Law403G1

	Project Proposal	Poster	Data Visualization Application	Application Report

Team Members

• Thomas Thio
• Margot Stelleman
• Li Wei Qiao
  

Problem

Problem is that there is currently no clear ways to compare between economic indicators of countries, especially in time series, and know what indicators impact another, or where external information such as news makes meaning to us when they report the new changes to these indicators . We would like to make it intuitive for users to interpret macro trends and their impacts by economic indicators by Regions, Countries and Industries. These economic indicators are GDP, Unemployment Rate, CPI, Currency power, and Industrial Indexes, as well as their changes over time to understand or interpret geopolitical forces as possible impacts.

In doing so, one can tell when a region, country or industrial is in a growth or decline stage, and correctly understand which aspects of the economy relate to one another, and test whether there was a lag period after a policy came into effect. This would help users such as retail investors, economists tracking the economy on a macro perspective, or job seekers and migrants wishing to find the best prospects by country and industry.

Relevant related work

Static visualizations of countries give a snapshot of its current state, but does not allow users to compare between times to understand what has changed. https://geopoliticalfutures.com/gdp-and-unemployment-in-europe/

Interactive spatial chart representing economic indicators, one at a time, and one period at a time: http://www.indexmundi.com/map/?v=74

UEconomics - Lets you see one type of economic indicator at a time, but to do cross-analysis you would need multiple displays.

World bank time-series visualizations

It shows the development of countries over time, but does not allow you to interact or compare against other indicators.

Bloomberg in-built charts: Data is available, but you have to plot each indicator one at a time. For industry data, these are in a separate section altogether. Charts cannot be pre-set to generate them again - Cannot be found for student edition, unsure for industry edition.

Gapminder motion charts - great for displaying visualizations across time, and the change between 3 variables. Notable example is Hans Rosling visualization of GDP, population and annual income. However, this does not give us a way to test our hypothesis that some country’s policies had affected another, or a snapshot comparison and drilling down into the industries that are flourishing or in trouble. Tableau - Similar to gapminder in that it does not provide drill down capability

Methods used and early prototypes

Motion bubble/line charts: Unemployment as size of chart.

Matrix scatterplot: Relationship between variables at that point in time.

Horizon chart for industries’ index?

Glyph/Star plot to represent performance between selected regions/countries/industries over time.

Timeline

References

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