This visualization is meant to demonstrate the exponential growth of coronavirus deaths in the United States starting in early March when the first confirmed deaths took place. Some reports indicate that the first deaths may have been as early as early February, though that is not shown in this data.
In the animation, each day is about 1 second long so on days with fewer deaths, the figures show up more slowly, while on days with greater deaths, the figures come very, very quickly.
Deaths stop growing exponentially in early April and start to level off and plateau. However, they haven’t yet started to decline significantly so we are still seeing thousands of deaths each day (as of late April).
The data and visualization will be updated daily with data from Covidtracking.com.
For more information about the virus and the disease and data collection, you can find good information on the CDC website.
The number of Americans who have recently filed for unemployment due to the coronavirus pandemic is equal to the entire labor force of several states put together.
click on the button below to see a new set of states.
A record 16 million Americans just filed for unemployment due to the coronavirus pandemic at the end of March and early April 2020. This is an amazingly large number of people and I wanted to visualize how many people this actually is. For context, the US Department of Labor statistics states that in February 2020 (before the pandemic hit the United State) there were 164.2 million workers in the Civilian Labor Force.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) site defines “Civilian Labor Force” as such:
“The labor force includes all people age 16 and older who are classified as either employed and unemployed, as defined below. Conceptually, the labor force level is the number of people who are either working or actively looking for work.”
This basically means that approximately 10% of the entire workforce of people (both employed and unemployed in Feb 2020) are now out of a job. While 10% is a large, unprecedented number in our lifetimes, comparing these number to the size of the workforce in several states helps to provide more context. The visualization shows a random collection of states whose total labor force is equal to the latest unemployment numbers. If you click the button you can see a different set of states that have the same total labor force.
Predictions are that the number of unemployed will grow as the shutdowns and social distancing measures to contain the virus continue through April and into May. I will update this graph to reflect new numbers as they come out.
And we can only hope that people will be able to manage these tough economic times until we contain the virus and the economy rebounds.
Stay safe out there: stay away from people and wash your hands!
The coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is literally affecting the entire globe right now and changing the way we live our lives here in the US and all over the world.
There are quite a number of different coronavirus-related dataviz out there, but as we shelter-in-place I wanted to add a map that looked at a number of different metrics that tell us about the coronavirus pandemic by US states and look at those metrics on a population basis.
There are a number of data sources that I’ve found that publish data about the coronavirus and the resulting disease (Covid-19) in the United States:
This map is based on the data compiled from covidtracking.com, partly because it has a good API and also lists testing, cases and deaths. The data I’ve included on the map is:
Numbers of coronavirus cases – i.e. tested positive for virus
Numbers of coronavirus tests administered
Numbers of deaths due to coronavirus
Each of these is also calculated per 100,000 population in the state:
Numbers of coronavirus cases per 100k people- i.e. tested positive for virus
Numbers of coronavirus tests administered per 100k people
Numbers of deaths due to coronavirus per 100k people
These latter metrics are important because numbers of cases or deaths can be obscured by small or large populations but per capita data (or per 100k capita data) can point out interesting outliers.
It is important to note that the data is far from perfect. There is probably significant underreporting of tests, cases and deaths. The data is a collection for the various local and state agencies that are working hard to deal with the medical, social and political ramifications of the pandemic, while also collecting data. We don’t know how many Americans have coronavirus because of lack of testing.
Also important is that the number of positive cases is a function of how much testing is taking place so cases does not necessarily represent the exact prevalence of the virus, though there will probably be good correlation between cases and actual coronavirus infections. Luckily it sounds like tests are becoming more widely available so hopefully those numbers will go up sharply.
For more information about the virus and the disease and data collection, you can find good information on the CDC website.
This map of the United States visualizes over 28,000 cities in the 50 states. The interactive visualization lets you type in a name (or part of a name) and see all of the cities that contain those string of letters. The points on the map show the geographic center of each city.
For example, if you type in “N”, you will highlight all cities that start with an N in the US. As you type in another letter (e.g. “e”, it will narrow down the cities that begin with those two letters (“Ne”). It will progressively narrow down the number of cities as you type in more letters. You can see an scrollable list of the cities (ordered by city population) that contain the string of letter that you have typed.
If you hover over a highlighted city, you can see the name of the city.
You can click on the check box to show or hide the outlines of the states.
You can “Show City List” to show the list of cities that contain the string of letters you have typed.
Previously, I created a map (cartogram) that showed the state by state electoral results from the Presidential Election by scaling the size of the states based on their electoral votes. The idea for that map was that by portraying a state as Red or Blue, your eye naturally attempts to determine which color has a greater share of the total. On a normal election map, Red states dominate, especially because a number of larger, less populated states happen to vote Republican. That cartogram changed the size of the states so that large states with low population, and thus low electoral votes tended to shrink in size, while smaller states with moderate to larger populations tended to grow in size. Thus, when your eyes attempt to discern which color prevails, the comparison is more accurate and attempts to replicate the relative ratio of electoral votes for each side.
