During production of the 2011 USAID annual letter from Rajiv Shah, someone said to someone else, “We need to make this more visually appealing. Let’s add some charts.” The problem was that there wasn’t much data to look at or report, and no one knew how to dig deeper. Plus — they had to sexify the letter in a hurry, so they settled for what’s there now.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find the mistakes and to make suggestions on how to improve on what’s there. Some figures clearly have a few oddities while others simply could’ve been improved with better design choices. Here’s the letter and the same as a PDF. Can you figure out what’s going on? Leave your findings in the comments. Godspeed.

You’ve seen population changes at the state and county level, but with Census data, you can zoom in all the way to the block level. Stephen Von Worley breaks it down.
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Over the past four years there was a 43 percent increase in prescriptions for antidepressants. Some news outlets attribute this rise to the recession. People more depressed equals more drugs. Ben Goldacre of Bad Science explains why said outlets need to be more careful with their analyses.

From what I can tell, all the reports took an aggregate (the 43 percent) and then made a big assumption to explain it. I’m all for data journalism, but statistics is rarely that straightforward.

The MIT SENSEable City Lab presents five different perspectives of the ebb and flow in Singapore at the Singapore Art Museum.
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It’s xkcd on statistical significance. I need to stop eating all those green jelly beans.

I hear there’s also a link between sunshine and lollipops.

John Martz, in collaboration with Koyama Press, pixelates 235 Star Trek characters in this limited edition print. This amuses me even though I’ve never been a Star Trek fan. Must be those episodes of Next Generation I watched after school because there was nothing else on. Always had a soft spot for that Data fellow.

[Trexels via Boing Boing]

Natasha Singer for The New York Times starts the article on visualization and design with: “In an uncharted world of boundless data, information designers are our new navigators.” Uh oh, I thought, another aesthetic-heavy piece on hot numbers. But then Singer continues:

They are computer scientists, statisticians, graphic designers, producers and cartographers who map entire oceans of data and turn them into innovative visual displays, like rich graphs and charts, that help both companies and consumers cut through the clutter. These gurus of visual analytics are making interactive data synonymous with attractive data.

I can get on board with that. Includes soundbites from Rosling, Shneiderman, and Rodenbeck.

[The New York Times]

Almost a year ago, the BBC aired the Beauty of Maps, but we Americans couldn’t watch it online. Well, now you can. The full documentary is available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube. The hour and a half film is broken up into 12 parts. They’ve actually been online since August of last year, but for some reason I’m just now hearing about it. Enjoy part one below.
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I feel like whenever I watch a British film, I see a Harry Potter wizard or witch in it. I guess I’m not imagining things. The Ragbag had a similar curiosity and graphed all the films with four or more wizards in it — all 24 of them.
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In a guest post for the guardian.co.uk Datablog, I thought out loud about the possible end of Data.gov and what it means for open government data. Let me know what you think.

Update: Funding might not be cut completely (for now).

As an entry to the Eyebeam DataVizChallenge to visualize your taxes, Budget Climb by Frankie Cheung, Zach Schwartz, and Fred Truman places you in a virtual environment where you can climb and stand on top of tax data.

Created using openframeworks, the Microsoft Kinect and OpenNI Budget Climb is a physically interactive data environment where we can explore 26 years of federal spending – giving us a unique perspective on how our government spends our money. In order to explore the data we must exert physical effort, revealing how the budget is distributed in a novel and tangible way.

Maybe not the best way to learn about the data, but I like the idea of data exploration as a game. See it in action below. It reminds me of Irad Lee’s Spamology.
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Designers’ current obsession with cocktails and proportions continues with Konstantin Datz’ recent poster. Engineer’s guide to drinks is still the best. Although this one gets plus points for hints of realism.
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I found this on Serious Eats, but it looks like it’s from a book. Anyone know what book it is? This picture is awesome. Maybe one day, with enough practice, sweat, and tears, you will be able to tame the breath of the dragon.
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Last week, there were rumblings over the end of the Statistical Abstract, and I suggested that it was just a sign of changing technologies. I thought that Data.gov and similar sites were the natural progression. Here’s the problem with that argument. Congress is planning on shutting down Data.gov and other transparency sites in the next few months.
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My many thanks to the FlowingData sponsors. Without them, this blog would probably be a big collection of posts apologizing for not posting in a long time. Check out what these groups have to offer. They help you make use of your data, and you can try all of them for free.

IDV Solutions Visual Fusion — Business intelligence software for building focused apps that unite data from virtually any data source in a visual, interactive context for better insight and understanding.

InstantAtlas — Enables information analysts and researchers to create highly-interactive online reporting solutions that combine statistics and map data to improve data visualization, enhance communication, and engage people in more informed decision making.

Tableau Software — Combines data exploration and visual analytics in an easy-to-use data analysis tool you can quickly master. It makes data analysis easy and fun. Customers are working 5 to 20 times faster using Tableau.

Want to sponsor FlowingData? Contact me at [email protected] for more details.

Amusing from graphic designer Joe Stone, although not as good as the crazy-detailed one from a couple of years ago. [Joe Stone | Thanks, John]

Not many people understand the importance of data privacy. They don’t get out how little bits of information sent from your phone every now and then can show a lot about your day-to-day life.

As the German government tries to come to a consensus about its data retention rules, Green party politician Malte Spitz retrieved six months of phone data from Deutsche Telekom (by suing them), to show what you can get from a little bit of private mobile data. He handed the data to Zeit Online, and they in turn mapped and animated practically every one of Spitz’ moves over half a year and combined it with publicly available information from sources such as his appointment website, blog, and Twitter feed for more context.
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Do you understand how time zones work around the world and when exactly you need to move your watch forward or back? Me neither. BBC News provides a brief history of time zones via interactive globe.
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