).
They could have left blank cells at the beginning/end of each month or add an indicator between cells to signify the month boundary.
They could have left blank cells at the beginning/end of each month or add an indicator between cells to signify the month boundary.
I found the color palette used in the visualization to be unnecessarily confusing. Dark to light blue, then light to dark earth tones, with the key roughly even with the bottom of the column.