The Crunch: interest rates, daylight saving, and the best character in Mario Kart
Welcome to the 12th edition of The Crunch!
In this week’s newsletter we’ve got higher for longer interest rates, a deep dive into Australia’s population projections and demography, the lifelong impact of famine in Gaza, how to pick the best character in Mario Kart, and more.
But first … we’re starting a new series, One Big Chart!
This is a new format with one bespoke, hand-drawn chart on a given topic. This will usually be news-related, but not always, and will come with a short article to put the chart into context. These will mostly be done by Josh, our resident illustration enthusiast, but you can expect a few guest appearances every once in a while.
Here’s the first one:
And you can read more here.
Four charts from the week
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1. Don’t get your hopes up on interest rates
Greg Jericho has put together another great, chart-laden analysis for Guardian Australia. This one is about interest rates, their impact, and why they may not come down as fast as some seem to expect.
Lots of charts to choose from in this piece but we like this one, which shows how often (recent) cash rate projections have been wrong:
A corollary to Jericho’s chart about Australia having a large share of variable rate mortgages is this recent New York Times story on American homeowners stuck because their fixed rate loans are “too good to give up”.
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2. How Australia’s population is changing (and ageing)
Australia is on track to be predominantly middle-aged and older in the second half of this century. This article by the prominent demographer Dr Liz Allen uses eight charts to unpack Australia’s demography and looming challenges.
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3. Daylight saved … again
Daylight saving time ended for much of the Australian east coast earlier this month, kicking off the biannual debate about who, what and why we do this.
Here’s something from our archives: Nick set out to explore daylight saving a couple of years ago and created this interactive that lets you deep dive into how it affects daylight hours.
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4. The famine in Gaza could cause a lifetime of harm
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are facing starvation as Israel restricts the amount of food aid into Gaza and famine takes hold. Almost half of Gaza’s population is under 18 years old and more than 20 children are estimated to have already been killed by famine.
The Washington Post has created a powerful interactive showing the potential lifelong impacts of malnutrition.
Spotlight on … the eclipse!
The path of the total solar eclipse across the US is mirrored in high hotel prices, according to the New York Times.
Axios also found a large increase in bookings for short-term rentals (Airbnb etc.) in the path of the eclipse.
Short-term rental data service AirDNA has a deep dive into the data.
The New York Times also used traffic and movement data to visualise people traveling to see the eclipse.
Off the Charts
It may have been a while since you last played Mario Kart, but in the latter versions of the game one of the first things you have to do is select your driver, kart, tires and glider. There are thousands and thousands of possible combinations and loads of tradeoffs to make – so, which build is the best?
Antoine Mayerowitz has a brilliant interactive using Mario Kart to illustrate the Pareto frontier – where you can’t improve on one dimension, for example speed, without making another worse off.
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