Source: Washington Post Archive:
The Deficit: Obama vs Bush
3 Feb 2012
The Post is doing a great job visualizing the election so far, with a number of clear tools that they are keeping very up to date.
First up: Maps and interactive filtering of spending on ads, including videos of the ads themselves:
A Primary Tracker: mapping out candidate visits, “pre-game analysis”, results by county, and “post-game analysis” – for EACH state!
And a campaign finance explorer:
They also have something called the @MentionMachine that supposedly tracks candidates by twitter mentions and other media references that you can drill down through. Unfortunately, it isn’t working for me on either Firefox or IE.
Iraq and Afghanistan Casualties
In: Graphic Design (bad) Interactive Maps Politics Source: Washington Post Source: WSJ
19 Dec 2011There are a lot of these graphs out there. What I like about this presentation from the WSJ is that each dot in each bar can be clicked on for a short biography of the person who died – a nice combination of information and gravitas.
CNN’s tool maps out where they came from and where they died, and provides an area for others to leave memories for each fallen. While information rich, this one felt very sterile to me, and I couldn’t find anyone that had the “memories” section filled in.
The NYT’s went strangely artsy, with a digitized mosaic menu of the fallen’s faces:
The Washington Post’s Faces of the Fallen feature does a good job of presenting summary information, as well as photos of each soldier:
And the Huffington post comes up with the least interactive, self-identified as interactive (ALL CAPS IN THE TITLE!!!), series of charts I’ve even seen. Pretty sad.
Marriage on the Decline
14 Dec 2011The Washington Post added family type to it’s interactive map of census data (the map also allows you to filter over time, race, density, etc). You can zoom in and see how your county compares to the rest of the country. Interesting observations: Married people with children only make up 7% of Washington DC?!? Utah is one of the few remaining regions with high “married w/children” percentages, compared to previous years when it was more common across the country.
Just 51 percent of all adults who are 18 and older are married, placing them on the brink of becoming a minority, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census statistics to be released Wednesday. That represents a steep drop from 57 percent who were married in 2000… In 1960, for example, when most baby boomers were children, 72 percent of all adults were married. The median age for brides was barely 20, and the grooms were just a couple of years older. (related article)
Washington DC Housing Prices
11 Oct 2011A nicely annotated analysis of changing house prices in the DC region. The main graphic shows how much you would need to earn to buy a “typical single family home”. There is also an interactive version which lets you compare information for different time periods and look at condo vs house sales. (related article)
Proof That Mondays Suck
30 Sep 2011Cornell researchers analyzed mood content in 2.4million tweets (based on word choice) and found that Saturdays and Sunday garnered the most positive expressions and Mondays the most negative – well, during the day anyway. Interestingly, Saturday and Sunday nights were way up (down) there too. On a design note, perhaps the lower graph should have inverted the scale? (related article)
Tax Break Breakdown
In: Innovative Interactive Politics Source: Washington Post US Economy
19 Sep 2011To be cliché: the truth may surprise you. This is a great look at the “loopholes” in our tax system, point by point. You can filter by kind of break, compare individual vs corporate, find out when they were first implemented, and see how they all add up. However, I really wish the lines in the main bar graph had matched width with the amount of the break (with the y-axis being billions of $) – at first glance that’s what I thought was going on. I’m also not sure how I feel about things like “employer contributions to health care” being considered a break. (related article)
Bad Credit Calculator
26 Jul 2011This interactive tool from the Washington post lets you see how much your credit score affects the interest you will pay on mortgage and auto loans.
(Not) Spreading the Wealth
20 Jun 2011
Life Expectancy
In: Culture Interactive Maps Science Source: Washington Post
15 Jun 2011Average life expectancy varies a lot by location, gender, and race. International comparisons done by the original study conclude that the US is falling behind the rest of the industrialized world.
From a design point of view, take a look at the below version of the map from the original study — the use of a higher contrast color scheme and non-linear legend ranges results in a more striking view of the results. I’m not sure which one I like better. The top one is more information rich and cleaner – but the bottom one slaps you in the face with meaning.
What is Causing the Deficit?
14 Jun 2011A number of these charts have been making the rounds, using different measures. Some of the projections obviously have to be taken with a grain of salt, but the basic message appears to be that letting the Bush era tax cuts expire would relieve a lot of budget pressure. Each of the links below go to fairly in-depth blog posts.
Immigrants Highly Skilled
9 Jun 2011Despite public perception of immigrants as being poorly educated, the high-skilled U.S. immigrant population today outnumbers the low-skilled population. (related article; original study)
Sorting Out Budget Proposals
1 Jun 2011On the left, a comparison of budget proposals. On the right, a videographic that is sort of “debt ceiling for dummies”. Both from the Washington Post.
What’s Your Major Worth?
24 May 2011Average earnings of different college bachelor’s degrees. Good to see engineering at the top. The most popular major?: Business – ick. The original study also breaks down earnings by gender and ethnic groups. (related Washington Post article)
Where are the Jobs?
In: Employment Interactive Source: Washington Post US Economy
20 May 2011A fantastic annotated heatmap from the Washington Post breaking down job creation/loss by sector. On the right is an interactive, slightly more annotated, line chart version of the same data. I prefer the heatmap. (related article)
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- edj: The bodies predisposition to get fat from carbs is a wonderfully outdated survival method/instinct t [...]
- RJS: Highly entertaining this, however misleading it might be--if indeed it is misleading. The problem is [...]
- Al: Designers out there will enjoy this 'making of', walking through the designs they tried and discarde [...]
- Matt: Totally misleading. The recent spending cuts were not an Obama policy; Afghanistan was overwhelmingl [...]
- Mike Liveright: Two comments, though I do like the look and results... 1) Since $'s are linear, I think that a 2 [...]