Chart Porn » Interactive

How Would You Cut Defense?

Dustin — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:49:59 +0000

The NYT presents a list of options for you to decide how to trim defense spending. As usual, it’s not quite as easy as you might think – but I still got it up over $800 billion. I like this interactive way of educating people about budget issues.

Gay Rights

Dustin — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:34:41 +0000

A nice interactive visualization of gay rights in the United States, by State. This was created by the Guardian in the UK – where, interestingly, the conservatives support gay rights.

Update: Scale of the Universe

Dustin — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:24:54 +0000

Cary and Michael Huang have updated their zoomable scale of everything (first seen in 2010). The graphics are nicer and smoother, they’ve replaced the annotations with a scale in the corner, and everything can be clicked on for popup detail. Thankfully, they also now let you turn off the dreadful music. Thanks to Shrub for sending me the link!

Zombie Apocalypse Map

Dustin — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:19:00 +0000

Use this interactive google-mashup-map to locate emergency supplies in the event of a zombie outbreak. This should help you not walk past guns and supplies like in that stupid Walking Dead show.

Geography of Government Benefits

Dustin — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:26:00 +0000

Share of income that comes from government programs, broken down by type of benefit. (related article)

CityMaps

Dustin — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:22:34 +0000

CityMaps is an interactive going out map service– something like a crowdsourced cross between google maps and yelp. Personally I found it to be a disturbing reminder of how surrounded we are by corporations and logos. For a fun game, see how many Starbucks logos you can fit in one screen – my record is eight, below. Currently available for NYC, San Francisco, and Austin.

Map of the US Melting Pot

Dustin — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:11:21 +0000

Bloomberg created this interactive map of heritages according to the 2010 census. You can select any two and see how they compare across the country. It struck me a bit odd that neither “native american” nor “african american” is included – it’s probably some strange dataset problem.

2012 Economic Freedom Map

Dustin — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:17:00 +0000

I’m not a fan of the Heritage Foundation, and the one time I dug into the data of their Economic Freedom Index I found that they occasionally compare apples and oranges to get around data scarcity – BUT: they do put a large research effort into the report each year. The below interactive map is well executed – but you should drill down to country level data to get a feel for what is really being measured (click on a country, then the “learn more about this country” link that pops up in the lower left. Why this requires two steps I have no idea).

2013 Federal Budget

Dustin — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:37:41 +0000

A number of news agencies took a crack at visualizing Obama’s 2013 budget proposal. (If you want to try it yourself, a shocking amount of detailed data is available in spreadsheet form at the OMB website).

Below is the Washington Post’s version. You can click on any box to see a column chart of historical values. It would have been nice to be able to drill down further, but this is a good start:

The NYT created a beautiful animated – ummm – I’m not sure what this is. A dorling diagram? Well, it looks pretty, and it’s slightly more detailed than the WashPost version, but I think the brain processes square area better than circles.

The WSJ posted five charts, but they’re nothing special:

2012 Global Risk Map

Dustin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:43:58 +0000

The World Economic Forum always has some interesting visualizations and info-videos.

Global Risk Map:

Interactive Risk Explorer (be sure to play with the menu tabs on the right):

OECD Statistics Explorer and Some Other Cool Shit

Dustin — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:45:52 +0000

This is an example of why you keep checking back on mediocre data visualization tools. The last time I looked at the OECD’s explorer, it was slow, kinda clunky, and not very innovative. This morning I took another look. Wow! It has interactive choropleth maps, motion scatter plots, profile plots, time graphs, and cool histogram tools – and all of them have excellent filters and fine tuning controls, can be viewed over time, are smoothly animated and you’re allowed to load your own data.

But wait! There’s more! MUCH more! It turns out the explorer is just one tool created by the Swedish National Center for Visual Analytics (NCVA), who have constructed a set of Geovisual Analytics Visualization (GAV) Flash tools, including what you need to create your own statistics explorer. The NCVA also has a spin-off company that sells a desktop version of the explorer, a Flow Map explorer that draws proportionate arrows on maps to track flows, and a multi-dimensional explorer (which I only played with a little – but is very very cool).

Check out the scatter tables in the MDIM as a way to select data in the other two panels:

I’m almost embarrassed I haven’t seen these before. On the other hand, I love that there is such innovation going on – all the time.

Browser Market Share

Dustin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:39:00 +0000

Aesthetically this is obviously quite nice. The roll-over data is snappy quick. The color selection is clear and intuitive. But there’s something about these nested arc charts that I just don’t like – they don’t seem like a very good way to illustrate historical data. It was created as a simple example of the Axiis data visualization framework – which offers several other Flex based graphic tools. (Hat tip to Ryan C for sending this along!)

The Strait of Hormuz

Dustin — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:22:00 +0000

This FT map illustrates just how packed things are at the Persian Gulf’s bottleneck. The designers wisely chose to allow viewers to select which layers of information they wanted to see, and also provided useful related information as popups.

Here is the map with all layers turned on – which obviously would have been a disaster without the interactive filtering.

(note: some FT features require a subscription to view)

Population Pyramids

Dustin — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:29:00 +0000

I’ve loved these types of charts since I first saw them used for insight into the Arab Spring discontent. What’s great about the version linked below is the country coverage that Worldlifeexpectancy.com has managed to pull together – it’s very impressive. If you wander the site, there are a lot of additional maps and charts on global causes of death, life expectancy, and other fun demographic topics. (via)

On a design note: Wow. I haven’t seen someone attempt a black background and glowing neon fonts in such a manner since the earliest days of the internet. I don’t know whether to applaud the boldness and bust out some glowsticks, or put on sunglasses to prevent a seizure. I suppose since it’s all about death, the black kinda works.

100 Best Companies to Work For (2012)

Dustin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:02:50 +0000

The Fortune Magazine website for this study has lots of related articles and indicators. My favorite it the interactive “Perkfinder” – you select the benefits most important to you, and it tells you which of the top 100 companies provide them: