Sam Hart

Data visualization developer

I'm a journalist who codes and designs. I currently work as a data visualization developer at Reuters Graphics. Scroll to see some of my work 👇

Highlights

Some projects I’ve done recently:

Here I made a simple choropleth map and a bar chart on a tooltip – some classic data viz on Germany’s election night.

Germany’s national election: Results

Here I made a simple choropleth map and a bar chart on a tooltip – some classic data viz on Germany’s election night.

This simple poll chart was a major back end exercise: I also created the scraper that pulled polling results from Germany’s federal website and fed them into this chart, which updated multiple times daily leading into the Feb. 23 election.

Germany’s national election: Polls

This simple poll chart was a major back end exercise: I also created the scraper that pulled polling results from Germany’s federal website and fed them into this chart, which updated multiple times daily leading into the Feb. 23 election.

This Reuters special report highlights research suggesting that melting glaciers could be contributing to an uptick in volcanic activity.

Volcanoes and climate change

This Reuters special report highlights research suggesting that melting glaciers could be contributing to an uptick in volcanic activity.

An investigation highlighting how a public health agency’s faulty reports allow large companies to save money on cleanup. For this one, I made the satellite scroll walkthrough.

A public health agency became a shield for polluters

An investigation highlighting how a public health agency’s faulty reports allow large companies to save money on cleanup. For this one, I made the satellite scroll walkthrough.

Used a few beeswarms here to show how high housing costs affected metro areas in key swing states ahead of the November election.

Housing costs in swing states

Used a few beeswarms here to show how high housing costs affected metro areas in key swing states ahead of the November election.

A thorough analysis on why we listen to the songs we do when Christmas rolls around. Come for the fun illustrations (the work of a talented colleague), stay for a Christmas-light inspired Billboard chart and a hierarchical snowflake viz.

Christmas music, analyzed

A thorough analysis on why we listen to the songs we do when Christmas rolls around. Come for the fun illustrations (the work of a talented colleague), stay for a Christmas-light inspired Billboard chart and a hierarchical snowflake viz.

This video analysis collaboration with Bellingcat, a European investigative journalism unit, required sensitive graphical treatment. For the project, I created a map showing the movement of Nigerian insurgents into the town of Biu and an audio player that pinpointed the moments gunshots erupted. Warning: some of the images and videos in the piece are very graphic.

An execution by the Nigerian military

This video analysis collaboration with Bellingcat, a European investigative journalism unit, required sensitive graphical treatment. For the project, I created a map showing the movement of Nigerian insurgents into the town of Biu and an audio player that pinpointed the moments gunshots erupted. Warning: some of the images and videos in the piece are very graphic.

Hot off the 2022 election, I did a quick R analysis to determine: is the romantic comedy a lost genre? This was a satisfying turn from R to a linear sveltekit narrative: I wrote, reported, collaborated with our illustrator and built the graphics you see here.

Box office breakup

Hot off the 2022 election, I did a quick R analysis to determine: is the romantic comedy a lost genre? This was a satisfying turn from R to a linear sveltekit narrative: I wrote, reported, collaborated with our illustrator and built the graphics you see here.

I served as a front-end developer on Reuters’ election rig. Aside from the page available on reuters.com, the project includes translations into over 10 languages and dozens of embeds provided to clients to mix, match and implement on their own websites.

2022 Midterm elections

I served as a front-end developer on Reuters’ election rig. Aside from the page available on reuters.com, the project includes translations into over 10 languages and dozens of embeds provided to clients to mix, match and implement on their own websites.

My first project truly fueled by an R analysis, this one involves calculating distances and joining Census data for a satisfying quick-turn.

Abortion clinic access

My first project truly fueled by an R analysis, this one involves calculating distances and joining Census data for a satisfying quick-turn.

A collaboration with our Special Reports team, I helped with the final piece in their series on threats to election workers by designing and building this page.

Anatomy of a death threat

A collaboration with our Special Reports team, I helped with the final piece in their series on threats to election workers by designing and building this page.

The goal for this somber COVID-19 benchmark for the U.S. was to lay out the scale of 500,000 deaths without compromising on the humanity of the situation. I harnessed the power of Canvas and IntersectionObserver to load 500,000 dots on this page, and was mostly satisfied with the outcome.

500,000 lives lost

The goal for this somber COVID-19 benchmark for the U.S. was to lay out the scale of 500,000 deaths without compromising on the humanity of the situation. I harnessed the power of Canvas and IntersectionObserver to load 500,000 dots on this page, and was mostly satisfied with the outcome.

