36-613 · weekly close reads
Three to five real graphics each week, with credit, access notes, and one question worth carrying into class.
Week 4 · September 14–18, 2026
An animated comparison moves from Americans’ ideal and expected wealth distributions to the much more unequal observed distribution.
Look for: How do familiar money stacks, narration, and a staged reveal make an extreme distribution legible without flattening its scale?
Original → · Free to watch · Found via FlowingData
A searchable dashboard brings a decade of enrollment, revenue, staffing, accreditation, and research-funding signals together for 1,890 four-year colleges.
Look for: Which measures genuinely indicate financial stress, and how well does the interface distinguish a warning signal from a conclusion?
Original → · Free to use · Found via The Guardian
Searchable time series pair changing interest in subjects across more than 100 million student artworks with examples of the drawings themselves.
Look for: What does the relative-interest line measure, and how do the selected drawings strengthen or bias the quantitative pattern?
Original → · Free to explore · Found via FlowingData
A synchronized timeline replays television, radio, and air-traffic-control records from September 11 as a primary-source archive.
Look for: How does synchronizing several media streams change the reader’s sense of sequence, simultaneity, and uncertainty?
Original → · Free to explore; contains distressing historical footage · Found via FlowingData
Earlier weeks
Maps, diagrams, and a few carefully chosen quantities make a distant naval supply chain concrete.
Look for: How does the sequence move from geographic scale to operational constraint, and where would uncertainty belong?
Original → · Subscription may be required · Found via FlowingData
Side-by-side projections show how a familiar world map can distort the apparent size of Africa.
Look for: What argument does the direct comparison make, and which map-reading goal does each projection serve?
Original → · Free to read · Found via FlowingData
Maps and ranked bars test how El Niño looks when the warming background climate becomes part of the baseline.
Look for: How does changing the reference measure alter the ranking—and the story a reader takes away?
Original → · Free to read · Found via FlowingData
Small charts separate average, daytime, and nighttime heat to explain why this summer’s record is unusual.
Look for: Which baseline and temperature measure drive each comparison, and are those choices visible enough?
Original → · Subscription may be required · Found via FlowingData
Updated .