US Economy Archive:
50 Years of Government Spending
In: Politics US Economy
18 May 2012I usually don’t like viewing stacked bars over time – it’s too hard to see what’s changing. This one still isn’t perfect, but the deficiencies are moderated somewhat by clear labels and only having the three columns. Content wise, it’s pretty fascinating too.
Why Gas Prices Vary Across the USA
In: Maps US Economy
23 Mar 2012James Hamilton takes a crack at explaining why gasoline prices vary so much across the country. I think he’s right that taxes, regulations, and transportation explain most of it, but I suspect that refinery shenanigans also play a role. Brad Plumer over at WashPost has additional insights.
(the original version of this map over at Gasbuddy is fun to zoom around in)
Update: Economic Indicators Dashboard
23 Mar 2012One of my favorite economic dashboards. It highlights major macro indicators, what direction they are trending, what the typical ranges are, and lets you drill down to explanations of why you should care about these numbers.
Ryan’s New Budget
21 Mar 2012There’s are a lot of nonsense charts and projections in Paul Ryan’s new House Republican budget, but rather than get into political arguments, I’ll just post the ones I thought were actually insightful:
High Costs of US Medical Procedures
In: Science US Economy
6 Mar 2012A recent study compared the cost of procedures across different countries. It’s interesting to me that some people think our “free market” medical system is the best, without realizing that health care services here in no way resemble a market. The related article runs through a number of ways our system is dysfunctional.
A wonderful post over at The Big Picture that takes both liberals and conservatives to the wood shed over their abuse of economic indicators and charts that show correlation but not causation.
Note: The comments over there are worth a read as well.
Update: Economic Indicators Dashboard
23 Jan 2012Updated for January: one of my favorite economic dashboards. It highlights major macro indicators, what direction they are trending, what the typical ranges are, and lets you drill down to explanations of why you should care. In other words, it’s a very sleek example of how to graph snapshot data while still providing valuable context.
What Jobs are the 1% Doing?
17 Jan 2012A treemap of the jobs that the 1% are doing – showing a lot of variety. I wish there was more detail about the dataset source. The related article provides some anecdotal examples.
What Percent Are You?
In: Culture Employment Interactive Maps Source: NYT US Economy
17 Jan 2012Enter your household income and see where you rank in 344 areas around the country:
There’s some interesting behind the scenes information on the news paper version here:
Retail Sales
In: Graphic Design (general) Innovative Source: WSJ US Economy
13 Jan 2012Here’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)
Interest Rates (1831-2011)
In: Finance History US Economy
19 Dec 2011
Education Pays
In: Employment US Economy
29 Nov 2011
Economic Indicators Dashboard
In: Employment Finance Housing Interactive Stock Market US Economy
22 Nov 2011Updated for November: one of my favorite economic dashboards. It highlights major macro indicators, what direction they are trending, and what the typical ranges are. It also lets you drill down to explanations of why you should care, and historical values.
Money – All of it
21 Nov 2011XKCD pulls together a number of interesting statistics and presents them all as square blocks, varying the magnitude in each section. I’m not sure how much value this has as a graphic – the comparative value of the different groups isn’t very high in most cases. However, the statistics themselves are really interesting and worth browsing.
(note: the graphic’s viewer took a while to load – probably because of server load, which should quiet down later)
US Economy: A Lost Decade?
18 Nov 2011A visually interesting video from the BBC. It does a good job of presenting basic facts, with a little annotation. The difficulty with these videographics, I find, is striking the right balance between being simple enough to understand easily, but complicated enough that they actually make a point. In the BBC’s favor, they appear to be using this as an introduction to issues, and link it back to their broader coverage of the global economy and crisis, including their video series “Make it Clear”, which answers basic questions like “How Can Countries Go Bust?” and “What is the IMF?”.
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- Martin: Manager asks geek to document process. The longer the geek takes to document, the longer the geek ke [...]
- Steve: Budgets aren't subject to the filibuster. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_S [...]
- Nathan: Rogier, follow the link to NPR and you will read that education has been lumped in with "everything [...]
- mims: Lol, the lazy man. I'd say the efficient woman. Or man. ;) [...]
- lam: except, scott, when you consider that congress has to do somethings just to keep this country functi [...]