Visualising Economic Data

Aidan Kane is doing some amazing things with the dynamic presentation of economic data on his blog.

See here for a moving scatter plot of US inflation and unemployment (once downloaded, press play to start).   And here for an evolving population pyramid for Ireland based on CSO data.  Check out the blog itself for explanations of what you are seeing.

11 replies on “Visualising Economic Data”

@ John McHale,

Available on google video: From Counterculture to Cyberculture: The Legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog.

There is an interesting talk here about the Whole Earth movement in the 1960s in the US. It was basically about the generation who grew up in the 1950s, who were exposed to Marshall McLuhan and Buckminister Fuller, who became aware of technology and saw it as a benefit, something that could integrate with nature, rather than be removed from it. They talk about the building of model communities, to understand real communities better. In a way, it was the beginnings of much ‘modelling’ we witness today with the attempt to work with and control data etc. Stewart Brand talks about the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock and so forth.

I have made a couple of IE posts of my own, where I use words to describe certain models, that might have powerful applications to economic behavioural visualisation. Like this one:

http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2009/11/06/the-benefits-of-financial-globalization-have-been-oversold/#comment-23766

@All

This piece of ecenomic visualisation really impressed in a previous post here – Take a peekat what €10 billion looks like ……… (via Oliver Vandt)

http://thestory.ie/2010/03/19/anglo-losses/

this is presently just €1 billion short of what Anglo_Chief is stating that we MUST put in to Anglo_Irish now to keep it afloat!!!! (front page of today’s Irish Times)

John
Thanks for that!

It just shows how primitive the means of dissemination of knowledge actually are. Any concept that takes a thousand words to explain can be designed to be a very effective picture incorporating dimensions, colour, time and motion relative to time and dimensions.
Quite a bit of info can be incorporated into nonverbal communication, which will suit we autistics very nicely. As these “cartoons” will be mathematically based, the ability to explain the truth and the lies and the statistics is obvious.

Too dangerous as it maight enable too many to see what is happening between any two sectors of the structures of a numerical economy ……. Suppress!

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