Story: China and India - 13 charts that show how the countries compare
By: Tania Branigan and George Arnett, from The Guardian "datablog"
In this story from The Guardian's "Datablog", Tania Branigan and George Arnett use raw data from a multitude of sources to pit the world's two most populated countries -India and China- against one another. Their comparison uses bar graphs for each country to visualize the difference between the each country , looking at areas such as unemployment rate, life expectancy, literacy and male to female employment ratios. One thing that was really great about this article was that it didn't include too many numbers or complicated charts, it was very simple, easy to read, and quite interesting to see the numbers in bar graph form.
The simple, wide bar graphs were easy to understand, labelled clearly, and each chart had a one-sentence description of what exactly the numbers reflected, as well as clearing up any complicated words. For example, neonatal fatalities was a category Branigan and Arnett graphed for readers, but in bold they included that "[the] neonatal mortality rate is the number of babies dying before reaching 28 days of age, per 1,000 live births in a given year". It seems that the data was presented as clearly as possible and with as much explanation as was necessary.
Though there wasn't an interactive element in the article, they could have included a map that allowed readers to see a breakdown (even for maybe one or two categories) of where exactly the most literate places were located within both countries. Having said this, it isn't really necessary to include any extra graphics, as this is already a very short, succinct article.
It would be quite simple to create a similar story for B.C., perhaps comparing British Columbia's data to other provinces, or cities within the province to one another. Most of this information could be obtained through the government website or even statscan. Though, one issue could be that a lot of cities in the same province might have quite similar numbers (in metro Vancouver for example), which could make a bar-graph less effective in plotting the data in a way that is easy for readers to understand.
For the most part, the aspects Branigan and Arnett looked at for China and India would be obtainable for a journalist in B.C., the only one that would likely be hard to obtain would be the number of nuclear warheads.
Ultimately this story could quite easily be created in B.C., though most of these topics are widely covered by local news anyway so there might not be a huge amount of interest in this sort of comparison. From the beginning of the story, the reader is drawn in by noting that China and India each contain more than one sixth of the world's population in the very first sentence.
This is an interesting story to do your analysis on, good job. They must have had to sift through so much information to par it down to the essentials. I disagree that this kind of story in BC, comparing different provinces to each other would be less interesting. Whenever you put two things in comparison with each other, people are naturally competitive and want to see how their home ranks.
ReplyDeleteAt first glance this article seems like it would be a complicated read, filled with numbers, stats, and unrelatable knowledge, but after reading your analysis of the article I am quite interested to read this article by The Guardian. A story such as this one could be done in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, but like you suggested I think an interactive map would be very useful to readers.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of comparing India and China is an intriguing one, and some of the factors for comparison (value of Swiss watch imports, for example) were quite unexpected. It think that if you were to compare between provinces or cities in BC, it would have to be on quite a different assumption than this article, which has a few development issues at the forefront. I think that maybe a comparison between Reservations across Canada, though maybe difficult, could be done in the same way as this article.
ReplyDeleteGreat story, excellent analysis.
Hey Alycia! I love your story choice! It was so interesting to read how two of the world’s nations with the biggest population compare. I liked the use of bar graphs in the article. I agree with you that the bar graphs were very clear and easy to read. I also felt the bar graphs helped me to visualize the data a lot easier. I do agree with you that the story would be a lot stronger if they had also included a map with the data plotted so that readers could have a better idea of where exactly the most literate places were located in India and China.
ReplyDeleteI really liked that story. It paints a good picture of the two countries and is interesting at the same time, probably because the authors were willing to use a few really unexpected categories such as value of Swiss watch imports. I agree with your notion that they did a great job of cleary and concisely explaining the different statistics. The bar graphs were the obvious, and also the right choice to visualize the data. It might have been tempting to use weird methods like two medals of a different size for the medal category, but it's the right choice not to.
ReplyDeleteAlycia,
ReplyDeleteI agree, this was a very clean article and easy to navigate. The fact that they have taken the two most populated countries and highlighted these statistics says something about the challenges we're faced with in the modern world regarding over population and the infrastructure in place to support ourselves in an even remotely sustainable fashion.
I think this story would be really good during provincial election years becasue it could straighten out a lot of misinformation that politicians through around about where BC compares to the other provinces.
ReplyDeleteI like how simple the visualization was in this one, it got right to the point.