Pacific Standard Debut Cover

How Congress Uses Twitter

June 30, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
How Congress Uses Twitter

Like other Tweeters, U.S. senators and representatives who use the Twitter micro-messaging service choose whose feeds they wish to follow; these attention preferences are depicted below by arcs connecting followers to followees. Members of Congress and associated entities (the Hispanic Caucus and the Prayer Caucus, for example) are arrayed and colored on our diagram according to the partisan lean of the congressional people and entities they choose to follow — going from most Democratic in blue on the left, to most Republican-leaning in red on the right. The arcs are colored according to ... Read More

More like this: Graphic Art, July-August 2010, Politics
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Cash for Clunkers, Visualized

March 5, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
R Graphics Output

Data from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Cash for Clunkers program is displayed below as a directed network that represents the flow of car ownership, from the trade-in of "gas guzzlers" toward the purchase of new, supposedly more efficient auto makes. Each node represents a make of car and is scaled in size according to the total number of units traded in and purchased new. Node color varies according to the number of units traded in versus purchased new: The brightest red nodes represent car makes that were more frequently purchased new; the bluest nodes indicate makes more often ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, CAROUSEL, Graphic Art, March-April 2010
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Counting the Stars

November 5, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

Metacritic.com is an acclaimed Web site that combines thousands of media reviews of entertainment offerings — movies, games, books and albums — into a Metascore, a sort of weighted average of critics' reviews that ranges from zero to 100. Analysis of just a small subset of the site's information shows the power of numbers to confirm — or defy — expectation. The Actors The colored horizontal bars on this chart present a graphical representation of the distribution of scores given to movies in which each of the listed actors appear. The numbers inside the bars represent the average ... Read More

More like this: Graphic Art, Media, November-December 2009
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Partisan Portfolios

June 15, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

The 1978 Ethics in Government Act requires the disclosure of certain financial information by some members of all three branches of the federal government, including a listing of investment holdings and their approximate value. This graphic shows the total amount owned (in millions of U.S. dollars) by U.S. senators and representatives in the top 50 most widely held companies as of 2007. The proportion of holdings in each company by party is shown with color (blue for Democrat and red for Republican, with brightness varying by degree of party ownership) and through offsets from a vertical ... Read More

More like this: Graphic Art, July-August 2009, Politics
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An Economy of Change

April 28, 2009 • By • 1 Comment

This spinogram depicts U.S. gross domestic product, divided into constituent sources. Column widths are proportional to a year's real GDP, and each sector's contribution to GDP is reflected in box height. Color intensity varies with historical relative magnitude of a sector's contribution to GDP. Clearly shown is the service sector's 25-year rise to dominance, paralleling a drop in the importance of manufacturing and increasing transportation production in periods of high energy prices. Numbers in billions of dollars. Key to abbreviations: • Agriculture, forestry and fishing • ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Graphic Art, May-June 2009
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