Tag: tree map

  • The Evolution of the S&P 500

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    Brendan Barry
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    I found myself doing a bit of summer cleaning yesterday and I stumbled upon a few graphics of interest. This one comes from a September 2016 Wall Street Journal article about the changes in the S&P 500, a composite index of American stocks, some of the 500 largest. In terms of the page design, if it were not…

  • The Affordable Care Act You Likely Know as Obamacare

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    Brendan Barry
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    It just won’t die. Grandma, that is, in front of the death panels of Obamacare. Remember those? Well, even if you don’t, the Affordable Care Act (the actual name for Obamacare) is still around despite repeated attempts to repeal it. So in this piece from Bloomberg, Obamacare is examined from the perspective of leaving 27…

  • If the Government Were a Household

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    Brendan Barry
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    One of the things that irritates me about when people complain about government spending is the comparison against household budgeting. The two are very different. I mean on the surface, I suppose yes, both have income and both spend on stuff and services. But, to put it all in context there is this nice piece…

  • The History and Future of Data Visualisation

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    Brendan Barry
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    From time to time in my job I hear the desire or want for more different types of charts. But in this piece by Nick Brown over on Medium, we can see that there are really only a few key forms and some are already terrible—here’s looking at you, pie charts. How new are some…

  • Whence do US Retail Sales Come?

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    Brendan Barry
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    Today’s piece comes from the Wall Street Journal. It looks at US retail and foodservice spending through different types of stores. I take issue with a few things, firstly the tree map. Because it’s not really a tree map. Another thing I am not keen on is the comparison feature in the piece. The user…

  • Average Ticket Prices in 2013

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    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    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? I think this graphic actually makes it more…

  • Deformed Tree Map

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    Brendan Barry
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    Yesterday the BBC published an article about the success of the United Kingdom’s creative industry especially given the not-so-successful economy of the last few years. Unfortunately, the article included the tree map below. The problems are a few. First, a tree map is usually looking at two variables. One is encoded through the size of…

  • Consumer Spending by Store Type

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    Brendan Barry
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    Today’s post is a small interactive from the Wall Street Journal that allows the user to explore consumer spending not by category of spending, but rather the type of store in which they are spending, e.g. grocery retailers. Consumer spending is a fairly important measure of the US economy since so much of our economy…

  • Campaign Contributions

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    Brendan Barry
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    On 21 May, Angelenos went to the polls to elect the next mayor of Los Angeles. The contest followed an earlier vote that prompted the day’s run-off election. This graphic from the Los Angeles Times examined the contributions to the campaigns of the two finalists, Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel. The overall piece features an…

  • Average Household Spending

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    Brendan Barry
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    This tree map from the Wall Street Journal looks at an interesting subject: average household spending. How much are we spending on housing, on food, on transportation, &c.? But I’m not so sure that the main visualisation is necessary. I appreciate the big colour and splashiness, but the space use seems inefficient. Perhaps if the…