So instead, I did something much simpler, which still took forever! A character map. I haven’t actually read Pride & Prejudice, but Lunchbox’s sister-in-law posted a link to this diagram:

Pride and Prejudice Character Map: Wikipedia

I wanted to try making it prettier. And maybe my chart can be on Wikipedia too!

Pride & Prejudice pedigree

Pedigree in a circle

Ugh I have a headache. What the fk am I doing.

Anyway! Happy Halloween.

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Post tags: character map, Pride & Prejudice

Geography of Jobs (tipstrategies.com)

I will make data graphics like this. Maybe I’ll have learned enough about stats by the time there is less red on the map.

For this quarter, I’m studying basic statistics, color theory, and freelance business. I’m also making myself do some kind of ‘assignment’ every two weeks. For this first assignment, I was hoping to make a graph of my own, but I don’t know enough yet. So I’ll write about this employment map.

Reactions

My initial reactions are: the map looks pretty neat to me, we’re so doomed, and where’d they get the data from & how’d they push it into Flash?

My stat book (for dummies) would ask, how are ‘job lost’ and ‘job gained’ defined? What were the methods in obtaining this information? What is the margin of error? Is there any bias? Shouldn’t the total number of people in a ‘metropolitan statistical area’ be displayed somehow? (Or are all the statistical areas the same in population?)

The more critical commenters ask:

1. Representing the value by diameter over-emphasizes difference (it is difficult to work with scaling circles — representing the value by area de-emphasizes difference)
2. The circles should display job loss/gain per capita or as percent changed.
3. Why red & green? What about red/green colorblind people?

Color

I think the red/green coloration makes more sense. I haven’t read too much into color theory yet*, but red definitely goes well with ‘danger’, ‘warning’, ‘bad things’. And green seems like a natural choice for ‘growth’. And the red & green are muted/transparent, which gives the graph a kind of serious/business/sophisticated feeling.

In contrast is an employment map from Slate that has their circles scaled differently, and uses red & blue circles with transparency. The red & blue doesn’t seem to work as well, because the colors are usually used to represent Republicans vs Democrats.

Here’s the map using other colors, just to show that color is important. I can actually feel my brain working to remember which color represents what, using these other colors. I also made a b/w version, just to see. It took a bit of fussing with the contrast & color balance to make the the green & red look different. A completely colorblind person would see the original red & green as the same value of gray.

Data Display

The circles seem kind of messy. It would be fun if the employment data were by state & the states would sink & rise accordingly. (Even though I think that 3-D bar graphs are silly.)

An alternative to changing the size of the circles would be to change the circle’s color. E.g., darker red = more jobs lost… This would make the graph less exciting. It seems that as long as there’s more than one way to represent the data, it’s impossible to make a graph that is objective. (Although you could put all the data into a table so that nothing’s easy to read.)

The authors definitely have a story to tell, and they share it in Map Highlights & Planning for Recovery essays… Mostly they seem to be saying, ‘Look every important event in the US since 2004 shows up on our fancy map!’ I wonder why they didn’t incorporate the current events information into the timeline or the map. Would that be too distracting? Or editorializing?

Other people also saw very specific stories when looking at the graph:

All this map shows is How in the cities we need to change from having such a capatilistic culture and focus more on jobs that are stable and that require skills. — THE AWAKENING

and

Ummm, one day we will realize, as the rest of the world already does, that until we start buying products made at home in North America, jobs will continue to go overseas. So, what are you driving? I know it’s a BMW or Toyota or Hundai, or…. — Jim Gwaltney

Data

Online people always want more! There are several comments like, “This map would portray a more accurate picture of the economy if it displayed housing prices. Why can’t you separate out part-time vs full-time jobs? White vs blue collar? Public vs private? Can you do this for every country in the world?”

Where are all these numbers supposed to come from?

Also (having learned that statistics are not really about numbers but about implementing the scientific method), what questions/hypotheses are these people suggesting? Or are they just hoping to observe a pattern which they can tack an explanation on to (or maybe use to ask more questions)?

And how would you compare two types of job employment numbers at the same time? Overlaying the circles might be too cluttered… Maybe that could be another assignment.

As for this TIP Strategies graph, there doesn’t seem to be a hypothesis. It seems more like they wanted to create an emotional response and present themselves an objective company with access to lots of information and the ability to process it. So maybe this graph is just a model? I don’t know. Aren’t some data graphics just representations of a thing or a system and nothing else? agkjas;fkjagj;aksg

ugh

Next assignment: Check out the numbers on the magazine death tolls

*I skimmed through Color Harmony Compendium, which is very pop-psych and brief about color. It’s more for showing color combination samples (but it unfortunately doesn’t use any dark colors, i.e., colors with more than 50% black).
I also checked out Itten’s book from the library, The Elements of Color, and it’s very serious and pretty boring so far. I feel like I should be googling all the artists he talks about.

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I’ve always thought that the infographics in Wired magazine, GOOD magazine, and Tufte’s books were pretty. And the interactive data things on nyt.com are also fun. But this video is what made me begin to think that creating data graphics could be a career for me.

The video is actually about health and the developing world (and our misconceptions of the developing world vs the first world). It’s really interesting! The speaker, Hans Rosling, is a doctor & researcher & a really great presenter:

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Yeah, I made that!

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Post tags: actionscript3

Lately the Lynda vids have been making me very sleepy…

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Post tags: Drupal, forum, study

I’m relearning CSS right now (I can never get things to look the same in different browsers…) and I’m also playing with PHP. It’s all very fun. Except I don’t leave the house much. And maybe sometimes I watch tv or play video games instead.

Today’s new toy is the Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox. It’s pretty neat. You can turn on/off styles, view the stylesheet, validate your code, view outlines for different elements on the page, and lots more! Try it!

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defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

Then restart the Finder (command-option-escape, click on “Finder”, click the “Relaunch” button).

There are files all over the place now! I feel like Apple has been cheating me of files that I paid good money for! If all those grayed-out files are too much for you, you can make them invisible again by repeating the same steps — just change “TRUE” to “FALSE” first.

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Post tags: mac os x