This map looks at the 2024, 2020 and 2016 presidential election results, county by county. An interesting thing to note is that this view is even more heavily dominated by the color red, for the same reasons. Less densely populated counties tend to vote republican, while higher density, typically smaller counties tend to vote for democrats. As a result, the blue counties tend to be the smaller ones so blue is visually less represented than it should be based on vote totals. More than 75% of the land area is red, when looking at the map based on land areas, while shifting to the population view only about 46% of the map is red. Neither of these percentages is exactly correct because each county is colored fully red or blue and don’t take into account that some counties are won by a large percentage and some are essentially tied. However, the population number is certainly closer to reality as Trump won about 48.8% of the votes that went to either Trump or Clinton.
Instructions
This tool should be relatively straightforward to use. Just click around and play with it.
The map has a few different options for display:
Hide Circles – just shows the county map
Show land circles – where the area of the circle matches the area of the county itself, though obviously shaped like a circle. The counties are colored red or blue depending on whether Trump or Harris (in 2024), Biden (in 2020) or Clinton (in 2016) won more votes in that county vs Donald Trump (2024, 2020 and 2016).
Show population circles – where the area of the circle matches the relative population of the county itself. More populated counties will grow larger while less populated counties will shrink. The counties are colored red or blue depending on whether Trump or Biden or Clinton won more votes in that county.
Selecting the No County Overlap button will spread out all of the circles so you can see them all. The total displayed area of the county circles is the same in either land and population view, though if the circles are overlapping, you may see less total colors.
Selecting the Color by Margin button will color the each county circle by the amount that a candidate won the county. If the vote margin is small, the county will be colored light blue or red, whereas if a county strongly favors one candidate, it will be colored darker red or blue.
Selecting the Allow State Zoom button let you zoom into and only show the counties of a specific state. Just click on the state to zoom in (and back out).
Visualization notes
This was my second attempt at using d3 to generate visualizations. I typically use leaflet to do web-based mapping but I wanted the power of d3 which has functions for the circles to prevent overlapping. This map was inspired by Karim Douieb’s cool visualization of 2016 election results. I modified it in a number of different ways to try to make it more interactive and useful.
This visualization does not actually simulate the collisions between the circles on your browser. It is a bit computationally taxing and causes my computer fan to turn on after awhile. So instead I ran the simulation on my computer and recorded the coordinates for where each circle ended up for each category. Then your browser is simply using d3 transitions to shift positions and sizes of the circles between each of the maps, which is simpler, though with 3142 counties, it can still tax the computer occasionally.
How much do US households spend and how does it change with household composition?
This visualization is one of a series of visualizations that present US household spending data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. This one looks at the marital status and presence of children in the household.
US Household spending by household composition (marital and children status)
This visualization focuses on how spending varies with the household composition (marital status and presence of children).
I obtained data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), based upon a survey of consumer households and their spending habits. This data breaks down spending and income into many categories that are aggregated and plotted in a Sankey graph.
One of the key factors in financial health of an individual or household is making sure that household spending is equal to or below household income. If your spending is higher than income, you will be drawing down your savings (if you have any) or borrowing money. If your spending is lower than your income, you will presumably be saving money which can provide flexibility in the future, fund your retirement (maybe even early) and generally give you peace of mind.
Instructions:
Hover (or on mobile click) on a link to get more information on the definition of a particular spending or income category.
Use the dropdown menu to look at averages for different groups of households based on the education level of the primary resident. This data breaks households into the following groups:
All
Single person households (and other households) – Unfortunately BLS lumps single households with other categories that don’t fit into the remaining three categories (i.e. non-married couple households).
Single parent households
Married couples with no children
Married couples with children
The composition of households and income change as the marital status of and presence of children in the household changes, which in turn affects spending totals and individual categories.
As stated before, one of the keys to financial security is spending less than your income. We can see that on average, income tends to increase the larger the number of children and adults in the household. Married couples with children have the highest incomes and greatest spending, but they also save the most money.
Households with a single occupant (and also single parent households) have lower incomes than married couples and on average need to borrow or draw down on savings to live their lifestyle.
How does your overall spending compare with those that have the same household composition as you? How about spending in individual categories like housing, vehicles, food, clothing, etc…?
Probably one of the best things you can do from a financial perspective is to go through your spending and understand where your money is going. These sankey diagrams are one way to do it and see it visually, but of course, you can also make a table or pie chart (Honestly, whatever gets you to look at your income and expenses is a good thing).
The main thing is to understand where your money is going. Once you’ve done this you can be more conscious of what you are spending your money on, and then decide if you are spending too much (or too little) in certain categories. Having context of what other people spend money on is helpful as well, and why it is useful to compare to these averages, even though the income level, regional cost of living, and household composition won’t look exactly the same as your household.
Here is more information about the Consumer Expenditure Surveys from the BLS website:
The Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE) collect information from the US households and families on their spending habits (expenditures), income, and household characteristics. The strength of the surveys is that it allows data users to relate the expenditures and income of consumers to the characteristics of those consumers. The surveys consist of two components, a quarterly Interview Survey and a weekly Diary Survey, each with its own questionnaire and sample.
Data and Tools:
Data on 2017 consumer spending was obtained from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Surveys, and aggregation and calculations were done using javascript and code modified from the Sankeymatic plotting website. I aggregated many of the survey output categories so as to make the graph legible, otherwise there’d be 4x as many spending categories and all very small and difficult to read.
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