The Curse(s) of the CEOs

It’s Friday, so we should try to take things a bit lighter. For me that usually means knocking back a drink or two and a swear-y exultation about it being the end of the work week. But, it turns out, I’m just trying to emulate our captains of industry. Bloomberg has gone through company conference calls and tabulated the number of swear words used and charted the results. And for fun, you can read some of the excerpts.

They'll swear by it
They’ll swear by it

Credit for the piece goes to David Ingold, Keith Collins, and Jeff Green.

Predicting the World Cup Winners

The World Cup is starting soon and that means predictions are also on their way. And snazzy graphics. Today’s snazzy graphic with predictions comes from Bloomberg. They have host Brazil winning the overall tournament. And if you want to investigate the matches further, you can do that by clicking on the match.

Brazil wins
Brazil wins

Credit for the piece goes to the Bloomberg graphics department.

Spilling the Oil

A few weeks ago, Bloomberg Businessweek published a nice graphic that summarised the last 25 years of oil spills. I’m finally getting around to posting it. But what it does really well is show just how bad the Deepwater Horizon spill was compared to the other big name disaster: Exxon Valdez. Of particular note is the bar chart at the bottom right comparing the millions of gallons of oil spilled.

Oil spills
Oil spills

Credit for the piece goes to Evan Applegate.

Defensive Incest

Today’s piece comes from Bloomberg Businessweek. In the wake of the Pentagon’s decision to push for budget cuts including force reduction and slashing several programmes, I decided to show this chord diagram that shows how the defence industry supports itself.

Defence companies supporting each other
Defence companies supporting each other

Credit for the piece goes to Robert Levinson, Dorothy Gambrell, and David Evans.

Average Ticket Prices in 2013

So yeah, the Super Bowl thing. Apparently tickets are expensive? Earlier, Bloomberg Businessweek took a look at average prices for the most expensive events of 2013. The only sentence supporting the graphic was that the most expensive event was not the Super Bowl. Okay, so what was?

Most Expensive Average Ticket Prices
Most Expensive Average Ticket Prices

I think this graphic actually makes it more difficult to tell. But beyond that, the decision to use the tree map confuses me. We are already looking at a subset of ticket prices—not all, but only the “most expensive”. What criteria determined that selection? After all, from my own experience and personal knowledge I know that Red Sox–Yankees game are also incredibly expensive. But those are not present in this set. And then if the idea is to undermine the common thought that the Super Bowl is the most expensive ticket, should the user be forced to find through each square—and no, the events are not squarified very nicely—the highest value?

So I took an hour before the game to try a quick stab at quickly identifying the most expensive tickets. It turns out that the glorious bar chart more than suffices. It also then shows how quickly the remainder of the prices become quite comparable. (Ridiculous I suppose depends upon your preference for sport/event/disposable income.)

My quick take
My quick take

Credit for the original piece goes to Bloomberg Businessweek.

The Cost of Chicago’s Gun Violence

Today’s piece comes from Bloomberg and looks at the cost of Chicago’s gun violence epidemic. And when I write cost, I mean just that. While the lives lost are the most significant, Bloomberg’s article states that shootings cost Chicago $2.5 billion per year, or $2,500 per household. They supplemented their article with an infographic detailing and breaking down these costs by focusing on the South Shore in the city’s south side.

The cost of Chicago's gun violence on the South Shore
The cost of Chicago's gun violence on the South Shore

Credit for the piece goes to Chloe Whiteaker, John McCormick, and Tim Jones.

Heritage Maps

From FlowingData comes a post to an interactive piece by Bloomberg that looks at the geographic distribution of different heritage—read heritage, neither race nor ethnicity—groups. (Its choice of groups, however, is slightly contentious as it omits several important ones, including African-Americans.)

I would say that a typical map like this would simply plot the percent of each county, state, or other sub-division for the selected heritage group. Much like below, as I chose the Irish.

Irish heritage
Irish heritage

Bloomberg’s piece is a bit more interesting than that because of the ability to compare two groups, to see where they overlap and where they diverge. In doing so, they created a divergent choropleth that can show the subtleties and nuances of settlement patterns.

Irish vs German
Irish vs German

Credit for the piece goes to David Yanofsky.