Nolan Chart

This chart is attributed to David Nolan, and it attempts to describe the political spectrum.

From http://conservapedia.com/Political_spectrum_theory

Accodring to the Nolan chart, which types of political beliefs give the least economic freedom?

Which give the most economic freedom?

Which political belief gives the most personal freedom along with the least economic freedom?

Which political belief gives the most of both types of freedom?

'Turkey' searches on Google experience annual surge

From http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/11/thanksgiving-turkey-searches.html

What time of year are there the most Google searches for turkey?

Why do you think there are so many searches for Turkey at this time of year, but fewer at Christmas?

The Day Before Thanksgiving

 From http://dcprogressive.org/2009/11/26/graph-thanksgiving-edition/

This graph is from the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Which states had the most people who looked up how to cook a turkey on Allrecipes.com?

Name 5 states that fell within the average range.

Can you suggest a reason why people in some states are more or less likely to look up a turkey recipe online?

Colorblindness Pedigree Chart

X-linked traits are traits that are passed on from parents to offspring on the X chromosome (the chromosome related to gender). A common X-linked trait is colorblindness. The genes needed to distinguish red from green are on the X-chromosome. A female with one defective and one normal X-chromosome has normal vision. However, a male with a defective color vision gene on his X-chromosome, is colorblind. There are no genes for normal color vision on the Y-chromosome to cover for the defective X-chromosome. One way of tracing a trait through generations is a pedigree chart. Here is a colorblindness pedigree chart.

From http://library.thinkquest.org/C0110254/Xlink.html

The first pair at the top had two children. Were they male or female? Colorblind or did they have normal vision?

One of those children had children. Could those children see color normally?

World Health Cartograms

Child Mortality

People Living with HIV/AIDS

Healthcare Spending

From http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/cartograms/

Compare the child mortality and the healthcare spending cartograms. What do you notice?

Which cartograms look the most similar?

The World's Wealth Cartogram

From http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/cartograms/

This is a cartogram of the world in which the sizes of countries are proportional to Gross Domestic Product, which is a measure of how much wealth a country's economy generates, and hence, to an extent, of the wealth of the country's inhabitants.

Which countries have the largest part of the world's wealth?

Which continent seem to almost disappear on this cartogram?

Cartogram of Population

Here is an ordinary map of the world:

and here is a cartogram representing world population:

From http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/cartograms/

In this map the sizes of countries are proportional not to their actual landmass but instead to the number of people living there; a country with 20 million people, for instance, appears twice as large as a country with 10 million.

Which countries have the most people?

Which countries look very different on this map, compared to the ordinary one?

Why might a country that appears large on the ordinary map appear small on this cartogram?

Time Spent Eating

From http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/05/eat-fast-get-fat.html

In which country to people spend the most time eating?

In which country do they spend the least?

From this chart, what do you think is the ideal amount of time to spend eating each day?

Traffic Area Chart

From http://www.designer-daily.com/information-design-patterns-790

Which type of vehicle had the highest number of accidents in 2005?

Which month had the most accidents?

Which month had the fewest motorcycle accidents?

Patient Flow Chart

From http://www.smartdraw.com/specials/partners/jcaho.htm?id=330459

Is it possible for a patient not to have to wait in the waiting room?

Why might a patient need to complete paperwork?

Morning Flow Chart

From http://www.edrawsoft.com/Process-Flowcharts.php

What is the first step in this flow chart?

What is the decision in this flow chart?

Police Organizational Chart

From http://www.wsprings.com/UserFiles/File/Police/Organizational_Chart.jpg

Who are the two people who report to the Director of Law Enforcement Services?

Who do the investigators report to?

Who does the lieutenant supervise?

Your Own Timeline Chart

See yesterday's Timeline Chart for Benjamin Franklin. Make a similar one for your own life showing at least 5 major events.

Timeline Chart for Benjamin Franklin

From http://www.bes.fayette.k12.il.us/excel/Timelines/create-a-timeline.html

Approximately what year did Benjamin Franklin open a printing office in PA?

Approximately what year was his famous kite experiment?

Injury Figures Line Chart

From http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ppt/injury/2007chartbook/injury_figures_PPT.htm

Which cause of injury rises most as age increases?

Which cause of injury peaks in the late teen years? Why do you think this is?

