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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Learn something new in a sketch each Sunday

Recent sketches

The overview effect

Astronauts returning from space have repeatedly shared experiences like this: “You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty.”— Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut Or this: “When we look down at the earth from space, we see this amazing, indescribably beautiful planet. It looks like a living, breathing organism. But it also, at the same time, looks extremely fragile … Anybody else who’s ever gone to space says the same thing because it really is striking and it’s really sobering to see this paper-thin layer and to realize that that little paper-thin layer is all that protects every living thing on Earth from death, basically. From the harshness of space.”— Shuttle/ISS astronaut Ron Garan The overview effect, coined by Frank White, is kind of the mother of seeing the forest for the trees. It’s the realisation that we live on a fragile planet, we are all connected, and this is all we’ve got. The sketch is based on the image of earth from the moon taken on the Apollo 11 mission.…Astronauts returning from space have repeatedly shared experiences like this: “You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty.”— Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut Or this: “When we look down at the earth from space, we see this amazing, indescribably beautiful planet. It looks like a living, breathing organism. But it also, at the same time, looks extremely fragile … Anybody else who’s ever gone to space says the same thing because it really is striking and it’s really sobering to see this paper-thin layer and to realize that that little paper-thin layer is all that protects every living thing on Earth from death, basically. From the harshness of space.”— Shuttle/ISS astronaut Ron Garan The overview effect, coined by Frank White, is kind of the mother of seeing the forest for the trees. It’s the realisation that we live on a fragile planet, we are all connected, and this is all we’ve got. The sketch is based on the image of earth from the moon taken on the Apollo 11 mission.

11 Aug 2019

Deseed a pomegranate

If you like pomegranate but are put off by the prospect of the effort of pulling out each individual seed and spraying pomegranate juice across the kitchen, then this is a fun and handy tip. It brings together two techniques: deseeding pomegranates in a bowl of water helps stop spraying when pulling them apart and naturally separates the light fluffy pith from the seeds, and whacking them on the back with a spoon is a surprisingly effective and fun way of making the seeds shoot out. Enjoy!…If you like pomegranate but are put off by the prospect of the effort of pulling out each individual seed and spraying pomegranate juice across the kitchen, then this is a fun and handy tip. It brings together two techniques: deseeding pomegranates in a bowl of water helps stop spraying when pulling them apart and naturally separates the light fluffy pith from the seeds, and whacking them on the back with a spoon is a surprisingly effective and fun way of making the seeds shoot out. Enjoy!

4 Aug 2019

Proxemics

I love this concept of the study of social distance, or how humans use space. Distinct from ergonomics, which is more about how people fit into their environment, proxemics focuses on the social aspect of space. For example: At what distance are you intimate? Where does your personal space end? How far away should you be for a good conversation? Why are the big circular wedding and conference tables so bad? How close should desks be in an office to encourage collaboration without feeling jammed together? Dev Patnaik at Jump Associates used to give the fine example of how you will whisper politely and with awe in the vaulted ceilings of a cathedral, while the confessional box — for people to share their deepest secrets — is low and close. An olde English pub that you stoop to enter under the low ceiling immediately feels friendly and intimate, whereas you’ll struggle to have a deep conversation on entering a warehouse. Proxemics was coined by the cultural anthropologist Edward Hall. His book The Hidden Dimension has the details.…I love this concept of the study of social distance, or how humans use space. Distinct from ergonomics, which is more about how people fit into their environment, proxemics focuses on the social aspect of space. For example: At what distance are you intimate? Where does your personal space end? How far away should you be for a good conversation? Why are the big circular wedding and conference tables so bad? How close should desks be in an office to encourage collaboration without feeling jammed together? Dev Patnaik at Jump Associates used to give the fine example of how you will whisper politely and with awe in the vaulted ceilings of a cathedral, while the confessional box — for people to share their deepest secrets — is low and close. An olde English pub that you stoop to enter under the low ceiling immediately feels friendly and intimate, whereas you’ll struggle to have a deep conversation on entering a warehouse. Proxemics was coined by the cultural anthropologist Edward Hall. His book The Hidden Dimension has the details.

