2026-06-02 15:52:22
Japan has been aging and having fewer children, which led to a decline of 3.1 million in population over the past five years. For the New York Times, Javier C. Hernández, Pablo Robles, and Kiuko Notoya have the charts and maps to show the drops.
This is a nice step chart. The red-orange hatching emphasizes the negative range, or a net population loss over time. The increase-decrease annotation on each side of the x-axis reinforces the meaning of the values.
Tags: Japan, New York Times, population
2026-06-01 17:52:48
Erin Davis calculated the average age of people with a given name to find the oldest name in the United States:
In short, the U.S. government produces estimates of the share of people born in year X who will still be alive in year Y. It also produces data on how many babies with a given name are born in each year.
By combining these two datasets, we can estimate how many babies with a specific name born in year X are still alive in 2025. Then, we can use those numbers to find a weighted average age for that name. (One big flaw this doesn’t account for immigration, but I haven’t found a way around that)
Myrtle wins for oldest average age. Davis provides an interactive version to search for your name.
Tags: age, Erin Davis, names
2026-06-01 17:39:22
The U.S. Census Bureau released a names dataset for first names and surnames.
The Census Bureau receives numerous requests to supply information on name frequency. In an effort to comply with those requests, the Census Bureau has embarked on a names list project involving a tabulation of names from the Census of Population and Housing.
These files contain only the frequency of a given name, no specific individual information.
You can currently download data for names that occurred at least 100 times in the 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020 censuses.
I wonder how well these match with the annual baby names dataset from the Social Security Administration.
Tags: Census Bureau, names
2026-05-29 17:55:12
U.S. voters have historically stuck with two political parties, but that’s changing in some states. USAFacts shows the shifts through voter registrations.
Colorado shows the first pattern most clearly. In 2016, the two major parties were nearly tied at around 30% of registered voters each, with unaffiliated voters already slightly ahead at 38%. By early 2026, more than half of Colorado’s registered voters belonged to neither major party.
This is a nice combination of ternary plots and connected scatterplots, with a bit of animation for good measure. [Thanks, Amber]
Tags: multiparty, USAFacts, voting
2026-05-29 05:32:14
Stuart A. Thompson, a New York Times technology journalist, used Google’s Gemini chatbot to avoid a realtor fee and sell his house almost completely from start to finish.
I had started this experiment thinking that the chatbot would create a superpowered version of myself — combining my own judgment with its vast knowledge. But once I started relying on A.I., witnessing its know-it-all competency with basically everything, my shortcomings started to feel enormous and even risky. I had thought I was elevating my own skills. In reality, I was replacing them.
Thompson prompted for listing price, negotiations, and dealing with the mental hurdles from selling an asset that made most of his family’s net worth.
The house sold above asking price and there were fewer fees, from using Gemini, a general chatbot paid for by an employer. What happens to Realtors in ten years? It’s getting a lot easier to see homeowners and buyers sidestepping high fees and instead using specialized chatbots to negotiate with others using chatbots.
Tags: chatbot, house, New York Times, sales, Stuart A. Thompson
2026-05-28 20:16:18
For the Washington Post, Federica Cocco and Taylor Telford report on the increasing difficulty for recent college graduates to find jobs.
The squeeze is hardest on those just starting out. At one point last summer, new workforce entrants made up a larger share of the unemployed than at any point since the late 1980s — higher even than during the Great Recession.
When hiring slows, the door closes first on those without an existing foothold. For the class of 2026, the timing could hardly be worse.
Fewer entry level jobs, more applications per job, and older people working longer have nudged unemployment for recent graduate above the national average. I think the yellow line for all workers should’ve been a dashed neutral color to draw attention to the comparison.
Tags: unemployment, Washington Post, work
