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🏖️ This is our last newsletter of the year. We'll be back in early January with a revamped newsletter and 3 new data storytelling workshops in Cape Town and Johannesburg (use the code ONL12 for a discount).
This week we passed the 650 chart mark on Our World In Charts. More than 200 of those charts were produced this year. So we did a quick poll in the office to see which everyone's favourite chart of the year was. You can see our picks below. We also put together a list of the most popular charts we produced this year. You can find that list here.
I hope you have a relaxing and restorative end of year and get to spend time with friends and family.
Happy holidays and see you in the new year
Alastair
alastair@theoutlier.co.za
🎁 Faulty (water) towers
If you live in Joburg, like we do, you’re probably frustrated by the water supply and struggling to make sense of official messages about what’s being throttled, what’s critically low and whether it will affect you. We’ve built a tool to help you find out which water towers and reservoirs you should be watching. This is a work in progress, so please let me know if you have any ideas, suggestions etc
🎁 Family favourites
We asked each member of The Outlier team to pick their favourite chart from the past year, which is a bit like asking a parent to choose their favourite child. But the selection below is a good reflection of the range of data storytelling work we’ve done this year, and we hope it resonates with you too.
Alastair Otter
I like the African inflows balloon chart because it is visually appealing and different to a lot of what we normally do. At the same time, it speaks to the underlying idea of the massive increase in remittances to African countries. It’s hard not to see the ‘ballooning’ even before reading the text.
I had a hand in creating many of the charts, so I’m probably biased and need to choose more than one. My second would be Media 24’s ink hole, for most of the same reasons as above.
Laura Grant
I like simple charts that show a clear insight. This is one reveals a lot about the housing crisis. There were 3-million people on the housing needs register in 2024, but the government took 30 years to build 3.5-million houses and the number of 'breaking new ground' houses built has been dropping for more than a decade.
Gemma Gatticchi
I like the way the Africa's cradle of speed chart shows how geography, culture and determination merge in the Rift Valley to produce the world’s fastest female runners. The clustering of red dots on one area is really remarkable. It was fascinating to learn how that region’s high altitude, traditional diets and cultural practices help shape extraordinary athletic talent.
Gemma Ritchie
The Cape shipping surge chart is my favourite as it shows how data can add context to a story – in this case how shipping routes were affected by attacks on the Red Sea, forcing many cargo ships to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope.
Ro Manoim
I like colours and I like using them to put different pieces of data together. The Minibus taxis rule the road chart shows quite a lot of information – how many people use each mode of transport; how much most people spend on transport each month; as well as the wide range spent by users of different modes of transport in Gauteng.
Anne Taylor
I spent a lot of time thinking about the CEOs’ salaries chart after it was published – probably because it’s a deceptively simple but accurate representation of our complex country. The single horizontal scale with the high-low juxtapositioning of salaries makes a point in a way rows of numbers never would. That a CEO could earn 1,308 times more than their lowest-paid worker left my jaw on the floor – and forced me into some valuable conversations about equity, equality and accountability.
Anne’s real favourite: Sneaking this one in because putting together the newsletter on homeground advantage ahead of the All Blacks tour to South Africa in September was loads of fun. Ro, who has her master's in data science, had just started at The Outlier. She was assigned the task of crunching the data while I wrote the words. Starting off, she asked me: ‘So is the team that gets the most points the one that wins?’ Clearly, being a data scientist doesn’t guarantee you know anything about sport! But we got over the line with a great newsletter, helped by Alastair adding his special brand of finesse to the charts. Best bit? The Springboks went on to clobber the visitors, pushing their home win rate to within much more acceptable margins.
👀 Can you guess what the most-viewed charts on The Outlier were in 2024? View the Top 15 on our website
🔭 2024 wrapped
I mentioned last week that 2024 has been a pretty busy year for us.
This year we ran our in-person Data Storytelling workshop more than a dozen times with 134 people, we launched the first African Data Journalism Academy, taught JournalismAI students at the London School of Economics's Polis think-tank, published more than 200 charts and sent out 38 issues of this newsletter.
For a longer list of our work this year check out The Outlier's 2024 wrapped.
🎤 Have your say
We don't have a poll this week, but last week you said ...
🤞 Digital Savvy: Dataviz tip-offs
Still searching
Google has released its Year in Search, which breaks down by region. For South Africans, top trending searches included the IEC, Tyla, Dricus du Plessis, Afcon, Inside Out and the word ‘demure’.
From the ashes
After the 2019 fire and an intensive five-year rebuilding effort, the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris reopened to the public last week. An NYT special feature.
Going bananas
The latest CPI data is in and we’ve updated our Consumer Price dashboard. Something nuts is happening to the price of bananas and coffee. But Trading Economics says perhaps it's not as bad as it looks.
Cleaning up
We’ve got a new video on using Excel to efficiently prepare and clean data. And if you’re wrangling a messy dataset, don’t miss the three-part OpenRefine series on our YouTube channel.
Ranked
Bloomberg’s Best (and Worst) rankings showcase data on topics as diverse as countries with the highest numbers of militias to the best-selling artists.
Keeping score
The 2023 TIMMS report is out, the benchmarking education study conducted in 64 countries. South Africa’s Grade 5 learners performed poorly, ranking last in both subjects. Grade 9s did a little better. Data is here
Support journalism that makes a difference
Trust in traditional journalism has plummeted. Meanwhile, the digital age has made it easier than ever to access information—and harder than ever to know what’s true.
That's the challenge we're focused on at The Outlier. We hope to help create a world where people can turn to trusted, data-driven insights to understand the key issues shaping their lives. You know what's important to you. We aim to help you make the decisions that are important, based on data and facts.
Doing this work is costly and takes time. You can support our work through a regular contribution on our Patreon page. Your contribution helps us to continue to collect, analyse and share the data that affects us all.
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