Each Friday we share some favorite reporting on, and examples of, data driven visualizations and embedded analytics that came onto our radar in the past week.
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Pop Quiz: I heard on the radio yesterday morning that the population of India will surpass that of China in the next 15 years. Soon thereafter I learned about the map above (click through for a high-resolution version), created by a Redditor called Tea Dranks and shared widely on the website of The Independent. The map graphs the world’s population visually by country, with each small square representing 500,000 people. (That’s why, at first glance, the map looks pixelated.) While that scale generally “works” for South America, Europe, and much of Africa – where population and geographic area run roughly in parallel – it creates strange effects in other parts of the world, and makes the burgeoning populations of India and China more clearly visible.
State of Play: Sunday’s Super Bowl is a true bicoastal affair, pitting the west coast’s Seattle Seahawks against the east coast’s New England Patriots. But does fan support hew to the west/east split? Website marketing firm AddThis created the map above showing which team the residents of each state support in the game. Click the map for the full infographic, which has other stats too. We like the concept of the map, but it begs for interactivity – so we’re less pleased that the data and algorithm are hidden from users. What do you think?
Commercial Time: The team at media intelligence firm Kantar Media has created a Super Bowl-related data visualization that’s more satisfying. It visualizes the other big game on Sunday – no, not the Puppy Bowl, but the advertising game. Kantar’s interactive chart (be sure to click through for the full version) tracks ad spending by sector since 1995. Autos have come on strong in recent years, as you can see in the snippet above. You can click each individual year to see spending by individual brands, or each sector to see the spending trend. Nicely done.
Do you have a favorite or trending resource on embedded analytics and data visualization? Share it with the readers of the Actuate blog. Submit ideas to blogactuate@actuate.com or add a comment below. Subscribe (at left) and we’ll email you when new entries are posted.
Recent Data Driven Digests:
January 23: SOTU tweets, Moore’s Law, Big Data roles
January 16: Tallest buildings, Ohio State’s Elo rating, airport efficiency
January 9: Global education, rainfall animation, cutting-edge visualizations