data visualization

Where Have the Fish Come From?

11 August 2009

After reading my posts on the international arms trade, a friend thought I might be interested in some data on the international trade in fish. While I know almost as little about fish as about arms, I always welcome good data. The data in question is published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of […]

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The Big Arms Traders

1 August 2009

My last post looked at the international arms trade. Taking data from SIPRI, I produced maps showing arms exports for a number of countries, including Australia and the USA. While these maps gave an indication of the spread of arms trading, it did not show which are the biggest overall importers and exporters of arms. […]

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Love is Old-Fashioned, Sex Less So

24 July 2009

Following on from my post on Visualizing the Hottest 100, I noticed that the UK’s Guardian newspaper has published a list of 1000 songs to hear before you die*. The list was assembled from nominations posted by readers. Even before looking at the list, I suspected that the demographic profile of the Guardian’s readers may […]

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Olympic Medals per Capita – Update

24 August 2008

Since my last post, about Beijing 2008 Olympic rankings by population and economy size, there has been a lot of action in the medals per capita stakes. The Bahamas knocked Jamaica from the number one spot with a Bronze in the triple-jump, only to have Jamaica regain the crown as it continued to win Gold […]

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Olympic Medal Count by Population and GDP

22 August 2008

Now that the swimming is over, Australia is likely to see its rankings in the Olympic medal tally start to fall. To feel better about this situation, people like to start pointing out that we still look pretty good for a small country and it’s certainly true that of the countries currently in the medal […]

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Digging into GroceryCHOICE

15 August 2008

Earlier this week, South Australian senator Nick Xenophon raised concerns that the Government’s FuelWatch scheme would lead to higher petrol prices and that small independent petrol retailers were likely to be disadvantaged by the scheme. So it looks likely that the FuelWatch legislation will fail to pass the senate and then fade into oblivion. I […]

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Online Data and Charts with Swivel

10 August 2008

I recently came across the OECD Factbook blog written by Jérôme Cukier, who works as a data editor for the OECD. He has an excellent post on publishing charts in blogs. As regular readers of the Mule will know, I don’t mind posting the odd chart and in the process I have grappled with the […]

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Drivers of Australian Inflation

18 May 2008

Inflation in Australia has been running well outside the 2-3% range targeted by the Reserve Bank of Australia, which is why interest rates have been on the rise for the last couple of years. So what has been driving prices up in Australia? One useful way to get a sense of what has been happening is to use a type of chart known as a treemap. These charts tend to be pretty busy, but can be a great way to explore a rich set of data.

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