Analysis of Mona Chalabi's "What Do These US Counties Have in Common"

Mona Chalabi's data visualization does a decent job of explaining the data clearly and the colours are not too overwhelming that they distract from the data, itself. Chalabi's visualization, however, suggests a correlation between Black people, Joe Biden, and COVID-19, but there is no data presented within the visualization that proves that people are dying in high numbers in these counties. Since there is no visible data to show this fact, it seems as though the statement "and people there are dying in high numbers due to COVID-19" is simply there to sway the audience with no real proof/data of that fact. Moreover, each County on the visualization has a little red segment of the County, yet the visualization does not explain what that red segment stands for. As a viewer, I am left with questions. Does the red segment represent the Black population of the County, or does it represent the amount of people who voted for Joe Biden? To help make this visualization less confusing, there should be a legend that explains what the red segments represent. There should also be data that supports the statement that Black people dying at high numbers due to COVID-19 in these Counties. Further, the COVID-19 data should be clearly related to the number of Black people voting for Biden. I do not believe that a bar chart or a line chart would be effective for what Chalabi is trying to demonstrate because bar charts and line charts only show two points of data at a time, and Chalabi seems to be trying to show four or perhaps five if you include the red segments (County, number of Black people, Biden votes, COVID-19 data, and red segments). If this were an interactive visualization, perhaps users could hover over the Counties to see the COVID-19 statistics for that region. If users could hover over this visualization, perhaps the correlation between all the information provided would be clearer.