Tá nos Números · Raian Pollock

The idea is simple. Each government answers the same questions, from food prices to jobs, poverty, violence, the forest and corruption. Every number comes from an official source and links to it. Every number sits on the same ruler, so one government can be compared with another. When the way of counting changed, the page shows the change. A voter, or anyone curious, gets one place where the record is laid out evenly, with no party behind it and no funding.

Every number comes from an official source, links to it and to how it was counted, and sits beside the figures campaigns and newspapers published, with the reason each one differs.

The title Tá nos Números in large heavy letters on grid paper, a small drawing of the Brazilian flag on the left and a pencil on the right. Below, a line in Portuguese and a note that the project is independent. On the right, a timeline from 1995 to 2025 with a small photo and name for each presidential term. — The opening screen. Every government of Brazil since 1995 on one timeline, with the site's promise of independence, no party and no funding, printed under the title.

Why I made it

With elections coming, I had questions. Under every government a lot goes up and down, and I could not tell what came from the government and what came from outside. The newspapers helped little. Even when they quoted the same number, each showed it its own way, and the way of showing it already pulled to one side. So I built this. Neutral, made of data, every government measured the same way, and easy, even fun, to look at.

Honest charts were not enough

I showed the site to people and watched them get lost in charts I thought were simple. Most people are not super literate with data, and even a fairly simple chart is tough. If this project is to really succeed and help people, it has to simplify that. So each screen has a "Ver explicado" button. The page stays, everything dims except one element at a time, and a short caption explains it, like a data analyst sitting beside you. Seven steps on the food screen, Next and Back, Esc to leave. The guide draws a conclusion only where the data backs it. Otherwise it says the data cannot say.

The guide on the food price screen of Tá nos Números. It moves through seven steps one by one. Each step lights the part of the chart it explains while everything else stays dim.

The look

The look is grid paper, heavy black letters, a pencil, and charts you step through. It borrows from newspaper data pages, the Financial Times' step-by-step charts, Our World in Data and The Pudding. Charts made for readers, not for analysts.

I have also made Pull Up the Tape, a US edition in English with every president since Reagan side by side, and it has its own page here.

Open tanosnumeros.com and see the governments side by side. The site is in Portuguese. Tell me what you think at [email protected].