iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Evan Peck @peck.phd · 19/08/2026

The chart gods continue to bless my course with new examples of vis-rhetoric just before I talk about it in class.

line chart showing increase in federal deb across presidents. Noticeably, presidents with 2 consecutive administrations are penalized by having longer lines. This particularly impacts recent comparisons of Obama and Bush to Trump.

Evan Peck @peck.phd · 19/08/2026

Things you should know: Many schools have deadlines in September & October, months before R1s. The graph below, created by Phil Chodrow, shows when schools listed their ads on our board + their app deadline cs-pui.github.io/faq.html#whe...

gantt-like chart showing when schools list positions on cs-pui - most deadlines are in October

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 04/04/2026

WTF does this mean, past-Evan?

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 24/03/2026

Since I'm using Ziptable to share data in my own class, I made a small change a couple of days ago to make my instructor flow better You can now filter columns to reduce dataset size, share shorter links, or choose targeted exports (e.g. to Datawrapper) Orig 🧵 on Ziptable: bsky.app/profile/peck...

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 22/03/2026

That calibration seems to be pretty messy...

A screenshot of a Reddit thread from the subreddit r/cscareerquestions titled "Meta planning sweeping layoffs, 20% of company."
The thread features a discussion about developer burnout and AI. One user, termd, comments that productivity gains attributed to AI are actually the result of developers working longer hours to avoid being fired. Another user, Cptcongcong, who claims to work at Meta, agrees, stating they worked from 8 am to 1 am the previous week. Other users chime in, sharing similar experiences at their own companies, with one concluding, "Sad times to be a software engineer." At the bottom of the screen, there is a promoted advertisement from OpenAI for Codex.

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 22/03/2026

A quick update to ziptbl.com: you can now open shared data directly in @datawrapper.de! The video shows the full flow: load data into Ziptable > share the link > create a 📊 in Datawrapper As always: the data stays off any servers until you send it to Datawrapper - it's just compressed in the url

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 19/03/2026

Holy smokes - thanks for all the ZipTable love! A small update: - 🗺️ GeoJSONs! Share geo data and open it directly in geojson.io (vid) - Better sharing guidance based on link length (email vs. Slack vs. SMS) - Faster! Only 65 KBs on 1st load now. Repeat visits are ~3.5 KB. That's dial-up modem fast 😂

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 18/03/2026

I made a tiny tool for quickly sharing small datasets (< ~1000 rows) without uploading any data to a server. 🔗 ziptbl.com It compresses the data into the link itself, so there’s no account, hosting, or storage layer involved. Here's Florence Nightingale's famous 📊 data: ziptbl.com#d=eNpdlE-LGz...

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 17/02/2026

Olympic medals are a good place to play with the Emojicon Creator I made last year: emojicon-creator.netlify.app 20 USA medals: 6 x 🥇, 9 x 🥈, 5 x 🥉: 🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥈🥈🥈🥈 🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈🥉🥉🥉🥉🥉 or 🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇 🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈 🥉🥉🥉🥉🥉

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 16/02/2026

I'm all for creating engaging visuals to capture attention, but I have mixed feelings about interactives that seem to use the visual language of charts to imply more data than is represented. I don't get much from the interaction, but maybe more people will read? 🔗 www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 16/02/2026

An interesting 📊 choice from ESPN's Olympic medal coverage. By giving each country its own axis-range, the bar for USA's 8 silver medals is the same height as Norway's 12 gold. If you're trying to compare countries at a glance, USA's bars are all bit taller than they should be.

Bar graphs of how many gold, silver, and bronze medals that Norway, Italy, and USA have. Each country has its own range, so the bar for USA's 8 silver medals is just as high as Norway's 12 gold medals

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 16/02/2026

Two snowpack maps, similar data, very different vibes. In my vis courses, I always talk to my students about how color associations can manipulate the story of a visualization. This is a great, recent (and local!) example.

Snow pack map of colorado. showing regional "percent of average". Colors range from light blue to dark blue, while percentages are in the 40s and 60s (low snowpack!)

Snow pack map of colorado. showing regional "percent of average". Colors range from red to orange to yellow, while percentages are still in the 40s and 60s (low snowpack!)

