Explaining the world one sketch at a time

Simplifying complex ideas through fun and insightful sketches. Explore topics from science, creativity, psychology, and more explained in pictures.

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Recent sketches

The travelling salesman problem

You have to drop off 2 things after school, get to the shops and back home — which route should you take? You drive an Amazon delivery van and you have 145 parcels to deliver across London — what’s the most efficient route? It’s pretty clear that for situations like the first one, with fewer stops, assuming you know travel distances or travel times, you could figure out the best route by trying out the different combinations until you hit on the shortest. The trouble is as you keep adding extra stops it doesn’t get just a little bit harder — instead the difficulty continues to increase along with the time it will take to find an answer. Figuring out the shortest route to visit all the stops and return back home is known as the travelling salesman problem. It’s a problem formulated over 150 years ago that still has relevance and interest today whether it’s for delivering parcels, stocking shelves or soldering transistors.…You have to drop off 2 things after school, get to the shops and back home — which route should you take? You drive an Amazon delivery van and you have 145 parcels to deliver across London — what’s the most efficient route? It’s pretty clear that for situations like the first one, with fewer stops, assuming you know travel distances or travel times, you could figure out the best route by trying out the different combinations until you hit on the shortest. The trouble is as you keep adding extra stops it doesn’t get just a little bit harder — instead the difficulty continues to increase along with the time it will take to find an answer. Figuring out the shortest route to visit all the stops and return back home is known as the travelling salesman problem. It’s a problem formulated over 150 years ago that still has relevance and interest today whether it’s for delivering parcels, stocking shelves or soldering transistors.

25 Jan 2020

The transparency paradox

The more transparent your workplace the less transparent your employees. In an age of trackers, wearables, online monitoring, workplace chat and always-on devices it turns out that not only does a more transparent workplace actually drive people to more secretive behaviours, but that adding a little more privacy actually may improve productivity also. As Ethan Bernstein says: Very simply, the transparency paradox is the idea that increasingly transparent, open, observable workplaces can create less transparent employees. See Harvard prof Ethan Bernstein’s The Transparency Paradox study (pdf) or I learned about it from the Freakonomics podcast: Yes, the Open Office Is Terrible — But It Doesn’t Have to Be.…The more transparent your workplace the less transparent your employees. In an age of trackers, wearables, online monitoring, workplace chat and always-on devices it turns out that not only does a more transparent workplace actually drive people to more secretive behaviours, but that adding a little more privacy actually may improve productivity also. As Ethan Bernstein says: Very simply, the transparency paradox is the idea that increasingly transparent, open, observable workplaces can create less transparent employees. See Harvard prof Ethan Bernstein’s The Transparency Paradox study (pdf) or I learned about it from the Freakonomics podcast: Yes, the Open Office Is Terrible — But It Doesn’t Have to Be.

19 Jan 2020

The Boaty McBoatface effect

In 2016 the British Government had plans to launch a new polar research vessel. To decide on a name for it, they put it out to a public vote. Despite a number of serious, meaningful or historic names suggested, like Shackleton and Endeavour, one name put forward, Boaty McBoatface, quickly overwhelmed all the other options put together. It turns out this is not limited to the British sense of humour, and people will vote for a joke candidate because it’s fun and subversive, and people want to see what will happen if it wins. This NYT article by Katie Rogers has some other fun examples of competitions going ‘wrong’, such as an attempt to name a bridge 'Chuck Norris’ and selecting a school for the deaf as a concert location: What you get when you let the Internet decide. I learned about the Boaty McBoatface effect from Dr Roger Miles on the Human Risk podcast. Also see Conduct Risk Management: A behavioural approach by Dr Roger Miles.…In 2016 the British Government had plans to launch a new polar research vessel. To decide on a name for it, they put it out to a public vote. Despite a number of serious, meaningful or historic names suggested, like Shackleton and Endeavour, one name put forward, Boaty McBoatface, quickly overwhelmed all the other options put together. It turns out this is not limited to the British sense of humour, and people will vote for a joke candidate because it’s fun and subversive, and people want to see what will happen if it wins. This NYT article by Katie Rogers has some other fun examples of competitions going ‘wrong’, such as an attempt to name a bridge 'Chuck Norris’ and selecting a school for the deaf as a concert location: What you get when you let the Internet decide. I learned about the Boaty McBoatface effect from Dr Roger Miles on the Human Risk podcast. Also see Conduct Risk Management: A behavioural approach by Dr Roger Miles.

