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Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!

In this week’s newsletter we have charts on the World Cup, more charts on the World Cup, charts on the dangers of increasingly huge cars, an explainer on synthesisers, a great feature on the most ethical NBA champions, and then some more charts on the World Cup.

But first … how does private equity actually work?

Our colleagues in the UK – where one in eight workers are employed by private equity funded firms – have put together this visual explainer on the industry, how it works and its pitfalls. It includes these bright, but disturbing graphics:

You can read more on the investigation into the private equity sector here.

Meanwhile, Nick has updated his penalty shootout datablog, just in time for a couple of thrilling games between Morocco and the Netherlands, and Paraguay and Germany.

We’re also using the same interactive animation to make replays of shootouts in the knockout rounds, and have charted the biggest upsets of the competition here.

Elsewhere, Europe has been sweltering through an unprecedented heatwave, which our colleagues have covered with maps and charts.

Four charts from the fortnight

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1. Harry Souttar is how big?!

Keeping with the World Cup theme, the Straits Times have put together a cool explorer letting you see which players you are physically the most like, as well as compare things like height and ages across teams and countries:

While you’re at the Straits Times, check out this awesome goal scoring game they made.

Reuters has an updating page of World Cup graphics that touches on a bunch of questions I (Josh) have had throughout the tournament. Like why are so many players wearing pink boots, and why have there been so many lightning delays?

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2. Less cowbell

Shri Khalpada at Per Thirty Six is back with another great visual explainer – this time on how synthesisers work:

Having little interactives to play with is dead useful for those of us who can’t carry a tune!

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3. They’re called utes

As in Australia, big cars and pick up trucks utes are dominating the roads in America more than ever. The New York Times estimates that 200 to 400 pedestrians a year in the United States would not have died if cars were about as large as they used to be 25 years ago.

They’ve put together a series of incredible visuals that illustrate the dangers of taller and heavier cars, with bigger blind spots:

The Times also had this story about how Google used accelerometers in Android phones to predict the Venezuela earthquakes and send warnings to millions.

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4. Time for some ethics in … sportsball

In a piece bound to provoke endless arguments, Russell Samora at the Pudding has ranked NBA champions by how ethical they were. By which he means how much they benefited from their opponents missing key players due to injury:

I mean, really, the Celtics 2008 should get extra points for the wheelchair game but who are we to quibble?

Bookmarks

Off the Charts

The Straits Times have an incredibly powerful and sad illustrated story on rough sleepers at Changi Airport in Singapore:

They also posted the story on Instagram.

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