Idea Transcript
THE DAILY VIZ A (semi-retired) digital sketchpad for data stories, by Matt Stiles. HOME ABOUT BLOG TOPICS DATA PORTFOLIO LA TIMES SUBSCRIBE
Month: April 2012
“Data and visualization blogs worth following” About three years ago, I shared 37 data-ish blogs you should know about, but a lot has changed since then. Some blogs are no longer in commission, and lots of new blogs have sprung up (and died). Today, I went through my feed reader again, and here’s what came up.
Source: FLOWINGDATA Via: Nathan Yau
Read more at: flowingdata.com
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Google
Email
“Episode #5 – How To Learn Data Visualization (with Andy Kirk)” Podcast (mp3): Play in new window |Download (80.8MB) Hi Folks! We love Andy so much that we decided to keep him with us for another episode (well, actually we hope somebody will eventually pay the ransom). This time we talk about “learning visualization”, which is the perfect topic for him given his experience with his training visualization courses.
Source: DATASTORI
Read more at: datastori.es
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Google
Email
Charting Netflix’s Stock Drop By Matt Stiles
|
April 25, 2012
|
Topics: Economy & Finance
The last two days have been rough for Netflix. Here’s David Carr’s take on its latest woes: In earnings announced on Monday, word came that for the first quarter, the company lost $4.6 million, its first loss since 2005. The company also said that its aggressive international expansion was going to take longer than expected. Netflix stock tanked, down over 14 percent on Tuesday.
This area chart shows how quickly the video service’s stock dropped in after-hours trading following the earnings announcement late Monday:
See larger version, via Yahoo! Finance.
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Google
Email
April 25, 2012 · Tagged: Area Chart, Netflix, Yahoo!
Charting Our Nightmare Water Bill By Matt Stiles
|
April 24, 2012
|
Topics: Policy & Politics
The folks at DC Water have had trouble updating our account since we closed on a new house in January. They figured it out recently, though, and we got a four-month bill over the weekend. It was a whopping $460. This, even though our previous bills with the agency — in a comparably sized rental house down the street — were typically $30-50 a month. There must be a mistake, right? I called the agency this morning and got a data dump of our daily meter readings (yes, they have the technology to capture this daily, but they have trouble moving customers). Armed with the data, I built this interactive line chart, which shows our daily water usage in the last 97 days. Notice the spike in mid-March. The city says we used 30,000 gallons of water in a four-day period, or about 80 percent of our overall use since January. (We average about 420 gallons a day with these outliers. If you remove the spike, we used about 80 gallons per day). Clearly, something went wrong:
See larger, interactive version made with Highcharts.
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Google
Email
April 24, 2012 · Tagged: DC, Highcharts, Water
“Among His Duties, Choosing the Guests” As the Obama administration’s third social secretary, Jeremy Bernard has planned three of the administration’s six White House state dinners, concerning himself not only with décor, but also the political calculations involved in compiling a guest list. A former fund-raiser himself, Mr. Bernard been an important liaison to “bundlers,” supporters of the president who solicit checks from friends and associates.
Source: NYTIMES Via: The New Tork Times
Read more at: www.nytimes.com
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Google
Email
Charting Post Offices By Matt Stiles
|
April 21, 2012
|
Topics: Policy & Politics
The U.S. Postal Service is still struggling to compete in an era of declining paper mail, and as private industry and Congress have resisted its efforts to reform, according to this story in today’s The New York Times. The agency’s troubles, which could result in the closing of thousands of post offices and hundreds of mail processing centers as early as next month, have many sources. Some are the inevitable result of technological changes, and others are the result of missteps by the Postal Service. But top Postal Service officials and outside experts say that another, underappreciated factor has been an insistence by Congress that the service not compete directly with private companies, even as companies like FedEx and U.P.S. have encroached on the Postal Service’s turf.
This chart shows the historic growth, and recent decline, in the number of post offices:
See larger version | Data source: USPS
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Google
Email
April 21, 2012 · Tagged: Column Chart, Postal Service, The New York Times
Uncovering ‘Ghost Factories’ By Matt Stiles
|
April 19, 2012
|
Topics: Policy & Politics
USA Today has a terrific package today about neighborhoods across the country that could have dangerous levels of lead contamination from old factories: Despite warnings, federal and state officials repeatedly failed to find out just how bad the problems were. A 14-month USA TODAY investigation has found that the EPA and state regulators left thousands of families and children in harm’s way, doing little to assess the danger around many of the more than 400 potential lead smelter locations on a list compiled by a researcher from old industry directories and given to the EPA in 2001.
Included is an interactive map with information about these locations:
Via Tony Debarros
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Google
Email
April 19, 2012 · Tagged: Environment, Mapping, USA Today
Mapping The NFL: Where Do Its Players Come From? By Matt Stiles
|
April 19, 2012
|
Topics: Sports
I stumbled upon an interesting data set that lists the home states of more than 20,000 NFL players in history. I wondered: Do some states send a disproportionate amount of players to the pros? This map shows which mainland states produced the most NFL players. As one might expect, it looks like a population map. Texas and California, the nation’s two most-populous states, produced the most players — more than 2,000 apiece. Vermont, which trails only the District of Columbia and Wyoming in population as of the 2010 Census, produced the fewest players:
But the map changes when state population is figured in. This map shows the rate of NFL players based on the 2010 population. Louisiana and Mississippi, which rank 25th and 31st in population, respectively, send more players per-person to the NFL than other states:
Of course, I should have used the male population, but there’s only so much time in my lunch break — and the maps wouldn’t look significantly different.
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Google
Email
April 19, 2012 · Tagged: Mapping, NFL
Charting Space Shuttle Mission Lengths By Matt Stiles
|
April 17, 2012
|
Topics: Policy & Politics
NASA flew more than 130 space shuttle missions since the vehicle went into orbital use in the early 1980s, and today the agency wowed many in D.C. with a landing at Dulles International Airport. (Yes, they are making poor Discovery commute in to the city from Dulles). Together, the shuttles have spent more than 1,300 days in flight. This chart shows their total time in orbital flights. Discovery spent about a year in the air, more than its sister shuttles:
And their total flights during those missions:
Data source: Wikipedia
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Google
Email
April 17, 2012 ·
“Gender wage gap, how much less women make than men” Explore weekly earnings between men and women, over the past nine years. There’s more to say about it, but my hands are tired from manually editing parsed PDF files, so I’ll leave that for later.
Source: FLOWINGDATA
Read more at: flowingdata.com
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Google
Email
Older posts
The Daily Viz, by Matt Stiles | Contact