Time, Through Windows

“Purple State” Voter Opinions On National Debt

Erik — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:53:23 +0000

“In order to reduce the national debt, would you support or oppose raising taxes on those with income over $1,000,000 a year?”

“In order to reduce the national debt, would you support or oppose cutting spending on Medicare?”

Source

Public Policy Polling, April 27 – May 16, +/- 3.1%

All data & text used the above charts/graphs does not necessarily reflect the view of Erik Austin Deerly.

Two Almost Entirely Publicly Funded, Booming Private Enterprises

Erik — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 20:03:40 +0000

For-profit schools are educational institutions that are run by private, profit-seeking companies or organizations.

Nine Percent of Students in Higher Education Are Enrolled In For-Profit Schools

24 Percent of Available Public Funds Are Taken By For-Profit Schools

For-profit schools made $4 billion in federal grants in 2009 (NY Times)

Loan Default Rates Compared

44% of those who attend for-profit schools eventually default on their loans (The Pew Charitable Trusts). Defaulted federal student loans lower the revenue available to the government.

Private prisons are institutions that are run by private, profit-seeking companies or organizations.

Nine Percent of Prison Inmates Are Held In Private Prisons

Higher Violence in Private Prisons

In 2006, $68,747,203,000 was spent on corrections. To date, no significant savings to the taxpayer has been proven to result from the prison privatization. (University of Utah)

Sources

NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/us/19prisons.html)
The Pew Charitable Trusts (http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=56473)
University of Utah (http://ucjc.law.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/86.pdf)
US Department of Justice (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2200)
The Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com/article/Data-Points-For-Profit/63388)
NY Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/education/04education.html?_r=3&hp)

All data & text used the above charts/graphs does not necessarily reflect the view of Erik Austin Deerly.

Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Erik — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 09:50:47 +0000

“There are more African Americans under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.” —Michelle Alexander

The above statement was made by Michelle Alexander, Ohio State law professor and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. I set out to display that data visually, along with supporting charts that might investigate related issues.

More Incarcerated African Americans than American Slaves in 1850

American Population by Race, 2010

Percent Sentenced For Federal Drug Offenses, 1970-2004

Number of Prison and Jail Inmates, 1950-2000

A: Drug War: 1971-Present

State and Federal Prisoners Housed in Private Facilities

Sources

Historical Statistics of the U.S. (1970)
Disproportionate Minority Contact/Confinement
2010 US Census
US Bureau of Justice Statistics
Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online
The Valley Project, Virginia Center for Digital History, University of Virginia

All data & text used the above charts/graphs does not necessarily reflect the view of Erik Austin Deerly.

Economy, Perception & Opinion

Erik — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 09:17:05 +0000

“Would you say that over the past year the nation’s economy has gotten better, stayed the same or gotten worse?”

The above question was posed by The American National Election Studies (ANES)* in polling studies between 1980-2008. I charted the resulting Perception data and distilled those results further, examining those respondents whose perception was that the economy was worse than the previous year. Finally, I have added a visual showing union membership over the same course of time.

Perception of Condition of Nation’s Economy 1980-2008

Percent By Education (Highest Level Earned) Who Responded “Gotten Worse”

Household Union Membership 1980-2008

Source: The American National Election Studies (www.electionstudies.org)

THE ANES GUIDE TO PUBLIC OPINION AND ELECTORAL BEHAVIOR. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, Center for Political Studies [producer and distributor]. These materials are based on work supported by the National Science Foundation and a number of other sponsors.

*Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these materials are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations.

All data & text used the above charts/graphs does not necessarily reflect the view of Erik Austin Deerly.

Opinion of Tea Party Movement

Erik — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 06:23:10 +0000

Overall Opinion of Tea Party Movement

Opinion of Tea Party Movement, by Political Affiliation

Overall Opinion of Tea Party Movement, by Age/Gender

Overall Opinion of Tea Party Movement, by US Region

Source: USA Today/Gallup, April 20-23, 2011

All data & text used the above charts/graphs does not necessarily reflect the view of Erik Austin Deerly.

Public Opinion on Abortion Law

Erik — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:58:00 +0000

Creating charts and graphs is just not very exciting (to me) unless the subject matter is interesting. Public opinion is as interesting as it is frustrating. In my Thursday edition of useless but interesting charts and graphs, I explore the public opinion on abortion law in the United States, as reported in studies by ANES*. Though the data show very little change in opinion on this matter for 30 years, in the first three months of 2011, legislators in 49 states introduced 916 measures related to reproductive issues, according to the Guttmacher Institute and reported by the Los Angeles Times.

QUESTION TEXT:

“Which one of the opinions on this page best agrees with your view?”

