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It's a neat idea, but I think it has some rough edges. As I understand it, the underlying data has no time component (i.e., we don't know on what date the pers
by ajays 15y ago
It's a neat idea, but I think it has some rough edges.
As I understand it, the underlying data has no time component (i.e., we don't know on what date the person moved; just that they moved). Therefore, showing a stream of particles moving out of a city brings in an (erroneous) time aspect to the move. For example, you see one city lose its population; and then a minute later, people start flocking to it. There is no temporal causality here, but the visualization projects such.
A better way would have been to project all the moves along the same time axis, and show them all at once.
Another idea: plot the delta (gain - loss) for each city as a circle; make the size of the circle a function of the magnitude, and the color a function of the sign.
You can also slice-and-dice by demographics and income (like the video did towards the end), and just show those numbers. (Which cities gained the most millionaires? Which cities gained the most youth??)
- eveneven 15y agoYou're right, it takes an artistic license with the information and fails any strict requirement of necessity. There are 320k of movers that year though and a transient particle was the only option I saw to display all of them. Screens just don't have the resolution to overlay that much information. As you point out, aggregation and faceting both solve this, but I really wanted to show all of them. That has more though to do with creating an experience of having seen a certain phenomenon than creating something actionable and clear. It's self indulgant, but I like that. And I agree: static representations with aggregate data would be interesting.
- ajays 15y agoHaving said all that: I think it is a beautiful piece. It looks very nice. Thank you for sharing it. :-)
- cop359 15y agoI think the "stream of particles" method is the easier, most visually appealing, way of showing the direction the people are moving.
- ajays 15y agoI agree. I was just pointing out that the streams having a temporal sequence give the wrong impression (as if people are moving to different places at different times, when it's not the case).