June 2012
4 posts
4 tags
The Health Care Ruling as a 'Word Tree'
As everyone knows by now, the U.S. Supreme Court today essentially upheld the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. I created a word tree to find specific words in the document and see how they fit in context with those around them. Here are phrases that begin with “federal power”:
Here are phrases that end with “federal power”:
Phrases that begin with...
3 tags
Charting SCOTUS Decisions Over Time
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to release rulings on key cases over the next week, including the much-awaited decision on the Affordable Care Act.
The court has seen its workload decrease over the last 50 years. Last year, for example, the court issued just 71 rulings, the fewest since at least 1946, the earliest date in the Supreme Court Database. (It decided 197 cases in 1967). This chart...
1 tag
Visualizing the MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference
I’ve spent the last few days in Boston, helping the Knight Foundation visualize data about attendees at its Civic Media Conference. Here is some of that work, which Knight has posted on its blog:
First, I wanted to know when people applied for the Knight News Challenge on networks, the winners of which were announced yesterday. Apparently some of the applicants are procrastinators:
This...
4 tags
Inside U.S. Prisons — From Above
A few years ago, the great Niran Babalola and I dreamed up a news app that included all inmates and prison units in Texas. We built it because the state’s database was perpetually down, and we thought the public — victims, prosecutors and inmate families, especially — should have a reliable view inside their state’s prison system. One of my favorite features was a Google satellite...
April 2012
10 posts
The Daily Viz Has Moved!
My little blog has a newly redesigned home. Come check it out, and please help me spread the word:
Mapping The NFL: Where Do Its Players Come From? →
Charting Shuttle Missions →
4 tags
Mapping Drought Conditions
USA Today reports that the country hasn’t been this “dry” in five years:
Still reeling from devastating drought that led to at least $10 billion in agricultural losses across Texas and the South in 2011, the nation is enduring more unusually parched weather.
The map uses the same data we at NPR used recently to map conditions in Texas, which endured the worst drought in...
4 tags
Ranking TechRaking Tweets
Dozens of technologists and journalists today descended on Google’s beautiful Mountain View, Calif., campus for a discussion about technology and journalism. The conference, organized by the Center for Investigative Reporting, led to some prolific tweeting, as one might expect.
I used a simple script to ingest the 1,500-plus tweets with the search API into a sqlite database. This chart,...
3 tags
Googling the GOP
A look at the GOP race through Google searches:
UPDATE: Ron Paul included at disobey’s request:
4 tags
Tiger's Worst Masters
The Associated Press captures the performance well:
Tiger Woods arrived at Augusta National as a favorite to win his fifth green jacket. Instead, he left with his worst score as a pro.
This chart, made with data from the Augusta Chronicle, shows his four-round average scores at the Masters since he turned pro in 1997. This year was the highest (which, in golf, if a bad thing):
It should...
4 tags
Tiger's Tee Troubles
Tiger Woods struggled off the tee yesterday at the Masters, a key reason he’s tied for 29th in a tournament in which many picked him as the favorite.
Tiger’s driving accuracy has also contributed to the general decline in his performance since its peak in 2000. He’s looked better this season, though, leading to his first PGA Tour win since 2009 two weeks ago.
This chart shows...
3 tags
'Sprawl On The Skids'
Nice before/after map and story from USA Today about how suburban growth has slowed:
Five years ago, millions of Americans were streaming to new homes on the fringes of metropolitan areas. Then housing prices collapsed and the Great Recession slowed growth to levels not seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Growth remained slow last year, and largely confined to counties at the center...
3 tags
How Americans Spending Habits Compare With Other...
From The Washington Post:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a fascinating new report out that compares consumer budgets in the United States, Canada, Britain and Japan. As the graph below shows, there’s a huge amount of variation in what people in each country are spending their money on:
March 2012
15 posts
4 tags
How Many Cops Does Your Local Government Have Per...
Does Washington, D.C., have more cops than other cities? That’s the question I asked myself the other day after watching a patrol car drive down our quiet, residential street. I see patrol cars everywhere — much more often than I did previous cities like Houston and Austin.
There’s a reason: Among the top 50 most-populous local governments, D.C. simply has more police officers per...
2 tags
Mapping Surface Wind
Hint.fm visualizes surface wind from the National Digital Forecast Database:
View larger, live version and archive.
H/T @blettenberger
3 tags
PGA Tour Driving Distance Increased By 30 Yards...
PGA Tour players hit the ball 30 years farther off the tee now than they did three decades ago, according to the tour’s statistics. That’s most likely because their equipment, fitness and coaching have improved dramatically over that time.
These charts show a year-by-year average of all 980 players active on the tour since 1980, as well as the trend for Scott Verplank and Phil...
4 tags
Charting Tiger Woods' Career
Inspired by Tiger Woods’ victory on Sunday, I decided to chart some basic statistics from his 17-year PGA Tour career, including this one on how often he finished in the top 10 at tournaments:
See all the charts.
The PGA site has tons of year-by-year data for each PGA tour player since 1980, including every imaginable question (putting, driving, greens in regulation, and many more). So...
3 tags
NY Times Examines Injuries To Jockeys, Horses At...
