Comments on: Watch the Giants of Finance Shrink… Then Grow

By: Planner Reads » Blog Archive » Watch the Giants of Finance Shrinkâ€¦ Then Grow

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:01:07 +0000

[...] 1 Share Comment source Watch the Giants of Finance Shrinkâ€¦ Then Grow First shared by: Andy [...]

By: Vu N

Vu N — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:55:35 +0000

Oh I see them now. I must have some caching issues.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:18:43 +0000

deal!

By: Nathan

Nathan — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:17:37 +0000

uh i seem them. do you not see your comments?

By: Vu N

Vu N — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:43:38 +0000

Hmm, some how my comments don’t appear on this post anymore? I think i might have flooded the blog :)

By: Vu N

Vu N — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:40:46 +0000

I like that idea :) Deal. Let’s do it to prove that the Times is sometime wrong ;)

By: Nathan

Nathan — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:42:05 +0000

True. I was thinking something along the lines of Amanda’s Barry Bonds graphic:

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/spo.....APHIC.html

I think that, couple with a slider might work since the market values are pretty different and won’t be completely clustered in the middle.

By: Vu N

Vu N — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:19:21 +0000

I am almost with you on this. The only small problem that you may face is that a time series with 39 lines will be hard to see. Unless you separate all of them out and have a time series for each of the bank, which may make the graphics very big.

Cheers,

By: Nathan

Nathan — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:38:55 +0000

or to go even simpler: a time series for all 39 with lines that highlight when you roll over…

By: Vu N

Vu N — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:14:33 +0000

I left a comment on infosthetic.com about this same graphics. I have to say that people are focusing too much on the technical execution of the interactive rather than its actual usefulness.

I will say it again, a simple bar chart will be better than this treemap because of the following reason.

This graphics shows you that the financial industry is shrinking over time, no big surprise here. But can you see how JPMorgan is doing over time? I didn’t find that very easy to do.

You can achieve that with a simple barchart of the initial amount for each institution drawn as a bar. As the time changes, the bars change their sizes, but the initial amounts stay grayed out so you can use them as references.

You can have another bar to present the industry as a whole and see how it shrinks with time.

Don’t get me wrong, I like most of what the Times produces. I worked with Shan and Karl before and they are amazing graphic editors. But this graphics can be presented in a more accessible way.

Cheers,