It’s a holiday week: Wednesday was Canada Day, and tomorrow is Independence Day in the United States. Fairness dictates that North America not get all of the attention, so the Eurozone is the subject of this week’s Data Driven Digest. We’re sharing interesting data visualizations about global art prices, the Greek economic crisis, and European population trends.
Picture This: The team at howmuch.com is obsessed with the price of things – and with maps. Their most recent creation overlays the most valuable painting in a country onto that country’s map to create the visualization above. (Maps for the rest of the world, sans Africa and with a few other gaps, are here.) Two important distinctions: the value is based on most recent sale, and the location is based on where the painting was created. (That’s why the Mona Lisa – arguably the most valuable painting in the world – doesn’t appear on the map of France: it was created in Italy, and it has never been sold.) We’d love to see an interactive version in which the full painting (with links and more data) pops up when you roll over a country. That would be a true work of art.
Greek Economy: All eyes are on Greece this week as the Eurozone sorts out its economic crisis. To help make sense of it all, FiveThirtyEight published The Extreme Economic Outlier That Is Greece, in 7 Charts – the title says it all. Vox created a similar article, 12 charts and maps that explain the Greek crisis. While FiveThirtyEight created all of its visualizations, Vox created four of its charts and borrowed eight (all linked) from other sources. The two sites and 19 data visualizations provide a solid explanation of a multifaceted situation.
People Counter: Berliner Morgenpost published a wonderful, detailed interactive map showing where the population of Europe is growing (in orange) and declining (in blue). Move your pointer over the map and a popup shows the name of the municipality (nearly 120,000 of them are cataloged) and the population growth or decline (both as a percentage and as a raw number). You can zoom in to explore any region in detail, switch between German- and English-language text, and see four specialized versions of the map with a single click. So much detail, so transparently presented.
Like what you see? Every Friday we share great data visualizations and embedded analytics. If you have a favorite or trending example, tell us: 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:
June 26: Period Table of wearable tech, SEO factors, private companies, human hair
June 19: Birth month and disease, medical employment, Grand Canyon deaths, HealthData.gov
June 12: Steph Curry’s jump shot, free throw arcs, Tweeting the NBA Finals