By law, abortion should never be permitted
The law should permit abortion only in case of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger
The law should permit abortion for reasons other than rape, incest, or danger to the woman’s life, but only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established
By law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice

Public Opinion on Abortion Law, as polled from 1980-2008

By law, abortion should never be permitted
The law should permit abortion only in case of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger
The law should permit abortion for reasons other than rape, incest, or danger to the woman’s life, but only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established
By law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice
*Don’t Know

Source: The American National Election Studies (www.electionstudies.org)

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these materials are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations.

All data & text used the above charts/graphs does not necessarily reflect the view of Erik Austin Deerly.

Cannabis vs Spirit Consumption

Erik — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:15:17 +0000

It is time for another useless but extremely interesting chart. For simple charts that can be expressed in pie, bar, line, area, bubble, scatter, dot, etc., I continue to like the JavaScript Object Notation and the Google Chart API I used in Crime and Punishment Statistics (part 2). Here I chose the line chart in order to display the peculiar inverse correlation between alcohol and cannabis consumption. It also shows a few outliers in the middle of the chart, including the US.

Cannabis vs Spirit Consumption

SOURCES

Global Market Information Database, published by Euromonitor (Spirits)
OECD (cannabis)

All data & text used the above charts/graphs does not necessarily reflect the view of Erik Austin Deerly.

Experiments In Audio Analysis

Erik — Tue, 31 May 2011 07:47:22 +0000

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

Warning: this is bandwidth-intensive… load time is painful… go get a drink… or maybe a pillow… very sorry…

I’m a fan of non-standard systems of musical notation—a concept made popular by 20th century composers such as Morton Feldman. I spend a lot of time analyzing audio (wave forms, timbre, pitch, volume, etc.) using tools which represent the sounds visually. This video is a test where I use the result of music analysis to create a non-standard system of musical notation (of sorts), albeit after the fact.

This example uses the entire track of the fourth of five pieces from my album, Parable of the Poison Arrow. If you look carefully (sorry for the small screen), you may notice that sounds occur exactly when the moving line passes over a visual. And if you look very closely, you may be able to figure out whether the high sounds are at the top or the bottom of the image. This was just a fun exercise—I don’t expect you to play along.

Crime and Punishment Statistics (part 2)

Erik — Mon, 30 May 2011 09:34:31 +0000

Here I am testing a charting method that can overcome the limitations of load time and browser/device compatibility found in the previous example. This revision creates and renders the chart using JavaScript Object Notation and the Google Chart API. The result is lighter and compatible with any device capable of displaying a PNG. This solution has been packaged into a WordPress plugin by dyerware. The pre-rendered design is fairly flexible for basic charts and graphs. For more complex visualization I suggest checking out Protovis—a toolkit for JavaScript using SVG. At some point soon I will discus the topic of bias in charts and graphs. In short, one may show the result they wish to see without altering the data…it’s all in the presentation.

Gun Ownership and Firearm Murders Compared

Murders With Firearms By Country (Seven Highest)

Prisoners By Country

SOURCES

The Eighth United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (2002) (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention)
International Centre for Prison Studies – World Prison Brief
Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies. “Small Arms Survey 2007″, Cambridge, 2007-09

All data & text used the above charts/graphs does not necessarily reflect the view of Erik Austin Deerly.

Crime and Punishment Statistics (part 1)

Erik — Sun, 29 May 2011 19:07:58 +0000

Here I am testing a JavaScript/CSS charting method that shows promise because it is backwards compatible with HTML table code—something quite useful for those of us who have a well over a decade of HTML tabular data. Please scroll over the chart key (also seems to work with iPad touch interface, with a minor deselect issue) of each chart to filter and display labels. The examples make use of the gRaphael—JavaScript Library, written by Dmitry Baranovskiy. I already see some issues but will test a bit more.

Gun Ownership and Firearm Murders Compared
	Guns (per 100)	Firearm Murders (in 100s)
Austria	31	.25
Canada	31.5	1.44
Denmark	12.4	.14
Germany	30	2.69
Mexico	15	26.06
Spain	11	.97
Sweden	31.5	.58
Switzerland	46	.68
UK	5.6	.14
US	90	93.69

Murders With Firearms By Country (Seven Highest)
	Firearm Murders
South Africa	31918
Colombia	21898
Thailand	20032
US	9369
Philippines	7708
Mexico	2606
Slovakia	2356

Prisoners By Country
	Total (1,000s)	Per Capita (per 100,000)	Female (1,000s)
US	2019.2	715	171.63
China	1549.0	119	68.15
Russia	847.0	584	49.12
India	313.6	29	9.4
Brazil	308	169	12.64
Thailand	214	340	43.4
Ukraine	198	416	11.5
South Africa	181.9	402	4
Mexico	172.8	169	76.07
Iran	136.5	226	57.23

SOURCES

The Eighth United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (2002) (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention)
International Centre for Prison Studies – World Prison Brief
Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies. “Small Arms Survey 2007″, Cambridge, 2007-09

All data & text used the above charts/graphs does not necessarily reflect the view of Erik Austin Deerly.