A Data Visualization Newsletter

The 2019 NBA draft took place last Thursday night, and fans are already buzzing about a rookie class that includes players like Zion Williamson and Ja Morant. While it’s too early to tell who won this year’s draft, we wanted to dig into the data to see which team has historically had the most draft success. Using our own methodology, we found that the New Orleans Pelicans, who already had plenty to celebrate on Thursday, have actually been the best drafting organization since 2000.

After hearing arguments in April, the Supreme Court will soon deliver its ruling on the census citizenship question. Its decision has major ramifications; should the Court side with the Trump administration and allow the 2020 census to ask respondents about their citizenship, it may deter immigrants and their families from answering the census. Researchers forecast that this may lead states with large Latino populations to lose representation in the House.

Zoning for detached single-family homes has been integral to city planning in the U.S. since the 1920s, when the Supreme Court deemed first zoning constitutional. But that might soon change, as some lawmakers in California, Oregon, and Minnesota are seeking to end single-family zoning for good. Allowing for denser development would likely reduce auto emissions and make high-cost cities more affordable, but it doesn’t come without its challenges.

Since its founding in 2005, Reddit has grown into a hub of Internet discussion, now with over 130,000 smaller communities or “subreddits”. Researchers at the University of Toronto have taken the liberty of mapping these subreddits in three-dimensional space, so that subreddits that share lots of users are closer together. The resulting map gives you not only a good sense of the Reddit ecosystem, but also a general understanding of how human interests intersect and relate to each other.

An update from the U.N. last week confirmed that more people are being displaced worldwide than ever before. Much of the rise can be attributed to crises in Syria and Venezuela, which account for roughly 17 million total refugees combined. This record displacement comes at a time when the Trump Administration has decided to cap refugee admissions to 30,000 per year in America, the lowest number since the U.S. program was created.