What Works
This was published as a joke. To be sure, the numbers represent real data. The punch line was supposed to be that research gets so little of the total pool. Or at least that is what I thought it was supposed to be. PhD Comics people prove their dedication to comedy with this. Time consuming to pull together and unlike their normal style.
That being said, others have attempted to find a way to visualize where tax dollars go. The vertical orientation is nice for the web. We’ve all learned to accept scrolling up/down much more than right/left. It’s nice to see tiny slices included here and there.
What Needs Work
I have trouble getting the overview from this graphic. Even just using a bigger font for some of the lumped categories would have helped. The aggregating triangles in the background are good in theory but not quite perfected in practice. Still not totally sure how they are meant to be interpreted.
Reference
Cham, Jorge. (2010) The US Federal Budget.
Comments 3
MeToo — May 24, 2010
Cool. One question: am I missing something? The budget is a totality: 1; 1005; one line. So, why are there two lines? Couldn't the blue line on the left be deleted, with no loss of info, and losing some confusion? I spent a few moments trying to figure out what the blue line was: the deficit? Next year's budget? EU budget?
MeToo — May 24, 2010
oops - that 1005 was supposed to be 100%.
May Spotlight on Member Blogs « Research!America — May 28, 2010
[...] knew that a discussion of onions in Germany could be so fascinating? And the Graphic Sociology blog jumps in to dissect a graphic that shows the relative place of research amid the U.S. federal [...]