Earth Photos

In: Maps Science

Interesting article on how they composite satellite photos of earth into those beautiful globe shots:

While we’re on the subject, below is NASA’s gateway for Astronaut photography of Earth, including some stunning videos:

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2013 Federal Budget

In: Interactive Politics Source: NYT Source: Washington Post Source: WSJ

A number of news agencies took a crack at visualizing Obama’s 2013 budget proposal. (If you want to try it yourself, a shocking amount of detailed data is available in spreadsheet form at the OMB website).

Below is the Washington Post’s version. You can click on any box to see a column chart of historical values. It would have been nice to be able to drill down further, but this is a good start:

The NYT created a beautiful animated – ummm – I’m not sure what this is. A dorling diagram? Well, it looks pretty, and it’s slightly more detailed than the WashPost version, but I think the brain processes square area better than circles.

The WSJ posted five charts, but they’re nothing special:

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14 Ways Economists Say I Love You (with Charts)

In: Humor

14 charts – each one quite cute. Below are my favorites. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

Thanks to Sam F. for sending me the link!

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Chinese Investment

In: Finance Global Economy Source: Washington Post

Wow. I didn’t realize China’s investment in the USA was so small.

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Taxi!

In: Maps Science

While in NYC recently I noticed that most of the traffic seems to consist of Taxis. Tom McKeogh, Eliza Montgomery, and Juan F Saldarriag collected Manhattan taxi GPS data and created this beautiful map of Taxi trips over just 24 hours. Nice! (via FlowingData)

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Why Does a Salad Cost More than a Big Mac?

In: Food Politics Source: NYT

Originally from PCRM, but I link to the NYT commentary below. Farm subsidies are a joke. Actually, almost all subsidies are a joke, now that I think about it.

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2011-12 Calendar Map of Infographic Events

In: Graphic Design (general)

Plan your junkets now!

(via Cool Infographics)

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European Debt

In: Bailout Finance Global Economy

A billion here, a billion there – soon you’re talking about real money.

News reports often focus on debt to gdp ratios, but it’s powerful to actually show the magnitudes of each, and compare the amounts already committed to what remains to be financed, as is done here by Spiegel:

A rawer way of looking at the debt of all of the PIIGS, in piles of euros:

This version shows who loaned Greece the money:

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Beyond the Hairball

In: Graphic Design (general)

Robert Kosara examines alternatives to the classic (useless) node-link hairball network diagram.

Bad!

Better?

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Cocktails

In: Food

Ok, enough politics and economics this week. It’s Friday, so here’s a more appropriate graphic: The definitive guide to mixed drinks:

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We Need a New Pie Chart

In: Graphic Design (general) Video

While poking around the World Economic Forum’s website I came across this talk by Adam Bly from 2011 about the important uses of data visualization to policy makers:

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2012 Global Risk Map

In: Employment Environment/weather Finance Global Economy Interactive

The World Economic Forum always has some interesting visualizations and info-videos.

Global Risk Map:

Interactive Risk Explorer (be sure to play with the menu tabs on the right):

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The Deficit: Obama vs Bush

In: Politics Source: Washington Post

Ezra Klein takes a crack at comparing the cost of major policy decisions:

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OECD Statistics Explorer and Some Other Cool Shit

In: Graphic Design (general) Graphic Tools Innovative Interactive Maps

This is an example of why you keep checking back on mediocre data visualization tools. The last time I looked at the OECD’s explorer, it was slow, kinda clunky, and not very innovative. This morning I took another look. Wow! It has interactive choropleth maps, motion scatter plots, profile plots, time graphs, and cool histogram tools – and all of them have excellent filters and fine tuning controls, can be viewed over time, are smoothly animated and you’re allowed to load your own data.

But wait! There’s more! MUCH more! It turns out the explorer is just one tool created by the Swedish National Center for Visual Analytics (NCVA), who have constructed a set of Geovisual Analytics Visualization (GAV) Flash tools, including what you need to create your own statistics explorer.  The NCVA also has a spin-off company that sells a desktop version of the explorer, a Flow Map explorer that draws proportionate arrows on maps to track flows, and a multi-dimensional explorer (which I only played with a little – but is very very cool).

Check out the scatter tables in the MDIM as a way to select data in the other two panels:

I’m almost embarrassed I haven’t seen these before. On the other hand, I love that there is such innovation going on – all the time.

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European Response to Crisis

In: Bailout Finance Global Economy Politics

Almost makes it look like they’ve done a lot:

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