economics » Coffee Spoons

California Budget 2013–14

May 152013

Yesterday I looked at the aboriginal Canadian identity infographic and wondered if bubbles in a bubble suffice for understanding size and relationship. Today we look at an interactive graphic from the Los Angeles Times where I do not think the bubbles suffice.

California Budget 2013–4

In this graphic, I cannot say the bubbles work. Besides the usual difficulty in comparing the sizes of bubbles, too many of the bubbles are spaced too far apart. These white gaps make it even more difficult to compare the bubbles. Furthermore, as you will see in a moment, it is difficult to see which programmes receive more than others because there is no ranking order to the bubbles.

Below is a quick data sketch of the state funds only data for 2013 and 2012.

California Budget 2013–14

While I did not spend a lot of time on it, you can clearly see how simply switching to a bar chart allows the user to see the rank of programmes by state funding. It is not a stretch to add some kind of toggle function as in the original. One of the tricky parts is the percent growth. You will note above that my screenshot highlights high speed rail; the growth was over 3000%. That is far too much to include in my graphic, so I compared the actuals instead. That is one of the tradeoffs, but in my mind it is an acceptable one.

Credit for the original goes to Paige St. John and Armand Emamdjomeh.

Cartograms

Infographic 2 Responses »

Apr 112013

Continuing this week’s map theme, we have an example of a cartogram from the New York Times. This piece supplements an article about how some manufacturing companies are starting to look away from China as a place for their facilities. There are two maps, the first (not shown here) looks at economic output overall. The second (below) takes that output and accounts for population.

GDP per capita

Hexagons are used instead of the more familiar squares to represent 500,000 people and the colour is the GDP per capita. The text accompanying the graphic explains how this is a measure of economic potential being (or not being) realised. But what the hexagons allow the map to do is better represent the shapes of the countries. Squares, more common in cartograms, create awkward box-like outlines of countries. That would be fine if countries were often shaped like squares, but they are not.

I am not often a fan of cartograms, but I find this one well executed and the annotations and explanatory text make what might otherwise be confusing far simpler to understand. All in all, a solid piece.

Credit for the piece goes to Mike Bostock and Keith Bradsher.

Waste Water Disposal Wells

Infographic No Responses »

Apr 092013

Today’s map comes from the Texas Tribune out of Austin, Texas. The map displays the location of disposal wells, i.e. the sites where the waste water from fracking and related drilling operations are dumped. Firstly, the map hints that the fracking industry is not spread equally across the state.

But secondly, the map does this through the use of hexagons that represent well density. So at a broad, state-wide view, the user sees almost a traditional choropleth. The difference is that these are not natural or political boundaries but rather data constructs designed to aggregate highly granular data points.

Well locations state-wide are aggregated into coloured hexagons

Even nicer, however, is that if you want to see where disposal wells are in your county or town, the map lets you do that too. Because as you zoom in ever closer, the individual wells appear within the hexagons that they colour. It’s a very solid piece of work.

Individual wells colour the hexagons, but are only visible up close

Credit for the piece goes to Ryan Murphy.

The Economies of Europe

Infographic No Responses »

Mar 282013

Cyprus has been in the news over the course of this past week because its financial system almost brought the country to bankruptcy. And that has meant trouble for European markets. So now it’s time to look at the economies of Europe once again. And the National Post has done a great job using clear and concise small multiples to examine key metrics for the ten largest European economies—not necessarily EU economies mind you. But at the end of each row, they summed up the country’s outlook in just one or two sentences.

Cropping of the overview for Europe's largest economies

Credit for the piece goes to Richard Johnson, Grant Ellis, John Shmuel, and Andrew Barr.

US Trade Balance

Infographic 1 Response »

Mar 132013

The US imports a lot. But it does not export quite as much. The difference between those two figures is what is known as the balance of trade. Quartz looks at the US balance of trade not at an overall level, but between individual countries.

US Balance of Trade

This is not one of my favourite pieces. For starters, while the overall figures are in the accompanying text, it would be useful to include total US imports and exports alongside the graphic as a point of reference.

Secondly, a long-standing issue I have is area comparisons. Sometimes they are needed and useful, a good example is a tree map. But in this piece, the circles do not add up to a recognisable whole. They also do not help when looking at individual countries and their historical trade values. A dotted outline of a circle shows the previous year’s trade. But more often than not, the trade level was so similar that the circles nearly overlap exactly.

The grouping and highlighting functionality hints at a useful application to explore US trade data, but the clumsiness of the circles renders that usefulness moot. .

Credit for the piece goes to David Yanofsky.

Wealth Inequality in the United States

Infographic No Responses »

Mar 122013

Reality is never what you think. Over at the Washington Post’s Wonkblog I found a post about a YouTube video looking at wealth inequality in the United States. It looks at a study that compared what Americans thought the distribution of wealth in the United States is vs. what they think is an ideal distribution. And then the video compares that to the actual distribution.

The video is rather solid and does a fairly good job at explaining its point. And those unsure about wealth inequality and how it is different from and sometimes more meaningful than income inequality should read the post along with the video.

Wealth inequality

Credit for the video goes to a YouTube user named Politizane.

Minions

Infographic No Responses »

Mar 012013

We throw the word minion around at work quite often. So for your Friday enjoyment comes a graphic from Indexed that looks at minions vis-a-vis wages vs. compensation as well as whether a worker is busy vs. powerful.

Minions

Credit for the piece goes to Jessica Hagy.

Budget Sequestration and US Austerity

Infographic No Responses »

Feb 272013

First things first, the verb is to sequester. The noun is sequestration. 1 March is not when the sequester begins. It is when the sequestration begins.

Now that we have the preliminaries out of the way, much is made of high government spending relative to revenue. However, this conversation still misses the point that government spending has fallen significantly. The New York Times charted that recent fall in spending in this graphic. This contraction is the largest drop in over 50 years. Along with the bars indicating recessions, I perhaps would have indicated major US military conflicts given the emphasis the introduction places on those events.

Government spending

The piece also looks at government employment, which has been atypically lower than pre-recessionary figures. Taken in sum, the two sets of data point to an extant condition of austerity that shall only be worsened by…c’mon everyone…that’s right, the sequestration.

Credit for the piece goes to Alicia Parlapiano.

Detroit

Infographic No Responses »

Feb 062013

Detroit’s population has fallen drastically while its economy has been all but eviscerated with the near-collapse of the American automotive industry. But it was not always that way. The National Post looks at Detroit over the years, starting in 1950. It’s the mapping and charting out of the decline and fall of what was once a great city.

Cropping of the fall of Detroit

Credit for the piece goes to Kristopher Morrison and Richard Johnson.

Follow the (Canadian Foreign Aid) Money

Infographic No Responses »

Jan 142013

Canada spends quite a bit of money on foreign aid. Last week a National Post infographic looked at the targets for that aid program and in particular highlighted Haiti, a country that has received large sums after the devastating earthquake three years ago.

Canadian foreign aid

Credit for the piece goes to Kathryn Blaze Carlson, Mike Faille, and Richard Johnson.

Older Entries

Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha

Coffee Spoons

California Budget 2013–14

Cartograms

Waste Water Disposal Wells

The Economies of Europe

US Trade Balance

Wealth Inequality in the United States

Minions

Budget Sequestration and US Austerity

Detroit

Follow the (Canadian Foreign Aid) Money

Feel Free to Stalk Me

Get Your Coffee To Go

Sometimes I Tweet Instead

Categories

Check it

Feel Free to Stalk Me

Get Your Coffee To Go

Categories

Tags

Check it