A Data Visualization Newsletter

The nominations for the 92nd Academy Awards were revealed last week, which featured a startling lack of diversity across the major categories. A particularly glaring example was Greta Gerwig’s snub in the best director category for Little Women, which still received a nod for Best Picture. This graphic from FlowingData gives us a sense of just how dominant white men have been in the best director category, stretching back to 1928.

This October, Mars and Earth’s orbits will draw them closest to each other since July 2018. During this window, space programs across the globe will be gearing up to send their own probes to explore the red planet. China is one of the major players to watch, as a successful landing would help close the gap between its space agency and NASA. Their only attempt to land on Mars came back in 2012, and it failed.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service recently announced that 2019 was the second-hottest year in recorded history, just one-tenth of a degree Farenheit behind 2016. Indeed, average temperatures were higher than normal in about 83% of cities worldwide according to data compiled by AccuWeather. See whether your city was one of them using this interactive tool from The New York Times.

As the Senate prepares to decide the fate of the Trump presidency, Sergio Peçanha asks a pressing question: is the American population adequately represented in the Senate, with just two Senators per state? Better yet: are cows more fairly represented than people? With some back-of-the-envelope math, Sergio finds that, indeed, they are. Was this the Founding Fathers’ plan all along?