Statistical Visualization

• Compare presidential candidate fundraising

  February 2, 2012 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (3)

  

  Presidential candidates have raised $186 million up to now, according to the Federal Election Commission. The New York Times lets you compare the amounts raised by each candidate, over time and space. Simply select a candidate on the left, and another on the right to see how they match up. Fundraising by candidates from previous elections, at the same time of year, are also included for context.

  While not the focus of the interactive, the distributions for donation size at the bottom seem to be especially telling.

  [New York Times via infosthetics]

• Words used in SOTU and Republican presidential candidates in debates

  January 24, 2012 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (10)

  

  Jonathan Corum for The New York Times examines word usage by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union addresses and the words used by Republican candidates in their debates. Many of you will be happy to know that no word clouds were harmed in the making of this graphic.

  [New York Times]

• Job growth at the best companies to work for

  January 24, 2012 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (6)

  

  Nicolas Rapp and Anne Vandermey with a straightforward look at new jobs added at the top 100 companies to work for, according to Fortune.

  Fat paychecks, sweet perks, fun colleagues, and over 70,000 jobs ready to be filled — these employers offer dream workplaces. Like Google, which reclaims the top spot this year to become a three-time champion. Meet this year’s top 100, network with the winners on LinkedIn, and more.

  Number of new jobs added or lost is on the horizontal, and number of employees at the start of the year on the vertical. Bubble size represents number of job applicants.

  There were 7.6 million applicants to Starbucks last year. That's insane.

  [Nicolas Rapp]

• Optimized dart throwing and other games

  January 17, 2012 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (9)

  

  If you play darts just trying to hit the bullseye, you aren't playing for maximum output. Don't fret though. DataGenetics is here to help with mathematical advice on how to play the game based on your skill level (Update: This is very similar to the dart work by Ryan Tibshirani, et al.):

  The optimal strategy for aiming depends on your skill as darts player. A very skillful player should aim for the middle of the triple 20; Much of the time he will hit his target, and the times he misses will be few enough that his average score will still be high.

  A very poor player should aim close to the bullseye, as just hitting the board will be an achievement (and a scoring one at that!). Aiming for the center maximizes the chances of hitting something.

  But what happens between these two extreme?

  I was a kid the last time I threw darts, and I was more interested in throwing them as high as I could in the air watching them stick into the grass. Maybe it's time to try it the right way.

  See also optimal gameplay for Battleship, Risk, and Candyland.

  [DataGenetics via infosthetics]

• Apollo 11 lunar landing told through data

  January 4, 2012 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (3)

  From Yanni Loukissas of the MIT Laboratory for Automation, Robotics, and Society, comes the story of the Apollo 11 lunar landing told via multiple time series running in parallel and the back and forth between astronauts and mission control.

  The Apollo 11 visualization draws together social and technical data from the 1969 moon landing in a dynamic 2D graphic. The horizontal axis is an interactive timeline. The vertical axis is divided into several sections, each corresponding to a data source. At the top, commentators are present in narratives from Digital Apollo and NASA technical debriefings. Just below are the members of ground control. The middle section is a log-scale graph stretching from Earth (~10E9 ft. away) to the Moon. Utterances from the landing CAPCOM, Duke, the command module pilot, Collins, the mission commander, Armstrong, and the lunar module pilot, Aldrin, are plotted on this graph.

  Climax hits around the 4-minute mark. Too bad it doesn't get to the one small step for man part.

• Corruption versus human development

  December 9, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (7)

  

  Transparency International released annual data for the Corruption Perceptions Index. The Economist plotted it against the UN's Human Development Index:

  Comparing the corruption index with the UN's Human Development Index (a measure combining health, wealth and education), demonstrates an interesting connection. When the corruption index is between approximately 2.0 and 4.0 there appears to be little relationship with the human development index, but as it rises beyond 4.0 a stronger connection can be seen. Outliers include small but well-run poorer countries such as Bhutan and Cape Verde, while Greece and Italy stand out among the richer countries.

  Interesting, although I suspect that the indices have some factors in common.

  [The Economist via @mikeloukides]

• 40 years of boxplots

  December 6, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (4)

  

  Famed statistician John Tukey created the boxplot in 1970. It shows a distribution summary in a small amount of space. Hadley Wickham and Lisa Stryjewski look back on the old standby and its evolution up to present. Keep it in mind, while still used today, the boxplot was created with pencil and paper.

  One of the original constraints on the boxplot was that it was designed to be computed and drawn by hand. As every statistician now has a computer on their desk, this constraint can be relaxed, allowing variations of the boxplot that are substantially more complex. These variations attempt to display more information about the distribution, maintaing the compact size of the boxplot, but bringing in the richer distributional summary of the histogram or density plot. These plots can overcome problems in the original such as the failure to display multi-modality, or the excessive number of "outliers" when n is large.

  Alright, computers are useful. I guess.

  [40 years of boxplots]

• Kill Math makes math more meaningful

  October 5, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (2)

  

  After a certain point in math education, like some time during high school, the relevance of the concepts to the everyday and the real world seem to fade. However, in many ways, math lets you describe real life better than you can with just words. Designer Bret Victor hopes to make the abstract and conceptual to real and concrete with Kill Math.
  Continue Reading

• The Fortune 500, 1955 to 2010

  September 28, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (15)

  

  Since 1955, Fortune Magazine has published a list of America's 500 largest companies. What companies have risen to the top? Which ones have fallen? Ben Fry, of Fathom Information Design, visualizes the companies of past and present and how their rankings, revenue, and profit have changed.
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• Last.fm scrobbles as calendar heat map

  September 13, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Add Comment

  

  Martin Dittus, a former Last.fm employee, grabbed listening data for staff, moderators, and alumni, and visualized 8.7 million scrobbles in an extended calendar format.
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• Girl Scout cookie pie chart

  September 9, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (7)

  

  With Girl Scout cookie season around the corner, Wired pies it up with cookies showing percentage of sales. It's all about the Caramel deLites. [Thanks, Elise]

• How the deficit got so big

  July 26, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (24)

  

  The US continues to rack up more and more debt, with a deficit in the trillions. But how did we get here? Teresa Tritch for The New York Times examines:

  In 2001, President George W. Bush inherited a surplus, with projections by the Congressional Budget Office for ever-increasing surpluses, assuming continuation of the good economy and President Bill Clinton’s policies. But every year starting in 2002, the budget fell into deficit. In January 2009, just before President Obama took office, the budget office projected a $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009 and deficits in subsequent years, based on continuing Mr. Bush’s policies and the effects of recession. Mr. Obama’s policies in 2009 and 2010, including the stimulus package, added to the deficits in those years but are largely temporary.

  Predicting the future is a tricky game. Even if you do have Grays Sports Almanac.

  [New York Times via Waxy]

• All the countries that the US owes money to

  July 22, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (21)

  

  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.
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• When crime happens in major cities

  July 5, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (7)

  

  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

  June 22, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (9)

  

  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.

  [very small array]

• RottenTomatoes trends with Career-o-matic

  June 14, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (1)

  

  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

  May 31, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (2)

  

  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.

  [New York Times]

• Reactions to the death of a terrorist

  May 4, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Add Comment

  

  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.
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• Tweets per second during Bin Laden announcement

  May 2, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (2)

  

  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

  April 19, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (10)

  

  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.

  [very small array]