The New York Times has posted a sad and troubling story about the horse racing industry:
[A]n investigation by The New York Times has found that industry practices continue to put animal and rider at risk. A computer analysis of data from more than 150,000 races, along with injury reports, drug test results and interviews, shows an industry still mired in a culture of drugs and lax regulation...
3 tags
Use Calendar Heat Maps to Visualize Your Tweets...
Following Nathan Yau’s excellent tutorial for creating heat maps with time series data (he used vehicle accidents by day for a year), I visualized 3,559 of my tweets back to March 2009.
These maps, created with a modified R script from the tutorial, show how often I sent tweets (both personal and RT), with darker shades representing more activity. It’s fun to go back to the dark days...
3 tags
Mapping Asian Population Density With Census Data
Asians were the fastest-growing racial group in the United States from 2000-2010, growing by nearly 30 percent in most states, according to a new report by the U.S. Census Bureau released today:
The population that identified as Asian, either alone or in combination with one or more other races, grew by 45.6 percent from 2000 to 2010, while those who identified as Asian alone grew by 43.3...
1 tag
Census Bureau Releases 1940 Data. America Has...
After 72 years, the U.S. Census Bureau today released data from its decennial count in 1940. The release includes a fascinating graphic about how Americans have changed over time. Here’s just one section, comparing our workforce:
There’s much more in the graphic: housing, demographics, etc. Check it out.
4 tags
Visualizing Gas Prices by State, Income and Time
Gas prices risen for the eighth straight day, part of a trend that’s driven the cost up 17% this year, according to AAA data reported by CNN Money:
The national average price for a gallon of gasoline rose for the eighth straight day on Saturday to $3.835. That is now only about 7% below the record high of $4.11 from July 2008.
CNN mapped the gas prices data by state:
CNN also created...
3 tags
Visualizing Foursquare, Pt. 2
This morning I posted a quick map illustrating my 1,100 check-ins on Foursquare during the last two years. I made it using TillMill, an open-source application for creating interactive map tiles.
This version was made in OpenStreetMap (larger symbols represent more check-ins). Clearly my Foursquare usage increased after I moved from Austin to DC last year:
Thanks to Pete Warden, who created...
3 tags
Visualizing Foursquare
I’m generally obsessed with Foursquare, the location-based service that allows users to broadcast their travels to friends. I’ve checked in more at more than 1,100 places since joining the service in February 2010, apparently more often on weekends:
But not so much in May:
And on three continents:
PREVIOUSLY:
Mapping ‘My’ DC
Learn the Foursquare API
4 tags
Visualizing Foursquare, Pt. 2
This morning I posted a quick map illustrating my 1,100 check-ins on Foursquare during the last two years. I made it using TillMill, an open-source application for creating interactive map tiles.
This version was made in OpenHeatMap (larger symbols represent more check-ins). Clearly my Foursquare usage increased after I moved from Austin to DC last year:
Thanks to Pete Warden, who created the...
3 tags
BRB
It’s been tough to keep this blog “daily” with a travel schedule like this over the last 30 days (compiled from Foursquare checkins):
I’ll be back tomorrow with regular updates.
Learn the Foursquare API.
3 tags
Charting Metro Diversity
Interesting news from my favorite Texas city, according to this story the Houston Chronicle:
The Houston region is now the most ethnically diverse large metropolitan area in the country, surpassing New York City.
Two suburbs - Missouri City and Pearland - have become even more diverse than the city of Houston. Other suburbs aren’t far behind.
This chart compares the demographics of...
2 tags
Our Warm Januaries
Last month was the fourth-warmest January in the contiguous United States on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
This chart shows three decades of Januaries. Red bars represent the percentage of the country that experienced “very warm” conditions compared to the norm:
February 2012
13 posts
2 tags
What Car Brands Tell Us About Our Political...
Interesting…
When it comes to cars, the results are often predictable. It probably won’t surprise anyone to learn that the data, as collected by Scarborough Research, show that drivers of hybrid automobiles tend to skew Democrat and are highly likely to vote. Subaru owners, as well. Saab and Volvo owners also lean left and vote in large percentages, though not by as wide a margin.
3 tags
How Did This Year's Oscar Ratings, Length Compare?
This year’s Academy Awards presentation seemed to drag on forever, but it wasn’t actually that long compared to past shows. The event last lasted 194 minutes, which is slightly longer than the average since the mid-1980s (183 minutes), but relatively short compared to the four-hour-plus show in 2002:
About 39.3 million people tuned in for the show, a four-percent increase over the...
1 tag
Mapping with TileMill
I just returned from the NICAR journalism convention in St. Louis, where I helped teach hands-on panels for using TileMill, the open-source mapping application. This first map we made shows the murder rate per 100,000 residents in the nation’s largest cities:
We also mapped the poverty rate:
Download the data and code
4 tags
Candidate Fundraising vs. Super PAC Spending in...
From Huffington Post:
Reports about January’s fundraising numbers, released on February 20, have focused on two narratives: Mitt Romney’s limited fundraising and high burn rate and the role that super PACs are playing in an increasingly contested Republican primary. HuffPost decided to combine those narratives together to make a graphic of candidate and super PAC fundraising and...
