The Great Depression vs "The Great Recession"

This chart uses color coding well to help point out attributes for comparison between the Great Depression and the supposed "Great Recession." The green and the red made it easy to identify the price level as well as deflation. The black color for inflation would have probably been better as some other color so one would not confuse it with normal text color. The use of green and red would be okay if they are the type of green and red that colorblind people can tell the difference with.

Military Spending

US military spending as a percentage of GDP, 1940--2003

The reason I like this visualization so much is it makes our military spending seem rather trivial. Aside from WW2, military spending has remained pretty steady (in fact its generally declined). I always hear how much money we spend, but it never puts it into perspective just how much it is relative to how much money we have. This reminded me of the video Professor Olson showed in class with the pennies and how much Obama claimed to have saved. I think there is room for a lot of visualizations that put common misconceptions in perspective.

The above visualization is by Carolyn Aler and Sam Conway in response to a "Making Sense of the Financial Mess" contest held by Good Magazine in late 2008.

The visualization succeeds in effectively using human abilities to easily distinguish relative magnitude by using simple shape representations of houses to indicate fluctuations in average home price between 1980 and the recent present. I find the outlined circles representing millions of prime vs. sub-prime (credit rating) home owners to be an especially effective tool, because our visual system is very adept at processing differences in color within a pattern. Although difficult to quickly assess exact numbers from such representations, this is besides the point in my opinion -- the general trends in the data are easily recognizable as a result, making deriving meaning from the data a simpler task. The remaining bar and line graph follow similar principles.

Great Depression Gold Standard

The visualization is simplistic and uses only representation in order to get its point across. Simplicity in this case works for the graph since interactivity may cause this become much more complex then necessary. On the other hand interactivity in terms of allowing only certain lines to appear and hide others, may allow for easy comparisons. Colors could be helpful hear in helping distinguish which line is which but the structure of each line takes care of this so colors may just be an unnecessary addition.

Abuse of Money Printing

I think this chart is rather straightforward and absolutely scary in its implications.

To quote directly from the site I got this from:

"Fed Chairman Bernanke is running amok, and for the first time since the birth of the U.S. dollar, our government is egregiously abusing its power to print money.

Specifically, from September 10, 2008 to March 10 of this year, he has increased the nation’s monetary base from $850 billion to $2.1 trillion — an irresponsible, irrational and insane increase of 2.5 times in just 18 months.

It is, by far, the greatest monetary expansion in U.S. history. And you must not underestimate its sweeping historical significance."

If anyone's familiar with the monetary system in, say, Japan or Vietnam, all of their bills practically have at least 5 digits on them. They weren't always like that, and were caused by similar situations where the government printed money at unprecedented rates.

Pretty soon the Chinese are gonna start laughing at how much the U.S. farmers make per hour instead of the other way around /sarcasm

This is a segment of a visualization of the US' economy between 1775 and 1943. For space reasons, this segment of the graph covers back to 1901. Multiple economic measurements are included, including national debt (the red line), national income (the green line), the commodity price of goods in the US (the dashed line) and and stock values (the |-|- line that's kind of hard to see.) Multiple y-axes are scattered throughout the graph, generally around the starting point of the measurements if there is one, but all adhere to the same grid lines. It also labels certain horizontal spans with historical events that occurred in that span of time. Those labels at the very top are the US Presidents in office during that time.
This graph is a lot like the visualization of Napoleon's march, in that it correlates multiple, related points of data across a common passage of time. This makes identifying correlations quite simple. Identifying key historical events, especially wars and post-war periods, also highlights causal relationships between world events and economic performance. We can also observe patterns emerging over time, in effect proving that history does tend to repeat. The main drawback of this visualization it its tendency to be rather busy in certain areas. In addition to the crossing of multiple lines of varying visibility, actually measuring the magnitude of any given measurement against its axis requires some knowledge about which axis should be used. Similarly, many of the labels and notations on the visual require some understanding of the historical occurrences and dynamics of their economic area. For instance, one segment of the visual highlights an area of commodity prices between 1841 and 1847 with arrows and notes "Wholesale commodity prices 1910-14-100". To the average user, the meaning of this annotation won't be immediately obvious.
Seeing the economic trends of the last 16 or so decades was generally interesting to me. However, two points immediately stuck out to me when viewing it. First, national income was fairly steady, climbing annually at rarely changing rates, until about 1916. After that, it quickly shot up, then began rollercoastering around until the end of the visual. The second thing was how completely the lack of business activity during the Great Depression eclipsed both the prosperity that preceded it, and any other depression that had come before it. Worse, during that period, everything except the federal debt (stock prices, commodity prices, income) followed. It's a stark depiction of how monumental the Great Depression was.

