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Posts tagged with diagrams

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2:52 PM

March 14, 2010

Economic Malaise: Merchants of Death

I think bankers have distracted some of the public from what used to be the cause celebre demon-economic-seed: the Military-Industrial Complex.

Obama says he wants to enter into a new era of arms reductions, specifically for nuclear arms, but what of the same Merchants of Death who were called out as the root cause for the first World War that continue to pump the world full of ammunition and instruments of death?

Every once and a while, we need a reminder of just how weapon crazy this world is, and just how responsible the United States of America is for perpetuating that reality. Thanks to GOOD:

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1:16 PM

March 7, 2010

Economic Stimulation, a la Obama

For anyone continuing to think that the Recovery Act (the stimulus) was a waste, think again.

These provide countenance to the fact that not only has our economy turned around, but that said turn-around occurred like clockwork with the Recovery Act becoming law. I was propelled to include these charts after criticism mounted over the supposed “bias-nature” of the graphic released by the White House that was created with the same data that created the above graphs. For a refresher, or for those who didn’t happen to see it, this is the White House’s graphic on job loss/the recession/the stimulus:

Beyond the obvious red/blue divide, nothing more partisan exists. One cannot simply claim the graph is partisan because it displays facts that support the arguments and views of a political party, especially not when these facts are indeed true. Add to the overall objectivity of the White House’s release of stimulus-related and economic data these charts on real GDP and Payroll Job Losses and you can see that there isn’t much room to claim on principle that the stimulus failed. (Both come from a Feb 17th report on the 1 year progress of the stimulus issued by VP Joe Biden).

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9:52 AM

February 19, 2010

Glenn Beck’s mediocre chart-drawing abilities

This is just one example of Beck’s paltry skill. For many more examples of his obliquely crass, chalk-board aided diatribes, see here.

Considering the incomprehensible nature of all these charts Beck draws, I continue to wonder why anyone lets him waste air-time and money to continue to feature said charts. More confoundedly though, I continue to wonder exactly how Beck thinks that these charts help him make an argument.

I like to feature examples of illustrations, charts, diagrams that communicate information particularly well; however, we should consider this as a study in contrasts. It pains me though to realize that these ridiculously poor-quality, partisan and propagandist diagrams continue to receive more validation and exposure than many of the more credible, factual ones out there. Its like the Republicans lame attempt at satire when they created that diagram of the health care legislation – do they really think this is helping their cause, to exhibit exactly how they’ve been spending their time and effort, making charts that communicate nothing while distorting the facts that were used to create said chart?

Well, I guess I answered my own question – of course distorting the facts surrounding health care helps Republicans!

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5:53 PM

February 5, 2010

Negative Correlations

GOP and JOB (s)

1.  The closer the Bush administration got to being able to get the hell outta Washington, the quicker the rate of job loss became.

2.  The more time  that the Obama administration had spent in office, the slower the rate of job loss becomes.

3.  The more Republicans blame Obama for a flat economy, the more slowly jobs are lost in this recession.

We’ll check back in with this graph after the jobs bill passes the Senate.

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12:21 AM

Ridin that Train (con’t)

A subdued, but fresh comparison of the nation’s largest public transit systems from our friends at GOOD. From left to right New York City Transit (NYCT), Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), and Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA):

What should come next is a comparison based not upon raw size of the public transit system, but of the relative size. These numbers have a slightly misleading character to them, in that the amount of people and area of land that the system covers is only hinted at in the “miles per trip (avg)” metric.

Take Portland, for example. They boast quite an impressive public transit system that serves an ever-expanding suburban periphery and provides it service for free within the city’s downtown. As well, Portland and its surrounding areas are the subject of a reinvigorated movement (well, semi-new) in development known as Transit-Oriented-Development (TOD). The goal is to fully integrate every new development (and further integrate existing ones) to the larger Portland area through the public transit system, resulting in suburban communities that are more walkable and a larger metropolitan area that is truly the sum of its parts.

For more on TOD and ongoing research check out the Sustainable Cities Initiative.

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9:28 PM

February 2, 2010

Quite the Graph

An interactive, educational, information-packed, 3 color graph that includes a short slideshow and annotations (it is a lot more interesting than I’ve described it here).

Occasionally I’ll be very drawn into a graph or diagram, and when it happens I always feel like I’ve learned so much after thoroughly digesting it. The shear inaccuracy of many of those predictions is amazing, the majority of budgets and forecasts were completely wrong. A couple of relatively accurate periods though : 84 – 85 forecasts resembled reality largely through 87; 03 – 04 forecasts correctly predicted the deficit in 06. That isn’t a great track record. It is almost comical at times to see just how wrong some predictions were. Standing out the most to me are 01 and 02 – seems like they were almost trying to will the surplus to stick around, projecting positive thoughts. That kind of fits with those folks though, they liked to project.