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 20/01/2026

(the game is currently 24-21 with 6 minutes left, and Toney has 115 yards)

Screenshot of AI search results: "Miami loses CFP title game to Indiana; Toney held to 13 yards
Miami fell to undefeated Indiana 10-7 in the national championship, with Toney limited to just five touches and 13 yards in the low-scoring affair."

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 03/12/2025

These are the kinds of example I love discussing with students. What does a city with 19.5%🔴 the workforce look like vs. a city with 20.1%⚫ of the workforce? 🤔 (I feel like I'm picking on the Economist a lot, but their charts consistently get promoted to me + glitch my brain)

Image of a bubble map on the Economist of "How remote work is changing American cities". Bubbles on cities have a color map that goes from light-red to dark-red to represent % of workforce working remotely in 2024... except for the highest category of color changes to black

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 29/11/2025

Not the first time that Anthropic has used truncated bar graph axes to visually exaggerate their performance vs competitors. 🔗 x.com/claudeai/sta...

Tweet from Claude: "Opus 4.5 is available today on our API and on all three major could platforms" Shows a bar graph of software engineering accuracy with a truncated axis, which exaggerates their gains

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 14/11/2025

My life can be summed up as "same logo, different colors" 🦬 I grew up in upstate NY (giant Bills fan) 🦬 I was a CS prof at Bucknell for almost 10 years 🦬 I am now an Info Sci prof at CU Boulder

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 11/11/2025

I'm not proud to tell you that I clicked this Wirecutter article fully believing it was about the 📊 Best Bar Charts.

Screen-shot of wirecutter page with a big titel that says "The Best Bar Carts"

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 04/11/2025

Can someone tell me what is going on with @economist.com's graphic department? This title also has nothing to do with the plotted data. Are they using charts as clickbait for the article?

Line graph titled: The world has become surprisingly less grumpy.

But the graph shows "People who report experiencing emotion yesterday" and shows increases in worry, sadness, pain, anger, and decreases in rested, laughter, enjoyment

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 28/10/2025

This graph that the @economist.com is boosting on Facebook is irresponsible. Titles create powerful frames in the way people interpret data (see: Kong et al 2019, www.hidykong.com/papers/Kong-...). This one tells a story that doesn't exist in the charted data.

Graph with title: Older people are addicted to their digital gadgets. But the graph itself only has data about device ownership %

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 19/10/2025

My town needs an intervention. What if I told you all these charts came from just the first 5 pages of our monthly sales tax update? 😱 🔗 www.erieco.gov/ArchiveCente...

a horrible stacked bar graph which ran out of horizontal room and then started wrapping onto itself

2 3D pie charts to communicate non-vehicle sales tax

A stacked bar that for some reason uses a dark background (different from all the other graphs)

2 line graphs - both have 9 different lines with different colors, but represent year information... very hard to interpret

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 17/10/2025

The answer: So many that I stopped counting and did some math. So if you guessed ~180, I both want to congratulate you and ask what kind of vis trauma you have experienced in the past.

Picture of the legend of the previous chart. It is nearly 2 pages of a pdf, with 180+ colors

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 17/10/2025

Guess how many colors are in the legend for this budget chart from my town. (see replies for answer)

Stacked bar graph showing historical expenditures by object - 4 stacked bars from 2023 to 2026

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 17/10/2025

All kinds of color associations going on in this choropleth. I think of red as either a high value (vis associations) or incredibly colorful leaves (tree associations). Here, it means "still nice, but declining" leaf colors 🤔 (I still kind of love the fall colors style 🍁)

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 11/08/2025

Listen, everyone's mad that ChatGPT 5 can't capture the full nuance of their discipline. But what about its potential to rapidly develop compelling, engaging visuals for education? It took me only a single prompt to create this emoji-based multiplication table for my child.

It looks like a multiplication table (with rows and columns 1 through 10), but there are many many errors. For example, the columns go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10. The final 10 only has single emojis as answers. Another example is that there are many cells which don't align with the row/column (33 x 45 or 100 x 80). Each cell also tends to have 1-4 emoji, regardless of the multiplication.

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 06/08/2025

I learned about Bill Collins today, CU's 1st black football captain. This image captures Bill at the 1969 Liberty Bowl coin-toss, standing in front of an all-white, never-integrated Alabama team that brought 40 players to stand opposite him. ▶️ youtu.be/RBNX8L5RTIA?... 🔗 cubuffs.com/news/2025/8/...

