March 2006

A Critic of InfoGraphics in the Washington Post

by Catherine Mulbrandon on March 22, 2006

Jon Udell’s blog post about visual explanations in the Washington Post. After pointing out some problems with two graphs that he found that paper he goes on to say:

First, that we all need all need more and better tools to help us create and analyze these visual explanations. Second, that the natural home for such tools is online. We should expect to find much more there than static PDFs of the printed infographics. The data, as well as the interactive tools used to analyze the data, can and should be online. It should be straightforward to verify facts and explore alternate interpretations.

Although I would agree with this sentiment, the current size and resolution of monitors limits their ability to display data visualizations effectively. However, the New York Times is making some effort to include Flash-based interactive graphics in their online edition: The State of Executive Pay in 2005

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Income share going to the richest 5% (1917-2002)

by Catherine Mulbrandon on March 20, 2006

Here, I am taking a closer look at the bottom and top halves of the Top 10%. Look at the dramatic change in income share going to the top 5% (purple line), from 35% to 20% to 32%. Again it is the most wealthy who have the extreme changes in income. (See previous graphs that I posted about the drop in income after 2000)

Top 10% Income in the United States

Also the share of income going to the top 5% in 2000 was closing in on the previous high in 1928. Then they lost ground with the stock market decline.

Income share going to the richest 10% (1917-2002)

by Catherine Mulbrandon on March 19, 2006

This income data is from an academic paper “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998” by Saez and Piketty. It is the longest history that I have found so far and it focuses on high-income “tax units”, i.e. IRS income data of the wealthy.

The U-shape of this graph was a little startling as was the dramatic drop in income during World War II.
top10_1917_2002

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Visualizing credit card debt

by Catherine Mulbrandon on March 16, 2006

John Maeda’s Credit Card Debt Calculator, by entering your credit card debt you create a table showing the time/# of payments it takes to pay it off.

Maeda_CreditCardDebt

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