3 tags
Holiday Viz: Mapping the Birthplaces of U.S....
Since I get the day off, I figured I should repay our presidents by honoring their birthplaces with two maps made with Google Fusion Tables. This first map places points on their home towns (see larger interactive version):
Here’s the same data but aggregated by state and mapped with polygons. Darker shades represent more presidents (see larger interactive version):
Data source:...
DC's 'Dining Desert'
The Washington Post has a story today about the lack of sit-down restaurants across the Anacostia River in neighborhoods that are among the poorest in the city.
For decades, the main arteries east of the Anacostia River have been dominated by carry-out joints and fast-food chains, their menus catering to an African American population that is the city’s most impoverished. In wards 7 and 8, with...
7 tags
Which European Soccer Leagues Have The Most...
Has European football gotten increasingly boring over the years? If you like offense, perhaps.
Since the mid-1950s, fewer and fewer goals on average have been scored per match. The trend is evident among the major national leagues (Spain, Italy, England and Germany) and also the Champions League, in which the best teams from each country compete for a European title.
Goals per match in the...
2 tags
Facebook By The Numbers
Via the Economist:
AFTER eight years, scores of lawsuits and a blockbuster movie, Facebook is going public. It is seeking to raise $5 billion from its initial public offering, which would give it an estimated market capitalisation of $80-100 billion—similar to that of fast-food chain McDonald’s. The social network employs only around 3,000 staff, giving it an average revenue of $1.2m per person...
3 tags
Charting Super Bowl History
Last night’s Super Bowl is one of only a few such contests held in the northern United States — all inside domed stadiums. This map shows the cities that hosted previous games and uses proportional symbols to show how many were played there:
Data source: Pro-football-reference.com
2 tags
WSJ Unemployment Tracker
The Wall Street Journal posted an interactive heat map to visualize the unemployment rate nationally over time. The backstory from the latest numbers:
Under the government’s definitions, people only count as unemployed when they’re actively looking for work. So when the unemployment rate drops, it could mean that unemployed people found jobs, or it could mean that they gave up looking for work....
3 tags
Charting Recessions and Recoveries
Amanda Cox from The New York Times charted the current downturn compared with history:
Horizontal axis shows months. Vertical axis shows the ratio of that month’s nonfarm payrolls to the nonfarm payrolls at the start of recession. Note: Because employment is a lagging indicator, the dates for these employment trends are not exactly synchronized with National Bureau of Economic Research’s...
FACEBOOK: Who uses it and what are they doing?
pewinternet:
On an average day:
15% of Facebook users update their own status.
22% comment on another’s post or status.
20% comment on another user’s photos.
26% “Like” another user’s content.
10% send another user a private message
A snapshot of sex/age distribution by social networking site platform:
43% of Facebook users are male and 58% are female.
33% of Facebook users are...
January 2012
16 posts
3 tags
NFC vs. AFC: Charting Four Decades of 'Pro Bowl'...
The two NFL conferences have split victories almost evenly in their annual Hawaii showdown/snoozefest known as the Pro Bowl, with the NFC holding a 21-20 record against the AFC. This chart, perhaps as interesting as the game itself, shows how the two sides have scored over the years:
Larger version | Data source: Wikipedia
1 tag
Did Obama Neglect Health Care in State of the...
More analysis from the speech from The Advisory Board Company:
Obama’s speech included just 44 words on health reform, far fewer than in his previous addresses. He said that the makeup of the overhaul—which he noted relies on a “reformed private market, not a government program”—is a sign that he is willing to work with Republicans.
3 tags
Charting 'Mass Layoffs'
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week that employers in December conducted roughly 1,380 “mass layoffs,” incidents in which more than 50 workers lose their jobs. That happened to about 145,000 Americans last month, according to new filings for unemployment benefits.
That figure seems high, but compare it to February 2009, the height of the recession. Back then more than...
4 tags
Obama's State of the Union
The Washington Post does a nice job comparing this year’s State of the Union to President Obama’s previous annual speeches:
President Obama devoted nearly half of his fourth annual address to Congress to the economy. A breakdown of the State of the Union and a look back at his previous three speeches.
5 tags
How 'State of the Union' Speeches Changed Over...
Tonight President Obama gives his third “State of the Union” speech, an address that dates back to George Washington. Over time, the length and format of the speech has changed, according to the The American Presidency Project.
Bubbles in this view are sized the represent the number of speeches given by each president, with colors representing format (purple = oral; green =...
Before, During and After: The Richest 1 Percent →
chartsnthings:
This weekend the NYT published Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff’s story about the richest 1 percent of Americans (a more diverse bunch than you’d think). The graphics department published a lot of work in print and online to accompany the article. Online, there was an interactive map that…
5 tags
Mapping 'My' DC
Steven Lehrburger, a software engineer in New York, announced just now that he’d updated his cool web app, wheredoyougo.net. It allows Foursquare users to visualize their checkins with heat maps.
Here’s an example from last January, when I still lived in Austin:
With the new version live, I mapped more than 900 checkins. Here’s where I go in Washington, D.C. (I live at 12th...