Distribution of Wealth

I like this visualization because of its sheer simplicity, but it does suffer from a few problems. While the color contrasts make seeing different pieces very easy, the text size for the more detailed labels makes them hard to read. Furthermore, the size of the two different segments of the pig are misleading; it's somewhat unclear that they refer to the percentage of the world's wealth. Lastly, the mud (paint?) splotch at the bottom right is also a little confusing: does it mean anything, or is it just "there?"

Cost of Living(1774-2007)

I think this is a good visualization of the cost of living. It's a little outdated, but 2007 is close enough for us to get an idea of what the cost of living is like today. I found the first graph interesting because it shows both the inflation rates and deflation rates in the United States since the U.S's birth. We can compare the rates year by year, and with extra information, we can change what we're doing today so that our inflation or deflation rate in the future stays stable. The second graph gives us an idea of what it would be like to live in 1774 with 2007's inflation rate. Basically in 1774, we could have more than survived on $100. The graphs don't represent changes in the standard of living though, only the cost, as standards are subjective to everyone.

Who is Paying Taxes?

This bar compares a pie chart and a bar graph that together reveal some interesting things about our tax system. I found the bar graph interesting because of the gradual transition the bars made from bottom to top. In the $10,000 - $20,000 range, there were still 16.4% paying taxes. In the $500,000 range, there were still 1.8% people not having to pay taxes. There are no 100%'s in any of the bars, not even for those who are making under $10,000. However, the pie chart provides another view of tax distribution. It seems that those at the top hold a hefty burden, with the people richer than 50% of the population paying more than 85% of the taxes. Thus, everyone who has to pay taxes suffers, especially those who are also poor. A solution to this would be to make a limit where people who are considered poor (don't make a certain amount of money) do not have to pay taxes. Otherwise, everyone else has to pay taxes. Since low-salary people barely contribute to taxes anyways, they should be replaced by the people who have no federal tax liability. Thus, everyone who has to (and who should) pay taxes will get to pay less.

World Economy

This visualization is a representation of the world economy. This is a really attractive visualization that uses shapes and colors effectively. Each circle represents the size of the nation’s economy every decade from 1970 to 2050. The different colors represent different countries. The simplicity of the visualization also drew my attention. Without a lot of texts, the visualization is able to illustrate what changes in the world economy. We can also easily see the shifts of the countries. Unfortunately, the texts are so small, which makes it hard to see the name of the countries. The countries listed are (respectively from top to bottom) : United States, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Russia, Brazil, India, and China. It is interesting to see how China (in red) shifts from being at the very bottom and end up being the number one country, higher than the United States (in blue). Another emerging country is India (in green) that ends up being the third country after the United States.

Housing Bubble

I thought this visualization showed a very interesting pattern in housing purchases for almost 5 decades. This depiction really attracted my attention at first because of the unusual shape of the bar graph. This is the first one i have seen in a circular shape, but I think it does a great job getting its point across. One of the things this chart does best is to show the ups and downs of housing growth (and the economy in general). Readers can clearly see the patterns that form with the bars even though it is not in a horizontal orientation. One thing i really liked about this graph was the position of what seems to be the most important or relevant information, which is the years 2000-2009. These are placed in the top left corner, which is usually the first place people look. If this were a horizontal chart, the focus would be drawn to the middle of the chart, the 80's-90's where there was less significant change. The values were also clearly marked by the outer circles, which was very helpful in identifying values. Lastly, I really liked how the high and low points were clearly marked by different colored tabs, which easily drew my attention.

Economic Stress Index 2008-2009

I found this visualization to be interesting because it combines different attributes such as the impact of unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcy of each county in the country into one visualization calculated as the economic stress index.This graph is good for visualizing trends and seeing which areas seem to be suffering the most (the more brown- the worse it is, the more blue- the better). One great value I see from this visualization is the vast amount of information revealed while making a complicated concept easy to visualize. Also, the way it is presented makes the topic interesting so the viewer wants to explore the data. Another great feature about this graph is that it is to scale and not distorted, making it easier for the user to make overall impressions of the trends. Moreover, the representation is clear on which counties and states in general are suffering the most. One of the faults I found is that even though there is color consistency, the graph is too cluttered with too many different colors because it is comparing counties. I think it would be better instead if it was calculated by region or perhaps if it had a scale with different ranges and colors corresponding to those ranges. Color contrasts could have been used in a better way as well.

