Alan Smith

@theboysmithy.ft.com

9140 Followers 200 Following

Head of Visual and Data Journalism @financialtimes.com; Honorary Prof @UCL Social Data Institute. Views expressed are my own. Reposts are not necessarily endorsements.

A pair of maps comparing the locations of the constituencies between Starmer's outgoing cabinet and Andy Burnham's new cabinet. There is a greater cluster of MPs now in the North West
Photo of Atlanta stadium
Photo of some fresh Belgian waffles
A Celtic cross in early morning sunshine
A photo of some cheese in front of a TV showing World Cup football Switzerland v Qatar
A google trends chart showing search interest in 'psephologist' in the UK this year. It is a flat line until April when it soars to 100
Sankey diagram of crude oil transported through the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia is top source of 5.3mn barrels per day, China is top destination with 5.4mn barrels per day
A photo of an elegant grade-II listed tomb in West Norwood cemetery
Screenshot of an insta post from FiveG in Harajuku
Waldorf Protein desktop synthesizer
A chart of the projected percentage point increase un share of income paid as income tax and national insurance from 2025/25 through to 2029/30. It whos that 'fiscal drag' is set to hit those at or near frozen personal tax thresholds
Screenshot of quiz showing budget announcement: 'Introducing independent taxation of married women' and chancellor quote: "“Married women increasingly resent … that a wife's income is treated … as that of her husband, depriving her of the independence and privacy she has a right to expect”" - with challenge to guess year: 1956, 1964. or 1986
Screenshot of an interactive Sankey diagram showing how sale prices since January 2024 of properties in Waltham Forest relate to Council Tax bands. Band C sales are highlighted, which show sale prices ranging from under £200,000 to £1mn+
Oliver Hawkins pictured delivering a lecture to UCL students, who are seated in a lecture theatre
A chart of the effective US tariff rate - now at 17.3, the highest level since 1930s. Based on actual trade, the rate at the end of May 2025 was 8.8%
A chart showing the proprtion of non-USMCA 2024 US goods imports covered by Trump tariff deals. It shows that seven deals mean that more than 60% of US imports threatened with 'reciprocal tariffs' are now covered by a Trump tariff deal
A scatter plot showing the comparative capacity and cost of nuclear power plants that shows Sizewell C is now set to be the costliest nuclear reactor in the world
A map of Hikarigaoka park showing the route of the parkrun. It resembles an outline of Donald Trump
A screen recording of an interactive draw your own oil prices chart, showing various lines being drawn from 1973 to 1975
Photo of Piazza di Fiera in Trento, setting for the annual economics festival. A medieval wall surrounds it
Screen recording of a scrolling graphic demonstrating impacts for a number countries on exports, imports and real per capita income under a variety of trade war scenarios. In the final scenario, full global retaliation, US imports and exports are negatively affected more than any other nation
An illustration of the Airy Transit Circle of 1851, a device to fix the position of stars and other celestial bodies by determining two coordinates. Inventor Sir George Airy is shown to scale next to the machine which is considerably bigger than him
A grid of four charts shows how armed forces personnel numbers have contracted across Europe since the 1990s - in France, Germany, the EU overall - and the UK
Screenshot from an FT US trade tracker page. Featured is a bar chart of the US trade deficit which shows it reached a record $131bn in January 2025
A bar chart showing exports of G20 countries to the US as a & of each country's total exports in 2023. Neighbouring Mexico and Canada rely on the US for around 80% of their exports. the next highest is Japan at just over 20%. Data is from Unctad.
A global map showing the locations of 2,500 Parkrun events, more than half of which are outside the UK. There are notable clusters in North America, Western Europe, South Africa, Japan, Australia and New Zealand
A photo of Andy Kirk wearing g an Apple Vision Pro headset in the FT office. He has adopted a self-defence position with hands raised as (virtual) elephants run past him.
Photo of the front cover of the third edition of 'Data Visualisation: A handbook for data driven design' by Andy Kirk
A short 'teaser' screen recording of a Financial Times draw-your-own interactive chart being played with; reader is drawing a pink line over background grey contextual lines
A map of the current state of play in the US House of Representatives, with 192 Democrats and 206 Republicans, there is still a race to get to 218 required to win control
A map of the swing between Republicans and Democrats between 2020 and 2024 which shows that red states have gone redder for Trump
Illustration showing detail from a classroom. The Financial Times Visual Vocabulary is a poster on the wall
A grid of charts showing monthly mentions in rightwing podcasts and online video series of conspiracy themes. Speculation about non-citizen voting and voter rolls are the most popular conspiracy theories this cycle
Poster advertising new Apple immersive film ‘Submerged’
An advert for white lead paint from Punch magazine
Adverts from Punch magazine for socks and trousers
Cartoon of a machine showing working of the economy
Front cover of Punch magazine from 1953. A dog is wearing a hat
Alan Smith of the FT demonstrates the FT Money Machine using Apple Vision Pro
Photograph of a device partially obscured by a pink covering. Text says "Meet the FT Money Machine"
Screenshot of interactive FT Money Machine. User is adjusting savings
The FT Money Machine - a digital Phillips computer - in a sunlit living room
Detailed render of digital Phillips machine with pink water
Moniac demonstration at Cambridge University. Machine inspected by Bob Haslett and colleagues under watchful eye of engineer Allan McRobie
Screenshot of a prototype digital moniac by Bob Haslett showing sliders/checkboxes and machine
Detail of plotter from Phillips hydraulic computer showing time series charts
Close up detail from the Phillips hydraulic computer. Sections for income and taxation are shown
Black and white photo (from 1950s) of inventor Bill Phillips with his hydraulic economic computer. He is wearing a suit and holding a cigarette
Moniac hydraulic computer in Science Museum, London
Photograph of Alan Smith in Financial Times newsroom wearing Apple Vision Pro headset
Screenshot of a German language version of the Financial Times Visual Vocabulary poster, which shows a range of different data visualisations and descriptions of their uses
A scatter plot that shows new reservoirs in the UK since 1800. The axis is date of completion, the capacity of the reservoir is shown on the y axis. The data excludes flood storage areas. Following a steady pattern of new reservoirs since the q9th century, the UK has not delivered a new reservoir this century. Water companies were privatised in England & Wales in 1989
A photo of Alan Smith with an FT newspaper distributor in Davos, Switzerland. It is sunny but both are wrapped up against the chilly mountain air
A photo of a half moon