The Economist updates their Big Mac Index, which as we all know, is the most accurate way to measure the global economy:

It is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), the notion that in the long run exchange rates should move towards the rate that would equalise the prices of a basket of goods and services around the world. At market exchange rates, a burger is 44% cheaper in China than in America. In other words, the raw Big Mac index suggests that the yuan is 44% undervalued against the dollar. But we have long warned that cheap burgers in China do not prove that the yuan is massively undervalued. Average prices should be lower in poor countries than in rich ones because labour costs are lower. The chart above shows a strong positive relationship between the dollar price of a Big Mac and GDP per person.

When adjusted for GDP, we can see where Big Macs are actually expensive: Brazil, Argentina, and Sweden. I guess there's a premium on special sauce over there.

[The Economist via kottke]

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Is the economy going to turn around any time soon? How does this economic swing compare to previous cycles? Amanda Cox et al of the New York Times explores these ever so important questions in her recent nine-part interactive series.

In a nutshell, the series is a story of business cycles starting at expansion, to slowdown, then downturn, to recovery, and we go in circles:

From there, we see the current cycle via industrial production in comparison to not just previous cycles (1969 to present), but also OECD leading indicators. It's animated, it's interactive, it's sexy.

Go take a look for yourself. It's pretty interesting once you take a couple of minutes to wrap your head around what you're seeing. I'm thoroughly impressed, and I feel a little bit smarter, which is saying something, because I'm an economic buffoon.

What do you think - is this interactive totally awesome or is the material kind of over your head?

Other Versions

This of course is not the first time this data has been visualized. Here are three other versions. Two use a similar concept while the remaining uses an indexed time series. However, while similar, the goals of each are different.

This one is from the Bureau of Statistics in Netherlands:

This one form the OECD:

Finally, this is from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis:

The NYT version plays out like a news story; the Netherlands and OECD ones are more like analysis tools with filters and more indicators; and the St. Louis fed uses a more traditional chart.

It's pretty clear which is better aesthetically, but what about from a data perspective?

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Inc.com just released their annual valuation guide for 2009, which allows business owners to gauge the value of their, uh, business. At the center of this guide is an interactive "business valuation calculator" by Tommy McCall. I guess the best way to describe the graphic is Trendalyzer with some style and added functionality.

Each dot represents an industry and the position on the chart indicates whether the companies in that industry are priced high or low. Press the play button and watch how prices change between 2002 and now.

Finally, if you've got a business of your own, enter your own values to for a custom value estimate.

[Thanks, Sarah]

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OK, so we saw CreditLoan's representation of Obama's stimulus package. Here's Washington Post's take on the breakdown with a combination of bar charts, bubbles, and a stacked graph chart for time - and the numbers seem to all add up correctly. I don't like the bubbles that look like dangling ornaments though. CreditLoan's is more readable, but maybe that has to do with the Post's version being made for print and the other made for online. What do you think - which version works best for you?

[via The Big Picture]

President Barack Obama has a $800 billion+ economic stimulus package in the works. That's a lot of dough. Where's it all going? CreditLoan provides the breakdown in bubbles, bubbles, and more bubbles. Fill color indicates what the money will be used for (e.g. tax cuts, human capital) and border color shows where the money goes to (e.g. government, people, business).

The information is organized nicely and the graphic is attractive, but it probably needs a good bit of fact checking. Some quick calculator work indicates a lot of the numbers don't add up right. I'm sure there are some rounding errors, but there are some pretty big discrepancies. Ideas anyone? I don't have the patience to go through all the comments on the original post to find out, but I suggest you take the graphic with a grain of salt.

[Thanks, Pavan]

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While many investors use economic and fundamental factors to identify investment opportunities -- i.e. whether a company has good management and is in a growth industry, or how it will be affected by macroeconomic conditions -- ultimately the price of an asset comes down to two things: supply and demand. The demand for buying vs the demand of selling. By visualizing the movement of price assets, we can gain an understanding of the psychology of the market as a whole, and thus what direction the price will go.

Let's look at the exchange rate of the Euro vs. the US dollar to see how this works.

The Euro-US dollar exchange rate has been in steady down trend since July of 2008. Recently, however, the market has been consolidating some of its movements. You'll notice the price makes a triangle shape of late; in other words, it is making lower highs and higher lows on a daily basis. Put simply, its range is contracting. The triangle is identified by drawing two trendlines -- one that tracks the fact that highs are declining, and another one that shows that lows are rising.

For traders, there is one key question: when is the market going to break out of the triangle? When the market breaks out of the triangle, it would suggest that the battle between buying and selling demand has been won by one side (at least for the short-term). As such, many traders will short sell (i.e. place a bet that the price will fall) if the price breaks out of the triangle to the downside; conversely, they will enter a buy order if the market breaks out of the triangle to the upside. In the chart above, the EURUSD exchange rate fell below the bottom triangle line, and then proceeded to fall even more. It was a sign that selling demand has the upper hand.

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In this map from the Financial Times, the state of Europe's economy is shown like a weather map. A cloud with a lightning bolt represents a "sudden change in outlook, outlook uncertain." There's nothing but gray skies ahead, I'm afraid. Oh, but wait, what's that? Cyprus has some sun peaking out over the cloud: "Clouds over growth with some sunny prospects." There is hope.

[via The Big Picture | Thanks, Michael]

Here's the abstract from their paper (bold added to emphasize point of interest):

Past research has investigated ideals of beauty and how these ideals have changed across time. In the current study, facial and body characteristics of Playboy Playmates of the Year from 1960-2000 were identified and investigated to explore their relationships with U.S. social and economic factors. Playmate of the Year age, body feature measures, and facial feature measurements were correlated with a general measure of social and economic hard times. Consistent with Environmental Security Hypothesis predictions, when social and economic conditions were difficult, older, heavier, taller Playboy Playmates of the Year with larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios, and smaller body mass index values were selected. These results suggest that environmental security may influence perceptions and preferences for women with certain body and facial features.

How would you visualize the data?

The data, past Playmate measurements, were made available. You can download them here in CSV format. Do the data really show a correlation? If so, how strong? Gold star goes to the best visualization of the data.

[via Marginal Revolution and kottke]

UPDATE: John S. did some plotting in R. Notice anything interesting?

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The G-Econ (Geographically-based Economic data) group has worked on making economic data publicly available via Gross Cell Product (GCP). In other words, they've collected data for each 1x1 degree latitude by longitude cell on the globe. Above is a cell-by-cell globe mapping world population. Here's one that shows world rainfall.

Check out more of these pretty world maps posted to the G-Econ Flickr photo set.

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I made a few tweaks and our humanflows visualization prototypes are now online. There's a bit of information on how humanflows came about, who was involved, and a day-by-day recap of the design process. Once you get to the prototypes section, give the applets a few seconds to load and hopefully you're not disappointed. The interaction is pretty intuitive. All you have to do is click and hold to browse the flow lines and the map. Also, if you can, go full screen on your browser. It looks much better that way (and how it was intended to be shown).

Again, I'd like to thank Miguel, Iman, and Monica for making my trip to Spain and the Visualizar workshop a memorable experience. Thank you!

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