Chart Porn » Source: WSJ

Retail Sales

Dustin — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:33:22 +0000

Here’s an example of how more isn’t always better. Compare the interactive presentation of retail sales data below to the static version – both from the Wall Street Journal. In my opinion the static version presents the information in a much clearer and usable format. The only thing it’s missing is a chart for “total retail sales”. Regarding the interactive version, I’ve never liked stacked bar charts over time unless they illustrate very clear trends – with this many similar segments I think they are pretty silly (though the ability to drill down does alleviate this a smidgeon). (related article)

Charting the Euro Zone Crisis

Dustin — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:04:17 +0000

A series of excellent annotated charts on the main indicators of the European crisis.

Iraq and Afghanistan Casualties

Dustin — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:41:00 +0000

There 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.

Presidential Primary Calendar

Dustin — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:56:25 +0000

An interesting comparison of state primary and caucus dates 2000-2012, both for the Democrats and Republicans. You can watch Iowa and New Hampshire keep moving back the opening day to stay before other states trying to steal the spotlight. The bad news: Super Tuesday isn’t until March 6th – so we have 3 more months to go of lame media coverage of the Republican field.

Unemployment (1948-2011)

Dustin — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 20:10:22 +0000

I haven’t posted this version in a while, but the WSJ does keep it up to date with the latest data. I think it’s a lovely use of a heatmap.

Capital Inflows

Dustin — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:49:56 +0000

Cheap money and slow growth in the advanced countries has led to large capital flows to emerging market countries, as this interactive tool from the WSJ shows. If you mouse over each country you can view countries’ policy responses. I really like these map/graph combo designs – the two go very well together.

Housing: Rent vs Buy

Dustin — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 18:43:48 +0000

Barry Ritholtz has another great post about the housing market over at The Big Picture. In addition to his analytical insights, he pointed out two great tools for looking at housing markets across the country.

The first is a Rent vs Buy interactive from Trulia:

Second is the Wall Street Journal’s chart of price-to-income ratios (compared to the 1985-00 average).

(related WSJ article)

How We Spend our Time

Dustin — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:07:19 +0000

Results from the 2010 American Time Use Survey. These look odd to me – and there are two possible reasons for this:
#1: Everyone lies on surveys (ie – they know they SHOULD be getting 8 hours of sleep, so that’s what they report).
#2: I do not have the lifestyle of an average American.

(via)

Federal Crimes

Dustin — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:27:27 +0000

Interactive graph of federal crimes. I wish it had better dynamic filtering so you could look closer at some of the more interesting categories.

Long-Term Unemployment

Dustin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 22:21:00 +0000

The percent of people unemployed greater than a year is scary. (related article)

Marriage and Divorce

Dustin — Mon, 23 May 2011 16:07:25 +0000

Flowing Data created some nice charts about trends in marriage based on the just released census survey data on Marriage and Divorce.

The original report has some very interesting tables, and includes data on divorces, for which the median length of the marriage was 8 years. The below chart indicated some surprising(?) differences in divorce trends between racial groups.

In related marriage research, the authors of the book "Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage and Dirty Dishes", created the below infographic based on a survey of 1,100 married people.

Inflation Heat Map

Dustin — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:45:00 +0000

Consumer prices are moving unevenly across the world. Economic growth, supply and demand, currency values and a variety of other factors drive consumer prices up — inflation — or down — deflation. Bars and figures show change from a year earlier in consumer price indexes.

The Gender Gap

Dustin — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:27:00 +0000

The Wall Street Journal has pulled together some interesting differences between the sexes concerning marital, educational, and employment trends.

Inflation: The Details

Dustin — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 18:56:59 +0000

Sure, inflation in January was only 1.6%:

but there’s a lot of variation in the products that make up the CPI (butter was up 19.6% y-y, for example), which this tool from the WSJ lets you explore:

Want to know how the CPI weights all of these goods? Check out this oldie but goodie:

Wall Street Compensation: 2010

Dustin — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:50:00 +0000

In 2010, total compensation and benefits at publicly traded Wall Street banks and securities firms hit a record of $135 billion […] The total is up 5.7% from $128 billion in combined compensation and benefits by the same companies in 2009.

The interactive tree-map has a nice introduction of how it works, but it would have been nice to be able to drill down further to firm level data. On the two bottom graphs, they could have combined them using the same scale so it was easier to view the revenue/profit/compensation ratios. (related article)