In May 2011, the United States owned $14.3 trillion in debt. A lot of that is money is owed to other countries. Heather Billings and Todd Lindeman of The Washington Post break foreign debt down by continent and then by country.
Continue Reading
Statistical Visualization
-
All the countries that the US owes money to
-
When crime happens in major cities
Does more crime happen during the late hours of the night or in the middle of the afternoon? Trulia Insights uses small multiples to look at crime by hour in major cities, or rather, when it is reported, according to SpotCrime. There appears to be a dip during the 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. hours for all crime types, across all cities. Well, except for Indianapolis, which seems to report incidents with rounded off hours.
Continue Reading -
Award-nominated movies vs. highest grossing
Dorothy Gambrell of very small array continues with her fascination of movie quality and money gross. This time around she looks looks at the overlap between Academy Award nominees and highest grossing films from 1928 to present. While the two categories are not mutually exclusive, the overlap isn't incredible common.
-
RottenTomatoes trends with Career-o-matic
Slate puts together a rough analysis of RottenTomatoes actor and director career ratings. They plot average ratings for films in general, actors, and directors, which aren't all that useful, but the Career-o-matic is fun to play with. Punch in a name and see the ratings over time.
[U]se Slate's Hollywood Career-o-Matic tool below to map the career of any major actor or director from the last 26 years. You can also type in more than one name to plot careers side by side. For example, Paul Thomas Anderson vs. Wes Anderson vs. Pamela Anderson. Mouse over the data points to see which movies they represent.
Poor M. Night Shyamalan is on the decline.
[Hollywood Career-O-Matic | Thanks, Laura]
-
Rise and fall of housing prices
Kevin Quealy and Jeremy White report for The New York Times on the rise and fall of housing prices with an interactive time series chart:
The Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index for 20 major metropolitan areas is one of the most closely watched gauges of the housing market. The figures for March, released May 31, showed prices at their lowest point since the downturn began.
It's similar to the home run count graphic from last year, although there's a key difference. It's not in Flash. It works equally well though.
Either click a city of interest on the left, or interact with the graph directly for more information. Not surprisingly, Detroit have been falling longer than any of the other 19 selected cities, whereas prices in Washington, D.C. have risen the most since February.
-
Reactions to the death of a terrorist
On the announcement of Osama Bin Laden's death, there was a mixed reaction across the country. Some celebrated, whereas others had mixed feelings. Jon Huang and Aron Pilhofer for The New York Times, asked readers how they felt and to mark their thoughts on the positivity vs. significance grid.
Continue Reading -
Tweets per second during Bin Laden announcement
As I listened to my young neighbors run around the parking lot chanting, "U-S-A! U-S-A!" I glanced at my Twitter feed, and it showed a burst of similar sentiment. On the announcement of Osama Bin Laden's death, Twitter recorded the highest sustained rate of tweets ever, at an average of 3,000 per second. The above shows the progression from 9:30pm to 12:30am EST.
[Image Link via @nickbilton]
-
Dropping movie ratings from the past six decades
Dorothy Gambrell of very small array charts median Tomatometer ratings of the top 10 grossing films, since 1950. From the graph it looks like movies are getting worse, but are they really? This goes back to a similar argument from a couple of months ago. The decline is probably more of an indicator of reviewers, viewers, movie types, and ease of watching than it is of a drop in quality.
-
Visual evidence that movies are getting worse
Moki takes a page out of the OkCupid social media playbook and analyzes movie ratings over the past two decades. They looked at the 20 most popular movies for each year, and then plotted them by "polarization," or rather, standard deviation, or in other words, movies that had a wider spread of ratings were more polarizing than those where reviewers came to a consensus.
Continue Reading -
America is not the best at everything
Charles M. Blow has a look at some metrics for the International Monetary Fund's "Advanced economy" countries. As Americans, we like to think that we're the best at everything, but in many instances, that just isn't the case. Sometimes we're the worst.
[New York Times via @charlesmblow]
-
The Grammy winning sales bump
A Grammy win is worth way more than a little trophy and some short-lived fame. It's worth actual cash. As shown in this graphic by Wilson Andrews and Mike McPhate for the Washington Post, album sales two weeks after winning shoot up from two weeks before the awards show.
Last year, album sales only went up 56 percent for the Taylor Swift album Fearless, compared to a plus 891 percent bump for the 2009 winners, Alison Kraus and Robert Plant. However, considering the relative obscurity of this year's winner, Arcade Fire, I suspect a bump more like the latter.