28 Jul 2019

Campbell’s law

Campbell’s law, rather pessimistically suggests: "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." Campbell's law is kind of a Goodhart’s law with more explanation. It pretty much seems to work with everything, unfortunately. If you measure the performance of an employment office by the number of cases handled you may get quick but ineffective placements and interviews. If, instead, you measure them on number of persons placed in jobs you may unintentionally drive a focus on placing the simplest cases at the expense of those who most need the service. When customer support is measured by number of tickets dealt with I’ve heard of writing quick answers that don’t fully solve a question in the knowledge that the customer will soon come back with another ticket to solve. When policing effectiveness is judged by crimes reported and the number of unsolved cases you may get both under reporting of crimes, and a form of plea bargaining where a criminal may be encouraged to confess to extra crimes — therefore fewer unsolved cases — in exchange for more lenient sentences. Campbell notes that: It seems to be well documented that a well-publicized, deliberate effort at social change–-Nixon’s crackdown on crime–-had as its main effect the corruption of crime-rate indicators, achieved through underrecording and by downgrading the crimes to less serious classifications. Measuring schools on attendance encourages creative reasons for children being taken out of school. Assessing learning can quickly become teaching to, and cramming for, the test. When reviews come to dominate purchase decisions pressure increases for fake reviews. And then there’s elections and voting… Campbell, Donald, Assessing the Impact of Planned Social Change, Dec 1976. (pdf) Also see: what gets measured gets better and Seth Godin’s take on Campbell’s law: Speedometer confusion Scott Carter gave a pithier paraphrasing of Campbell’s law: “What gets measured, gets corrupted.”…Campbell’s law, rather pessimistically suggests: "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." Campbell's law is kind of a Goodhart’s law with more explanation. It pretty much seems to work with everything, unfortunately. If you measure the performance of an employment office by the number of cases handled you may get quick but ineffective placements and interviews. If, instead, you measure them on number of persons placed in jobs you may unintentionally drive a focus on placing the simplest cases at the expense of those who most need the service. When customer support is measured by number of tickets dealt with I’ve heard of writing quick answers that don’t fully solve a question in the knowledge that the customer will soon come back with another ticket to solve. When policing effectiveness is judged by crimes reported and the number of unsolved cases you may get both under reporting of crimes, and a form of plea bargaining where a criminal may be encouraged to confess to extra crimes — therefore fewer unsolved cases — in exchange for more lenient sentences. Campbell notes that: It seems to be well documented that a well-publicized, deliberate effort at social change–-Nixon’s crackdown on crime–-had as its main effect the corruption of crime-rate indicators, achieved through underrecording and by downgrading the crimes to less serious classifications. Measuring schools on attendance encourages creative reasons for children being taken out of school. Assessing learning can quickly become teaching to, and cramming for, the test. When reviews come to dominate purchase decisions pressure increases for fake reviews. And then there’s elections and voting… Campbell, Donald, Assessing the Impact of Planned Social Change, Dec 1976. (pdf) Also see: what gets measured gets better and Seth Godin’s take on Campbell’s law: Speedometer confusion Scott Carter gave a pithier paraphrasing of Campbell’s law: “What gets measured, gets corrupted.”