11 Jan 2020

The data prison

The data prison is the default table where the bars of the cells crowd out your data with non-data-ink and lock your data into a prison. When data is locked into cells, their relationships with other data are harder to see, and the reader has to work harder to learn from your table. When making a table of data, consider if, by adjusting spacing and alignment, you can make the columns or rows clear enough as they are without the prison bars. And look for opportunities to remove the visual noise to let your data and the relationships between them shine out. The data prison is a concept from Edward Tufte. Check out the beautiful Envisioning Information More Tufte sketchplanations: Maximise data-ink Watch for the lie factor…The data prison is the default table where the bars of the cells crowd out your data with non-data-ink and lock your data into a prison. When data is locked into cells, their relationships with other data are harder to see, and the reader has to work harder to learn from your table. When making a table of data, consider if, by adjusting spacing and alignment, you can make the columns or rows clear enough as they are without the prison bars. And look for opportunities to remove the visual noise to let your data and the relationships between them shine out. The data prison is a concept from Edward Tufte. Check out the beautiful Envisioning Information More Tufte sketchplanations: Maximise data-ink Watch for the lie factor

4 Jan 2020

The Peter Principle

The Peter Principle (book) states that “every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” Someone who is good at their job is likely to get promoted. However, the promoted position will likely require different skills. If they’re good, they may get promoted again, but if not, they will stay. At some point, each employee in an organisation will be incompetent at their position. I like this short take on the Peter Principle by Tim Harford. The Peter Principle is a specific case, the case of people, of the Generalised Peter Principle which states that "Anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging situations until it fails." See rule number 1 of indoor games. The Peter Principle was an observation originally meant as satire. Laurence Peter later wrote a book called The Peter Principle: Why things always go wrong.…The Peter Principle (book) states that “every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” Someone who is good at their job is likely to get promoted. However, the promoted position will likely require different skills. If they’re good, they may get promoted again, but if not, they will stay. At some point, each employee in an organisation will be incompetent at their position. I like this short take on the Peter Principle by Tim Harford. The Peter Principle is a specific case, the case of people, of the Generalised Peter Principle which states that "Anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging situations until it fails." See rule number 1 of indoor games. The Peter Principle was an observation originally meant as satire. Laurence Peter later wrote a book called The Peter Principle: Why things always go wrong.

28 Dec 2019

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis

This simple model for the progression of ideas is sometimes called a dialectic. It has many philosophical roots, but regardless, it’s a nice way to think of how ideas and perhaps society can progress. Something is created or put forward. It has some benefits but gives rise to negative effects, and somehow, we figure out a resolution as progress. That new solution then becomes the basis for the next step. In engineering, I learned that we progress by resolving contradictions. As a very simple example, it’s nice to have a walking stick. But a full-length walking stick is difficult to transport. You want it to be long when you’re walking and short when you’re travelling with it. So, we invent retractable ones. But retractable ones break more easily, so we invent…to be determined. You also see a similar idea in stories. See the story spine. It’s sometimes erroneously called Hegel’s dialectic, perhaps partly because Hegel’s work was sometimes so difficult to grasp, and this is nicely simple.…This simple model for the progression of ideas is sometimes called a dialectic. It has many philosophical roots, but regardless, it’s a nice way to think of how ideas and perhaps society can progress. Something is created or put forward. It has some benefits but gives rise to negative effects, and somehow, we figure out a resolution as progress. That new solution then becomes the basis for the next step. In engineering, I learned that we progress by resolving contradictions. As a very simple example, it’s nice to have a walking stick. But a full-length walking stick is difficult to transport. You want it to be long when you’re walking and short when you’re travelling with it. So, we invent retractable ones. But retractable ones break more easily, so we invent…to be determined. You also see a similar idea in stories. See the story spine. It’s sometimes erroneously called Hegel’s dialectic, perhaps partly because Hegel’s work was sometimes so difficult to grasp, and this is nicely simple.

21 Dec 2019

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