Photo from the coin toss at the 1969 Liberty Bowl. Bill Collins, left, can be seen standing alone in front of an entire row of white Alabama football players

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 30/07/2025

This wild AI example just happened to me + a colleague trying to decide on "wellbeing" or "well-being" for public material. Depending on query framing, Google gives inverse recommendations for US audiences! Almost as if its inferring my preference from order and trying to make me happy 🤔

Left, screen shot of google search results for "well-being vs. wellbeing". Right, screen shot of google search results for "wellbeing vs. well-being" - reversing the hyphenation. When hyphenated "well-being" was first in the query, it said that was the "traditional and preferred spelling in North American English". When non-hyphenated "wellbeing" was first, it said "this was the more common and preferred spelling in many parts of the world, including the United States, Canada, and Australia"

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 08/05/2025

Dug up the paper (left) the WPost vis (right) is based on to see how they presented the same data. It's fascinating to me how subtle color differences can shape the spatial patterns we see. (I can't quite figure out why more of Houston seems to be rising in the paper than the WPost article 🤔)

screenshot from academic paper vis showing sinking areas of Houston. Seems to suggest most of Houston is sinking, but shows more areas rising than WPost vis (next image)

screenshot from WPost vis showing sinking areas of Houston. Seems to suggest nearly all of Houston is sinking.

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 04/02/2025

We often share W.E.B. Du Bois's more colorful work, but his annotations in charts like this ensured that positive-trending data did not mask America's social reality. Give me more Du Bois designers right now.

line graph called "Valuation of town and city property owned by Georgia Negroes". While the line increases, it is annotated with things like "Ku-Kluxism, Lynching, and Political Unrest"

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 31/12/2024

Follow-up example that broke my brain for a second this morning: www.weather.gov/bou/winter All that white? It actually represents a *low* probability of > 0.1" of snow. Totally normal to use white as the low end of a scale.. but here, it just looks like the map is covered in snow

Map showing the probability of 0.1" of snow across Colorado. 0% is white, 100% is dark blue. Most of the map is colored in white-ish colors.

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 30/12/2024

😀 Emojicon Creator 🔢 Icon arrays are a great way to see some kinds of data - often used in health, and broadly used to communicate probability. But I get annoyed trying to prototype them, so I made a tiny tool to quickly make + share emoji-based icon arrays. 👉 emojicon-creator.netlify.app

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 29/12/2024

My daughter wanted a label maker for Christmas. This is our house now.

Photo of a mug with a label on it reading "daddy mug"

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 29/12/2024

Facebook ads know I like effective data communication 📊 No notes.

Bar graph with truncated y-axis with celebrity heights. The truncation makes celebs like Taylor Swift look like giants compared to Ariana Grande

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 23/12/2024

I've done nothing wrong if my kids grow up believing that this is Charles Dickens

Portrait picture of gonzo from the Muppet Christmas Carol

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 22/12/2024

This is a good example where the "feel" of data can really vary by a simple chart change - from pie chart to bar graph. While the 🥧 pie chart looks like 3 roughly-equal groups of people, the "didn't vote" group jumps out in a 📊 bar graph Same data plotted below: barvpie.netlify.app?numbers=31.5...

A screenshot with two graphs side-by-side. Left: a bar graph with the values 31.5, 30.6, and 37.7. Right: a pie chart with the same values.

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 20/12/2024

📊 An old NOAA map of ❄️ probabilities is flying around socials that shows wonky color design Old 🗺️ (left): It takes work to understand because the color lightness doesn't increase consistently with values (48% is light-blue, 52% dark-purple 😬) New 🗺️ (right): lightness increases as values increase 👍

map coloring probabilities of snow. This map goes from dark blue to light blue, and then dark purple to light purple... all within 0 to 100%, which isn't great

map coloring probabilities of snow. This map goes from dark blue to light blue/white - a more consistent shift in lightness

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 20/12/2024

I suspect it depends what we mean by reliable. While those heuristics broadly hold, there is a lot of individual variability, even in basic graphs. I like this example showing how graph rankings vary between people (@mjskay.com + @laneh.bsky.social research paper) arxiv.org/pdf/2212.10533

image showing how rankings of charts varies between people - "Individual rankings of visual effectiveness". "While the canonical bar < pie < stacked bar < bubble ranking is the most likely for any individual to have, our model estimate that only 20-25% of people will have that canonical ranking... and only about 75-80% of people will have bar as the best visualization"

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 18/12/2024

In a July article from the @nytimes.com also on home insurances, that same dotted pattern is labelled as "Low or No Data" in the legend (vs. "State rate shown" today). While I understand the shift in clarity, I really miss fronting that data integrity info vs. burying in a footnote.

