In the FiveThirtyEight article titled “Team USA’s Women Are An Olympic Powerhouse” uses two different graphics to get its point across.
It compares two things, shows the differences between the two, and integrates numbers and words. There are scales of measurement used and they are appropriately labeled. The graphic isn’t over cluttered with various fonts and unnecessary colors. Everything is neat, organized, and easy to follow. You’re not “drowning in data” but the message still gets across.
The overall point of the article is to show how women are dominating the summer olympics for the US and bringing home more medals than the men, especially gold. Of the 46 gold medals, 27 of them went to women. The graphics included in the article provide evidence for this trend.
The first graphic compares the number of men’s and women’s olympic events over the last 100 years. The trend line shows how, over time, the number of women’s olympic events are near comparable to men’s.
The second graphic displays how many gold medals men and women have won in the summer olympics since 1900. Women took 19% of the medals in Rio compared to the one’s 12%. The author then uses this graphic to transition to the third graphic about US women winning gold medal’s on a national level.
The third graphic shows how many medals US women have won since 1900 compared to the rest of the world’s female competitors. Since the 1960s they have won 25 or more gold medals.
These graphics further illustrate the point that US women winning gold medals at the olympics is an upward trend.
