Fortune 500

In: Finance Stock Market

7 May 2012

The 2012 Fortune 500 is out (which basically rates companies by revenue). I like this presentation of sales vs profits:image

There in also a charting of the Top 10 that let’s you take a look at revenue vs profits:

image image

2 Responses to Fortune 500

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Raphael

May 7th, 2012 at 12:36 pm

Not bad, but there’s a lot of unnecessary ornament in these plots.
The transparent area fills convey no information. (Unless the dark area of overlap is supposed to be interpretted as a population-wide trend?)

The points are redundantly labeled with their “change in profits” (though I’m forced to gues that, given that there’s no indication about what these numbers mean).

And why are two of the tick labels (0% on the X, 50% on the Y) in bold?

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Another fed up American

May 28th, 2012 at 9:57 pm

I also would love to see these “Top 10” companies in relation (i.e., on the same vertical scale) to the US Federal Government, perhaps with “revenue” in blue with the trillion-plus-dollar deficits in red.

Or would that ruin the attempt at demonizing successful businesses? (When did it become shameful to provide a useful good or service while still making a profit? Wasn’t that the whole point of the “American Dream” – being better off than the preceding generation?

Of course, who needs facts in context when you have a chart?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics

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