The Oil Economy

This is a visualization of the US Consumption, Gas price, and Oil price trends since 9/11 that I found on mint.com. I like this one in particular because its very easy to use; just clicking on the 5 buttons on the left will display the corresponding line on the chart. Any line from the chart can be removed by simply clicking the corresponding button again. i also like this visualization because of the high correlation it shows between gas prices, oil prices, and US consumption. As you can see, for the most part of the graph an increase in oil prices means an increase in gas prices, and conversely, a decrease in US consumption. Another feature of this visualization that makes interpretation easy is the "timeline of events" along the top of the chart. hovering the cursor over the green dots reveals specific events that are related to the sudden increase/decrease depicted in the graph.

Unemployment Rate Over the Last Decade

This graph clearly does a great job of showing trends of the unemployment rate. We can see a spike most recently in the unemployment rate due to the economic crisis we are currently feeling the effects of. The graph also shows the difference between USA and Canada showing that all of North America is being effected as well. The graph however lacks information about any affects that would directly cause the unemployment. Overall, this is a great graph to show the simple idea of how the job market has been changing as a result of the economy.

Unemployment Rates in the US: September 2009

This visualization is an illustration of the unemployment in the United States during the month of September in the year 2009. The national average rate of unemployment during this time is at 8.9%, and this diagram displays the way the statistics are distributed among the various counties across the nation. The visualization makes effective use of color, using contrasting colors between higher and lower rates. This helps facilitate visual cognition, allowing readers to easily distinguish the variations in the data represented. Although this is supposed to be a representation of unemployment rates by county, it is almost impossible to isolate a single county due to its small size and lack of labeling. However, the purpose of this visualization is to display the distribution of unemployment and moreover the concentration of higher rates in the more industrialized areas. The Midwest displays the lower rates of unemployment, and this diagram is meant to highlight this matter. The effective use of color in this visualization allows readers to much easier make this distinction and draw educated conclusions given the displayed data.

Visualizing Unemployment in the UK

Here's an interesting interactive visualization I've found that overlays unemployment rates over the geography of the UK. At the different states of the visual, there are instruction tags directing how you are supposed to interact with it.

The most important interaction point is the sliding bar, which allows you to scroll through the unemployment rates for a specific month between June 2005 and April 2010. As you the month changes, you can see the map overall grow a darker shade of color with some areas hit much harder than others, denoted by a shade of purple (colors are explained in the legend next to the map). Worst impacted areas on the map for the month are explicitly listed under the legend. Like the map, this list also dynamically changes as you use the scroll bar.

The visualization also makes use of common-place zoom-able map design: clicking on the map allows you to see specific areas in detail and clicking areas near the edge of the map allows you to pan and a message that points to the "reset map" button to zoom out. The scroll bar is still usable in this state so that you can view unemployment shift for smaller regions in greater detail.

The greatest asset to this visualization is that it uses a continuous interaction style (Spence Ch.5) to present a large amount of data in a small amount of space, even though the data itself is discrete).

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7789784.stm

Bankruptcies

This recession definitely has seen history's largest bankruptcies. Here is a cool visualization I found on the web:

I like this visualization because of the colors appeal - the different economic sectors are classified in different colors, and it is clearly distinguishable that the finance sector had the biggest implosions. The element that I like the most about this infographic is that is to scale -- most infographics I come across are visually appealing, convey correct numerical information, but are scaled incorrectly for a deceiving (may be on purpose, or harmless mistake) visual.

GG Lehman Brothers.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

This video describes the lending practices that led to economic meltdown using images and narration that are understandable to the average person. While it is not a traditional visualization which directly maps economic data to some graphic, I think it is far more useful than the standard line graphs and pie charts for people who have not studied economics past high school but still want to stay informed about why the economy is behaving the way it is.

The video succeeds at presenting its information in a comprehensible manner by keeping it within the mental model of the target audience. Each of the pieces of the credit equation shown in the video are depicted as what a typical homeowner thinks of them as. Money is shown as dollar bills, houses are houses, and fat investment bankers are fat investment bankers. There are no abstract bars or lines, only real, concrete objects that are instantly familiar to the viewer. Combined with the simple narration, this visual style effectively presents the viewer with all of the information they need to know to understand the situation without confusing them with too much detail and clutter.

Recession Visualization

This visualization shows the prediction of when the current recession is going to end for each state. All the states are categorized into four different colors based on the various recession periods. Viewers can easily identify each state's prediction from the color sequence designed for classification. Because red and green are opponent colors of each other, we tend to see the distinction more easily when we process the information in our brain. In addition, shading technique is also used in this visualization to define each area apart from another. It looks like California has one more quarter to go before getting out of this recession.