Living Alone
I am helping a professor develop some graphics for his forthcoming book about the increase in people living alone. Above is just a rough draft; I’m still thinking about adding a border. Comments are welcome. More graphics coming in drips and dribbles.
Comments 3
michael miller — April 10, 2010
Nice work, but how about clearly specifying a metric range on the y axis that would relate to proportion living alone?
MeToo — April 26, 2010
Not sure how to hit this right, but I don't think this is quite "there." There are two data, and sociological, issues: one - household clusters are getting smaller, and two - there are more single-person households.
The sociological ramifications are for the sociologist. But the rheterical value of the graph could be improved by a stacked chart, with two aspects of the same data: first horizontal line is the portion, rising, of single-person households, and stacked on top of that is the remaining portion of households, 2+ persons - this could be 2+, 3+, etc. The X axis is still time, in years. The Y axis is portion of all U.S. households. It will be flat, at the top, 100%.
In the current graph, it makes its rhetorical point quickly - I believe it, and am alarmed -- but, there are two dimensions carried by the Y axis that confuse me.