Energy Usage Pie Chart

Residential Energy Costs

From http://www.r-prollc.com/SavingEnergy.html

What is the largest source of residential energy cost?

What percentage of energy goes to refrigerators?

What percentage of energy is spent on changing the temperature of our homes?

Metal Density Bar Chart

From http://www.gcsescience.com/hsw13.htm

Which metal is the most dense?

Which metal is the least dense?

Final Exam Histogram

From http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid92_gci330729,00.html

What range of scores does the pink bar represent?

How many students got between 80 and 100 on the final exam?

What score range was the most frequent? Least?

Countries and Oil Reserves

From http://gcaptain.com/maritime/blog/tag/data/

Which country has the greatest oil reserves?

Which country in South America has the most oil?

Container Shipping Companies

From http://gcaptain.com/maritime/blog/tag/data/

The data visualization above represents the world's 10 largest container shipping companies by TEU capacity.

Which container shipping company has the greatest TEU capacity?

Use the size of the circle to help you estimate the TEU capacity of CSCL.

Phone Comparison

From http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-10384027-260.html

What trends do you see for each of the three types of phones?

When did Blackberry reach its highest percentage of owners?

If the trends continue, what do you predict will happen to each of the three types of phones?

Housing in Baltimore

From http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/realestate/blog/2009/10/home_buying_and_selling_in_the_baltimore_area.html

About how many new real estate listings were there in Baltimore in 2002? In 2009?

When was the peak in new real estate listings?

Describe the relationship of new contracts to new listings.

Internet Use

79% of American adults used the internet in 2009, up from 67% in Feb. 2005
46% of online American adults 18 and older use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 8% in February 2005.
65% of teens 12-17 use online social networks as of Feb 2008, up from 58% in 2007 and 55% in 2006.
As of August 2009, Facebook was the most popular online social network for American adults 18 and older.

From http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/10/25/graphic-the-rise-of-social-networking-with-american-adults/

Choose any of the above data and make an appropriate graph or graphs to represent it. You do not have to include everything, just choose what is most interesting to you.

Obama's Speeches Tag Cloud

From http://blogs.lubbockonline.com/inauguration/

What are some of the most common words in Obama's speeches, according to this tag cloud?

Which word is more common, generation or generations?

Texas Temperatures

Minimum Temperatures, Oct 24, 2009

Arlington	42
Dallas-Love	44
DFW	44
Denton	40
Fort Worth Alliance	43
Fort Worth Meacham	46
McKinney	39

From http://www.examiner.com/x-5182-Dallas-Weather-Examiner~y2009m10d24-Oct-24-A-cold-start-in-north-Texas

Choose the type of graph you think will best represent the data above and graph it. Remember to label your axes!

Freezes in Texas

From http://www.examiner.com/x-5182-Dallas-Weather-Examiner~y2009m10d24-Oct-24-A-cold-start-in-north-Texas

Which month has the highest number of average freeze days?

Which months have the lowest number of freeze days?

Health Care Expenditures

From http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/10/graph_of_the_day_for_october_2_5.html

What are the two biggest sources of funds for health care services?

What type of health care expenditure takes the biggest proportion of money?

Foreign Exchange

For each pair of graphs, the left graph depicts Wednesday’s currency forecast and actual currency data while the right graph depicts Thursday’s currency forecast. Green is Wednesday’s forecast; red is Wednesday’s actual trading data; and blue is Thursday’s forecast. The time is GMT +1, also known as the time in Western Europe or 6 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. In other words, the forecasts extend from 6:00 PM Wednesday to 5:59 PM Thursday Eastern Standard Time. We list the data based on military time. Thus, our graphs begin with 18:00 or 6:00 PM today and extend until 17:59 the next day.

From http://sumfolio.com/forexmetals-forecasts-thursday-october-22nd-2009-235/

What differences do you see between the predicted value of the dollar and the actual dollar value?

At the end of the day Wednesday, was the dollar worth more or less than at the beginning?

Newspaper Circulation

From http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/10/graph_of_the_day_for_october_2_3.html

Describe what has happened to newspaper circulation since 1960.

When was the last time newspaper circulation was at the level it is now?

Dog Walking

From http://graphjam.com/2009/10/16/song-chart-memes-dog-sniff/

What do you notice about the y-axis on this graph?

Approximately how many times will the dog sniff on a walk when the owner is in a hurry?