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 18/12/2024

Interesting 📊 design choice by @nytimes.com: Vis designers often use a color like gray for regions with little-to-no data. But "in counties with few policies reported", @nytimes.com used the state avg + a dotted texture Imagine how different this would look + feel if those sections were gray! 🤔

Zoomed in version of choropleth shown in nytimes article. I highlighted the visual encoding for "State rate show" and pointed to areas on the map that are colored with that visual encoding

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 12/12/2024

Android just released a promo for their new AR platform. One thing I'm thinking about: Isn't it interesting how often our visions of future tech imagine info-rich dashboards like this? Similar 2D versions already exist - how many people do you know who use them? ▶️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn5u...

image from Android's promo video. It shows an AR scene about baseball with several screens and data overlays at once

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 04/12/2024

While the main point of this thread is to encourage color to draw attention + focus, check out this other little design decision! The y-axis labels are only where they need to be (no square box, no vertical y-axis label). This frees up space for the title, subtitle, or commentary.

Same graph as before, with red circles around y-axis labels that are next to the data instead of aligned on the left-hand side

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 04/12/2024

All those little decisions create a *visual hierarchy*. By playing with visual features (color, line thickness, etc.), we can control the order people focus on data. This comes up a lot in UX/UI classes. Start with the main story (Manning!) 👇 then current QBs 👇 then historic QBs 👇 then all others

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 04/12/2024

But the focus of the article, Peyton Manning, gets his own styling. Bolder text + thicker line. Those combine to draw your attention *first*. Everything else is context for Peyton Manning. We tend to teach vis in isolation (me too!), but they are often designed to resonate with surrounding text.

Same graph as before, this time the bolded, blue Peyton line is annotated with "But Peyton Manning - the focus of the story - is given the boldest text + thickest line of blue"

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 04/12/2024

Current, active players are given their own color 🔵. It seems like an obvious decision when you see it, but because we tend to emphasize color as primarily (or only!) a data encoding, I rarely see design choices like this from students. (yes... "active player" is data, but you know what I mean)

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 04/12/2024

Well-known, historic players are given a darker gray + labels. You probably noticed those *before* the lighter gray because it draws your attention 👀 more.

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 04/12/2024

Most students would make every line in this chart the same color OR filter to only a handful of players. But here, we use color to keep both data density + maintain clarity! How? *Most* players from the past have faded gray lines w. no labels. They still provide context, but only if you focus!

The same graph from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/19/upshot/peyton-manning-breaks-touchdown-passing-record.html

This time, the gray, faded lines are annotated with "Most QBs are deemphasized by making ti light gray + no labels"

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 04/12/2024

Part 3 because I love this stuff: A 🧵 on a topic I find many students struggle with: "why do their 📊 look more professional than my 📊?" Color is used for focus! Check out this @upshot.nytimes.com 2014 🏈 graph about QB Peyton Manning's scoring record + pace 🔗 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Top graph from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/19/upshot/peyton-manning-breaks-touchdown-passing-record.html . Shows rising lines, each representing a different NFL QB's touchdowns over time. The focus is Peyton Manning, a thicker blue line.

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 01/12/2024

❄️ I wanted a different view of how state-wide snowpack in Colorado is progressing compared to previous years. Plugging into NRCS data (updated daily!), I created an interactive chart that compares this year vs. the median + each season since 2013-14. 📈 www.datawrapper.de/_/WPaJE/?v=5

Small multiple line chart showing how snowpack in CO compares to recent years.

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Evan Peck @peck.phd · 30/11/2024

Since PhD apps are due *tomorrow*, a weather-inspired nudge. Growing up in the northeast USA. I used to believe that Colorado winters were a snowier version of us. Nah. Sure, we get a big ❄️ storm here and there... but mostly, we get embarrassing amounts of sun + mild stretches all winter long 😎

Screenshot of upcoming forecast in Denver. Nearly every day for the next 2 weeks is sunny with highs between the 40s and 60s.

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