data visualization
Very Small Array posts several great data visualizations of info on hit songs in the United States. The one above is an interesting data visualization of the genres of hit songs from the 50s. I love the simplicity here. It’s really easy to read the data, note the shift in hits from vocal pop to rock and roll and r&b around 1955, and the result is still visually compelling.
state-machine.org by Max Carlson and Ben Cerveney is a flash-based dynamic visualization of the relationship of the members of the United States senate to different sources of campaign funding.
Each green + represents a source of lobbyist funding in Washington. The size of the + indicates the relative amount of funding that sector has input into the political process. The collage of dots are representations of US Senators. Their coloring reflects party affiliation, while their size indicates the amount of money they have accumulated in their campaign finance funds.
In this simulation, the Senators are attracted to the lobbyist broups based on the amount of money their campaign has received from that source. By moving one of the funding + around the screen, you can see how much force it exerts on each Senator.
While state-machine ran very slow on my mac, especially when I lowered minimum on the contribution range filter (including more senators in the visualization), the effect of the movement is still striking. State-machine is a really clever way of visualizing how campaign funding pulls senators, drawing a direct relationship between the $$$ and the individual’s allegiance. It would be very interesting to see this visualization tied to legislation and the senators’ voting records.