An example of a quicker hit on deadline, I made use of our team tooling and customized our cartogram to fit the needs of this voting policy project. This one went up in less than a work week.

A wave of voting laws

An example of a quicker hit on deadline, I made use of our team tooling and customized our cartogram to fit the needs of this voting policy project. This one went up in less than a work week.

This post analysis of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots uses animation and d3-force to visualize data from <a href="https://acleddata.com/#/dashboard">ACLED</a>.

When the right wing rallies

This post analysis of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots uses animation and d3-force to visualize data from ACLED.

The archives

Some more clips, from the archives:

Famine in Gaza

Where climate finance goes

Canada’s snap election

Prices are rising, but is it inflation?

An explainer on the dramatic low level of Lake Mead’s water, this takes one data point and drives it home with scrollytelling and animation.

Lake Mead at a low

Biden's tax overhaul

Here I did the scroll step d3 maps you see, where you progress through multiple stages of the variants proliferating across the globe. One is of Great Britain, the other of the entire world. I created one Svelte component that is called twice and passed different props.

Variant of concern

Wild weather, warming planet

Live U.S. Election Results

Raspberry racket

Vote by Mail Explainer

Rite Aid Special Report

Race Gap

A team effort, on this one I was the resident d3 developer and helped add the bar chart totals you see on the map that changes state up top. I also created the scrollytelling breakdown "Company Breakdown" section at the bottom.

High-risk dams

Tracking the Fed

Our Investigative teams took a look at the CDC's compiled dataset on various health in the U.S.'s 500 largest cities. I visualized disparities in urban areas for each of the cities included in the dataset that are in our markets. I created a clickthrough interactive that shows these disparities and is configured for each of our markets (try switching out "nbcnewyork.com" for "nbcchicago.com" in the URL.) Behind each interactive is a complex data workflow that joins shapefiles with CDC files and splits data by market. Lastly, I spent a good amount of time figuring out how to tween a scatterplot into a chloropleth map.

500 Cities: A Look at Health and Geography

An intern and I dissected and analyzed the newly-elected congress as compared to the previous for a graphic on NBC's sites. I designed the layout for the congress arcs dynamically using d3 and the trusty formula for points along the circumference of a circle learned in high school trig.

Diversity in the New Congress

My NBC Owned Television Stations team plans graphics for twelve individual markets' websites, and each one had their own API Key to receive election results from AP. To create twelve individual live-updating electurion results maps, I wrote an Amazon AWS Lambda script that scraped the results for all of our markets, parsed the data, and then deployed it to our server, where the data filled up twelve individual basemaps and updated at regular intervals.

Live-Updating Midterm Election Maps

This project required me to pull acreage data on burning wildfires across the US from the USGS's FTP server. I used GDAL to convert shapefiles into csvs, and grouped acreage totals into days of the year in a Jupyter notebook. I then visualized daily totals using d3.

California Wildfires Becoming Year-Round Trend

This project involved tracking down data from a scientific report on the Great Pacific Garbage patch and visualizing it, with the added feature of superimposing U.S. states over the patch to show its total size. It was a lot of mapping with GDAL, with the added bonus of hillshading from TIFF files.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Visualized

One of our national editors approached me asking how to visualize the strength of the NRA, and my response was to track data from Open Secrets on individual expenditures spent by the NRA on messaging for or against particular candidates.

NRA's Independent Expenditures

Ahead of the primary election, NBC Chicago asked me to create a widget that shows the user their elected representatives for their districts (based on an address they input), and which candidates had filed for the primary election. I created this widget, and then refreshed it for the general election in November.

Searchable Chicago Primary Election Guide

San Francisco's Dirty Streets

Olympics Medal Breakdown

Castro Valley Sidewalks

Educating Bay Area Teachers on Transgender Issues

Immigration Court Backlog

Rainfall During Hurricane Irma

This project involved pulling data on gun violence incidents from the Gun Violence Archive and comparing that to the number of cases filed in various district courts under federal gun statutes to show that the Northern District of Illinois charged a disproportinately low number of federal gun charges relative to the amount of gun violence in the city of Chicago.

Chicago Gun Prosecutions

Centuries of Execution

Misstatements by Appeals Judge

Appeals Court Explainer

Bond Court Investigation

Cops and Stops

Who I am

I’m based in Brooklyn, NY and love television from Succession to Real Housewives, reading, food, running and much more. I love to talk about my work and/or any of the above. Reach out!