Chart of the Day: Minnesota Population via Sankey

• March 21, 2018

Here’s a beautiful chart for you, from a Reddit thread I once happened across. It’s a “Sankey diagram” showing the population of the state broken up by type of city / region / type of urban or rural environment.

Check it out:

It’s both beautiful and informative! Thanks to Reddit user aphid43 for making it.

If you’re curious about more of the work behind the chart, check out the Reddit discussion.

By the way, the most famous Sankey diagram is probably the one showing Napoleon invading Russia by French data viz pioneer Charles Josef Minard.

What do both diagrams have in common? That’s right: harsh winters, though hopefully Minnesota’s population does better than Napoleon’s army.

Bill Lindeke

About Bill Lindeke

Pronouns: he/him

Bill Lindeke has writing blogging about sidewalks and cities since 2005, ever since he read Jane Jacobs. He is a lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Minnesota Geography Department, the Cityscape columnist at Minnpost, and has written multiple books on local urban history. He was born in Minneapolis, but has spent most of his time in St Paul. Check out Twitter @BillLindeke or on Facebook.