Makeover Monday: How Many Blacks Did the Police Kill in 2015?

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This week's Makeover Monday was much harder than I anticipated and I must note that it took me way, way over an hour to create something I was happy with (more about that in a bit). The website that we reviewed had a series of three charts about police killings in the United States. I'll focus on the first two:


What works:

• Good title and subtitle
• Bars are sorted properly
• Using a rate is good practice because it normalizes the data
• Using a different color of the U.S. average

What doesn't work:

• I hate charts that make me turn my head sideways to read the labels.
• I would have the U.S. average as a reference line.
• There's no sense for the rest of the population.
• It feels like there's more to the story.

Ok, so how about the second chart:


What works:

• Good title and subtitle
• Ranking the police departments
• Using a rate is good practice because it normalizes the data
• Calling out those that police departments that have only killed blacks

What doesn't work:

• I almost didn't notice the U.S. average (it's above the first police department).
• The column headers should wrap so they fit better.
• Again, it feels like there's more to the story.
• The table makes comparing police departments harder than necessary.

A quick bit of background before we get to my viz. Last week, we brought Caroline Beavon to the Data School to teach an infographics and information visualisation course. I would highly, highly recommend the course. It was a perfect blend of the courses that Andy Kirk and Cole Nussbaumer teach if you've ever been to their classes. We learned a ton about knowing your audience, choosing the aim for your visualisation and picking out the proper story in the data. In addition, we designed several infographics, which is something I was particularly excited to put into practice this week. With that being said, here's is my makeover of the two original charts, but really, it's completely different and delves much deeper into the story the data is trying to tell.

You can download the workbook from Tableau Public here.