-
Exploratory treemap for Obama’s 2012 budget proposal
It's that time of year again. Obama recently released his 2012 budget proposal for how to allocate $3.7 trillion. It's complicated no doubt, but Shan Carter and Amanda Cox of the New York Times make it easier to understand with their interactive treemap. Rectangles are sized by proposed spending and colors indicate percent change from previous year. Darker red rectangles represent bigger drops from the 2011 budget and darker green greater increases. Zoom in and pan as you please.
Continue Reading -
Gamers mimic the real life football season
As you might expect, people who play sports video games tend to play with teams when those teams are winning in real life. Anyone who plays online via their Playstation or Xbox can tell you this. I play NBA 2K11 sometimes, and it can get pretty boring playing the Lakers over and over again. Kevin Quealy for the New York Times investigates the phenomenon with data from Madden NFL, the most popular football video game of all time, and small multiples. I sense R and ggplot.
A team loses, and there's a dip in gameplay. A team wins or gets a new star player, there's a spike.
-
Watch the world get fatter over the past three decades
People are getting fatter everywhere. You know this. But there's nothing like the numbers to actually show how we're growing outwards and by how much. With this interactive, Wilson Andrews and Todd Lindeman, for the Washington Post, report:
With a few exceptions, the average body mass index in most countries has risen since 1980, according to a project that tracked risk factors for heart disease and stroke in 199 countries over 28 years.
Each circle represents a country, plotted by men's BMI on the horizontal axis and women's BMI on the vertical. Countries above the diagonal are countries where women have a higher BMI than the men, and vice versa for dots below the diagonal. Press play, and watch how BMI has changed from 1980 to 2008.
Continue Reading -
Price and adoption timeline of gadgets
New gadgets, from Web-connected TVs, to smartphones, to Fax machines, always seem to start expensive and then decrease in price a few months later. We all know this. But by how much? Alicia Parlapiano of The Washington Post takes a look in this interactive. It shows units sold by year for different gadgets. Bubble size indicates average price.
Poor tape player. The Consumer Electronics Association didn't even bother tracking its sales after 2005.
-
Delicious mass exodus
On news that Delicious is on Yahoo's sunset list, thousands of people decided it was time to take a look at simplified competitor Pinboard. The much lower blue area is normal activity for the Pinboard servers, during a three-day period. The green represents activity after the Yahoo leak.
As a Delicious user for years, I really hope sunset means move to another company rather than shutdown.
Or maybe I'll start bookmarking on my desktop via browser. Gasp. I don't want to think about it. Oh the horror. The horror.
[Idle Words via @PinboardIn]
-
Facebook status updates: young people are self-centered and old ramble
The Facebook Data Team had a quantitative look at status updates by age and content:
The chart on left confirms the typical stereotypes about younger and older people. Younger people express more negative emotions (including anger) and swear more. They use more pronouns referring to oneself (“I”, “my”, etc.) and talk more about school. Older people write longer updates, use more prepositions and articles, and talk more about other people, including their family.
Word categories are sorted by correlation, from greatest to least. Blue indicates positive correlations while red indicates negative.
Continue Reading -
Worst and best commutes in America
I grew up in a relatively small city where it took no more than fifteen minutes to get where I needed to go. When I went to college, the public transportation was really good, and everything was pretty close together. So when I found myself in Los Angeles for a couple of years, it was hard to swallow the hour long drive without traffic and three-hour long drive in traffic to get places. I still can't stand it.
In a similar vein to their food spending graphic, Bundle, with Selma-Rachel Swire, has a look at commuting in major cities in the US. Darker reds indicate greater spending, height represents number of commuters in a city, and length indicates average distance travelled by commuters.
What's commuting like in your neck of the woods?
[Bundle | Thanks, Mike & Lauren]
-
How Twitter users balanced the budget
In a follow-up to their puzzle to balance the budget, The New York Times shows the top selections that about seven thousand Twitter users made. It's not a scientific sample, as it's only Twitter users, but interesting to look at nevertheless with a number of useful breakdowns.
-
Comparison of Republican and Democratic tax plans
Lori Montgomery of the The Washington Post reports on the difference between the Democratic and Republican tax plans.
The Republicans' plan to extend the Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthy would cost $36.6 billion more than the Democrats' plan, which extends cuts only for families making less than $250,000 a year and individuals making less than $200,000.
As you move down the chart, there are relatively small differences, until you hit the bottom. Medium circle. Huge circle.
Continue Reading
Data and visualization blogs worth following
How recruiters look at your resume
Bed cartography
Pancake Venn
Interactive Islands of Mankind
Gender wage gap, how much less women make than men
How to Visualize and Compare Distributions
Visualize This