Math 216: Statistics for Engineering

That's a pretty nice segmented bar chart on the right.

anyqs: I would like to know how big the sample size was. Also, how many of the participants are actual college students? I'd like to see the data on purely college students.

anyqs: I would definitely like to see some more info on this, the things mentioned above as well as what N/A actually means. Does it mean non drinker? Also I'm guessing that they did not poll anyone under 21. I think there's more non-drinkers than drinkers under 21 but including that group would certainly change things (most likely lessen the wine numbers). Finally, it's not a big deal but the 36% for beer in 2011 appears higher up on the graph than the 36% in 2005.

Worldwide locations and sales of Starbucks and McDonalds

anyqs Is the growth of Starbucks in multiple countries similar to what McDonald's growth was earlier? If so, how closely do the growths match, and can we expect Starbucks to eventually be as ubiquitous as McDonalds?

anyqs The size of each bubble is confusing. The size of the ones for McDonald's and Starbuck's are very similar, but if looked at closely, are actually different. This leads to questions about the relative presence of each corporation in each region. Also the range that is covered by the McDonald's circles are greater than that of Starbuck's. I know that this visualization is just to show the relativity in size between the two companies, but the information given is hard to translate. My question is, did they make the circles similar on purpose to show the similarities between the spread of the companies, or was it just because the overall range of Starbuck's presence was smaller than McDonald's?

anyqs This is one of the most creative visualizations I've ever seen. I would be very interested to know more about the point at which Earth simply can't handle more people (as depicted by the nearly overflowing vials). Asia's vial, for example, is nearly filled to the brim by the year 2015, indicating that it will start to overflow soon. Does this mean that Asia's population growth will have to slow down before that of other continents? All the vials are the same size in this representation, but I would be curious to see which vial fills up first if the size of each vial was adjusted to represent a "theoretical maximum capacity" for each continent/country (based on available land, available resources, average consumption rates, etc.). From an execution standpoint, I think it would be useful to see a table of values with population growth rates for each continent/country, particularly because the vials mainly indicate relative rates. anyqs

anyqs This was pretty cool the first time around. I like the use of the glasses, but the way they have China, India and the rest of Asia in separate cups. How does the way they break up the world into regions affect the data? The separations make sense when trade/communication were minimal. But in the last 200 years, the most dramatic time, the importance of location in the data diminishes. Like Irene said, I also thought the "max capacity" of the cups was misleading. I like the part at the end where the world cup it about to overflow but I don't think it works with the individual cups.

I was planning on bookmarking just one of these, but this page has a list of seriously cool and diverse data visualizations ranging from interconnectivity of the web to the history of Great Britain.

anyqs In the munterbund visualization what do they use to connect the words to eachother?

Statistically shows who should be considered the greatest basketball players of all time based on different accomplishments.

"anyqs" This is a very cool way to see how players from the past rack up to one another. One of my questions is how did they come up with a a methodology to rank the award achievement points, and do they believe this method can be used to rank all players versus one another? It seems like using this method, guys who have played with multiple championship teams who are not considered stars could then rank really highly, even though they might not have played a huge role in the championships won (NBA championships are the most achievement points). If all the NBA players were put on this chart, then some people could be mislead, as a guy like Charles Barkley could rank lower than say Derek Fisher, even though Fisher would is not considered on the same star level as Barkley.

anyqs How was the scoring of the achievement decided? For example, why is the pointage for Playoff Appearances 0? And it seems like there's a significant penalty for people who've never won a championship, despite their skill level. Is it fair to discount a player's all time greatness, if they were never on a team good enough to win a championship? Like John Stockton, one of the greatest point guards of all time. Leads the league in career assists by over 4000 (with 15,000+), but is given a very low ranking for his skill and effect on the game, because of his lack of rings. There's an odd skew, and while championship rings are a massive deal, they're not everything.

anyqs: The article says "more women are entering college, which in turn is changing the relative popularity of disciplines," but doesn't say exactly what percentage of degrees awarded in each discipline go to women. I'm wondering what that percentage is. It would have been nice to have seen the number of degrees awarded to women and men in each discipline visualized with the number of degrees awarded.

anyqs: It is true that more students are earning science degrees than they did twenty years ago, but it is also true that more students are earning degrees, period. Note the growth in arts, music, and business degrees awarded. It would be good to know the percentage of the total increase in degrees awarded for each discipline.

anyqs How has the tree distribution has changed since 2002? It would be valuable to see areas of recent over-logging in red and areas of new growth in a lighter green.

anyqs This visualization is pretty interesting however I feel its lacking something to compare it to. I wonder how this tree distribution differs from the pre-industrial revolution distribution? Is today's tree distribution worse than before because of pollution and over-foresting? I also agree with Taylor, I think a different color like red to show recent over-logging would be very valuable to the viewer. anyqs

anyqs I wonder how the distribution of trees in the North West would change if we counted trees, not Biomass in tonnes, since so many of the trees there are large Redwoods which are considerably heavier trees due to their size.

Nuclear Explosions since 1945

anyqs It is interesting to note the relationship between the locations of the nuclear explosions and the population densities around those regions. Furthermore, it seems that there is also a relationship between the frequency of nuclear detonations and how long ago they were detonated (i.e. there were several nuclear detonations 50 years ago, but just 2 in the last 10 years). Lastly, it is interesting to see that the UK and France conducted the majority of their nuclear explosions in their colonies during the 1960s and 1970s, away from their population.

For decades, the World Database of Happiness has tracked how happy people are.

anyqs Immediately when I see statistics on human emotions, I find myself asking, rather skeptically, how do they know how happy someone is? If I say that I am the highest level of happiness today, i.e. a 4, and then tomorrow I win the lottery, then I'm still stuck saying I'm a 4. I wonder what the statistics would have looked like if they gave their populations a greater range to choose from than 1 to 4? Perhaps 1 to 100? Would the people have rated themselves happier or less happy? Does forcing the sampling population into discrete values with a resolution of only four values affect how they respond? Further, the graph mentions that some countries weren't even surveyed some years... Perhaps they weren't surveyed during the worst years when everyone would have been very unhappy? \ The creators also gave "suggestions" as to why the counties got happier or sadder. For example, they believe that France became sadder as a whole country because we renamed Freedom Fries back to French Fries.. Really??? Is this website meant to give statistics or just to be funny? Consider the title, its even a joke. anyqs

anyqs What polling statistics were used and what were the cut-offs for each category?

This is a cool argument for the new (next season) 1 game playoff between the top two wild-card teams in the NL and AL, and why it should work

Winning percentages for baseball teams.  Shows which teams' formulas worked best

Has a couple of videos with very detailed data visualization techniques employed by the New York Times to monitor the way their social media articles propagate through the internet. It evolves with time and shows many variables including the number of user's reading it and their locations. 

Tony Heath