20 Jul 2019

Human risk

In Don Norman’s classic book The Design of Everyday Things, Don gives an example of how to break into an office: just turn up at the door with a bunch of unwieldy computer equipment that looks difficult to carry and ask someone if they can open the door for you. Generally, someone will. Which goes to show no matter how well your system is designed, how seemingly impregnable your defences are, or how robust your processes, human risk — people doing things they shouldn’t or not doing things they should — are most likely the biggest ones. Like accidentally leaning on the keyboard before sending a bank transfer. The sketch is loosely based on a story, which is not true but illustrates the point nicely, that the Mongols got past the Great Wall simply by bribing the guards. If you like behavioural science, cognitive biases and the like, and want to build a better understanding of human risk, take a look at the human risk newsletter run by a long-time patron of Sketchplanations Christian Hunt.…In Don Norman’s classic book The Design of Everyday Things, Don gives an example of how to break into an office: just turn up at the door with a bunch of unwieldy computer equipment that looks difficult to carry and ask someone if they can open the door for you. Generally, someone will. Which goes to show no matter how well your system is designed, how seemingly impregnable your defences are, or how robust your processes, human risk — people doing things they shouldn’t or not doing things they should — are most likely the biggest ones. Like accidentally leaning on the keyboard before sending a bank transfer. The sketch is loosely based on a story, which is not true but illustrates the point nicely, that the Mongols got past the Great Wall simply by bribing the guards. If you like behavioural science, cognitive biases and the like, and want to build a better understanding of human risk, take a look at the human risk newsletter run by a long-time patron of Sketchplanations Christian Hunt.

13 Jul 2019

The cobra effect

The story goes something like this. Back in colonial India the top Brit in charge decided there were too many cobras around Delhi. To reduce the population they put in place a cash reward, or bounty, for anyone who brought in a dead cobra. The intention was clear. Legend has it that people did bring in the cobras reliably because some enterprising souls had started breeding cobras for the very purpose of getting the bounty. When the authorities realised this they scrapped the scheme, the cobra farms closed and the bred cobras were released into the wild significantly increasing the cobra population by a few orders of magnitude. Hence, the cobra effect: when a well-intentioned measure can have the opposite effect to that desired. It’s not clear how true this story is, but the cobra effect has been demonstrated many times. The Freakonomics podcast on the cobra effect discusses some excellent examples (with references), including: A bounty on rats in French colonial Hanoi — where the bounty was earned by bringing in a rat tail — which went the same way as the cobra story Removing wild pigs at Fort Benning, Georgia, at $40 a pigs tail that didn’t make a dent. It could be the hunters would bait the pigs with all sorts of tempting scraps. Many pigs learned to avoid the hunters and instead bred like crazy while well-fed on scraps. The capital of Colombia, Bogotá, tried to reduce traffic congestion by restricting each car from driving one day during the week. The result: people started buying more than 1 car and did more driving on weekends. Publication of proposed areas of habitat to be protected for endangered species meant land developers responded by building in those areas before the land was protected. People are smart. Incentives work—in the sense that you tend to get what you incentivise. So be careful what you are incentivising. Also see: Goodhart’s Law What gets measured gets better You get what you measure The law of unintended consequences…The story goes something like this. Back in colonial India the top Brit in charge decided there were too many cobras around Delhi. To reduce the population they put in place a cash reward, or bounty, for anyone who brought in a dead cobra. The intention was clear. Legend has it that people did bring in the cobras reliably because some enterprising souls had started breeding cobras for the very purpose of getting the bounty. When the authorities realised this they scrapped the scheme, the cobra farms closed and the bred cobras were released into the wild significantly increasing the cobra population by a few orders of magnitude. Hence, the cobra effect: when a well-intentioned measure can have the opposite effect to that desired. It’s not clear how true this story is, but the cobra effect has been demonstrated many times. The Freakonomics podcast on the cobra effect discusses some excellent examples (with references), including: A bounty on rats in French colonial Hanoi — where the bounty was earned by bringing in a rat tail — which went the same way as the cobra story Removing wild pigs at Fort Benning, Georgia, at $40 a pigs tail that didn’t make a dent. It could be the hunters would bait the pigs with all sorts of tempting scraps. Many pigs learned to avoid the hunters and instead bred like crazy while well-fed on scraps. The capital of Colombia, Bogotá, tried to reduce traffic congestion by restricting each car from driving one day during the week. The result: people started buying more than 1 car and did more driving on weekends. Publication of proposed areas of habitat to be protected for endangered species meant land developers responded by building in those areas before the land was protected. People are smart. Incentives work—in the sense that you tend to get what you incentivise. So be careful what you are incentivising. Also see: Goodhart’s Law What gets measured gets better You get what you measure The law of unintended consequences

7 Jul 2019

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