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Visualizing America's Debt

12 points by cwan 17y ago

johnohara 17y ago
These debt graphs are notoriously variable. Google "debt as a percent of GDP" and you will find all sorts of diagrams each showing a different percentage. Some show the U.S.A. at 98% of GDP, others show it at 60%, and still others fall somewhere in between. There is "what is owed" versus "what is obligated" versus "what is projected." No wonder I'm the first to comment in over an hour.
samdk 17y ago
Some of these graphs are much more confusing than they need to be. The money scales should remain more consistent. Most of the graphs are scaled in billions of dollars, but one is in trillions, and one is (completely inexplicably) in millions of dollars. The 'Strategic Petroleum Reserve' chart doesn't tell me much. It tells us a value of the strategic petroleum reserves once, and then gives two values for the price of a barrel. Which is being used to calculate the total value? The brown/grey background also makes several of the charts much more difficult to read. It's very hard to see any but the darkest-colored countries on the map of foreign countries that hold US national debt.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  Yes, it's a terrible page. I have no idea how it got to the front page. Half the debt figures are future projected values and we know how dubious those are. Even more, the time scale isn't consistent. It starts with ten year jumps and then shifts to one jumps and then goes into the future. One interesting thing is showed was that China seemed to hold no more than about 5% of US debt - but since it only gave visual illustration, the figure is sadly inexact.
iamwil 17y ago
Blah. There's a prevalence of bad visualizations like this that we eat up just because it looks pretty and it has gradients. In the first bar graph, the increases in year aren't consistent even though the spacing between the bars and widths of bars are consistent. That makes it deceptive to the eye about the overall trend of the national debt. Not only that, a downward pointing bar graph with the color red usually indicates some sort of negative number or amount in opposition to the the graph pointing upward and colored blue. But it ends up that they're both debt, but measured in different ways, and not at all in opposition to each other! Visualizations are basically summaries of data. To have to fill in those spaces in time with my mind mentally is work that I shouldn't be doing.

12 points by cwan 17y ago

These debt graphs are notoriously variable. Google "debt as a percent of GDP" and you will find all sorts of diagrams each showing a different percentage. Some show the U.S.A. at 98% of GDP, others show it at 60%, and still others fall somewhere in between. There is "what is owed" versus "what is obligated" versus "what is projected." No wonder I'm the first to comment in over an hour.

samdk 17y ago

Some of these graphs are much more confusing than they need to be. The money scales should remain more consistent. Most of the graphs are scaled in billions of dollars, but one is in trillions, and one is (completely inexplicably) in millions of dollars. The 'Strategic Petroleum Reserve' chart doesn't tell me much. It tells us a value of the strategic petroleum reserves once, and then gives two values for the price of a barrel. Which is being used to calculate the total value? The brown/grey background also makes several of the charts much more difficult to read. It's very hard to see any but the darkest-colored countries on the map of foreign countries that hold US national debt.

joe_the_user 17y ago
Yes, it's a terrible page. I have no idea how it got to the front page. Half the debt figures are future projected values and we know how dubious those are. Even more, the time scale isn't consistent. It starts with ten year jumps and then shifts to one jumps and then goes into the future. One interesting thing is showed was that China seemed to hold no more than about 5% of US debt - but since it only gave visual illustration, the figure is sadly inexact.

iamwil 17y ago

Blah. There's a prevalence of bad visualizations like this that we eat up just because it looks pretty and it has gradients. In the first bar graph, the increases in year aren't consistent even though the spacing between the bars and widths of bars are consistent. That makes it deceptive to the eye about the overall trend of the national debt. Not only that, a downward pointing bar graph with the color red usually indicates some sort of negative number or amount in opposition to the the graph pointing upward and colored blue. But it ends up that they're both debt, but measured in different ways, and not at all in opposition to each other! Visualizations are basically summaries of data. To have to fill in those spaces in time with my mind mentally is work that I shouldn't be doing.