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Visualize This: Poverty Rate By Age in America (Jan 14 to Jan 27)

Started 3 years ago by nathany / 84 posts

12…5
  1. nathany
    FlowingData Editor
    Posted 3 years ago #

    [attachment=244,37]

    What's the best way to visualize poverty by state and age in America? The attached dataset provides proportions of specified age brackets that are in poverty in each state in America. For example, the .27 after “Alabama” means that .27 (or 27%) of all Children 18 and under in Alabama are in poverty(!). The last value in the same row, .20, means that .20 of all people in Alabama are in poverty.

    The original dataset can be found at Kaiser State Health Facts.

    Feel free to incorporate any other datasets or context from other sources to make your visualization more informative, and please include the software that you used.

  2. nathany
    FlowingData Editor
    Posted 3 years ago #

    @Chimp711 just pointed this out. You have to register and sign in before you download the dataset. Register for a new (free) account here:

    http://forums.flowingdata.com/register.php

  3. infinitee
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    hi Nathan, this is my very first attempt (am a newbie here). I used openoffice (spreadsheet and drawing) to create this.

    cheers,
    Pavan

    [attachment=251,40]

  4. nathany
    FlowingData Editor
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Nice! You get a brownie point for being the first to post your image.

  5. alisonruth
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Hi Nathan, another newby here.

    Created using Wordle after a bit of manipulation in excel, then put together in Pixelmator.

    Full size version is here -> http://flickr.com/photos/purple_academic/3199657715/sizes/o/

    [attachment=253,41]

  6. nathany
    FlowingData Editor
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Haha, I'm pretty sure about 99% of you will be "newbies." Thanks for submitting :)

  7. pragmatic
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    [attachment=255,42]

  8. Tim
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    nathan, 100K is a bit restrictive for a jpg. mine is 233.5 K

  9. nathany
    FlowingData Editor
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Thanks, Tim for the heads up. I actually didn't even know about the limit. I increased it to 500kb.

  10. Pat McComb
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    I did this with Excel, CorelDraw and Photoshop. I also correlated the the original data with population statistics. All those details are explained here.

    Visualize This is a great idea! As a non-professional gig, it allows for some trial and error. Also, it's sobering to work on the data showing the huge problem of child poverty in the US.

    For some reason, I could not upload the PDF.
    The PDF is available at Scribd

    [attachment=261,45]

  11. nathany
    FlowingData Editor
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Great work, Pat. It's very easy on the eyes.

  12. hadley
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Here's my first effort - a pretty standard dot plot of state by poverty rate, with ages distinguished by colour, and states sorted by overall poverty rate. One thing that struck me was that overall poverty rate increased, the disparity between the young and old also seemed to increase. My next plot investigates that difference.

    [attachment=263,47]

  13. hadley
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    In this plot, I chose to illustrate the poverty rate for each age class as a proportion of the overall poverty rate. You can see children seem to have a rate around 30% higher than the overall rate, and the elderly about 30% lower.

    I've also attached the R code I used to make the plots. You can see the 10 other visualisations I experimented with before deciding on these two. Note that all these plots are quick and dirty - in the initial stages of an investigation there's not a lot of benefit in making them pretty/elegant - you just want to get to the guts of the story.

    [attachment=264,48]

  14. hadley
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Ok, so I'm not allowed to upload R code - so here it is a text file.

  15. nathany
    FlowingData Editor
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Hmm, did the text attachment not work either? I just added .pdf and .r to the list of allowed file types. Hopefully that works...

    By the way, I am LOVING this thread.

  16. hadley
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Trying again with the R.

  17. hadley
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    OK - it didn't like the mime type on that one. I'll try adding the code directly


    b

  18. Pat McComb
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

  19. Pat McComb
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    PDF (29.4 KB) is still not uploading. "[denied mime]"

  20. nathany
    FlowingData Editor
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Drat. I guess we'll have to stick to .gif, .jpg, and .png for now.


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