Australian Government budget illustrated using d3.js | Hacker News Reader

Australian Government budget illustrated using d3.js

smh.com.au

37 pointsmrmagooey17 comments

The visualization isn't as good as ABC's - I tweeted this yesterday: ABC's use of the tree map is far superior to SMH's bubble charts. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-08/interactive-budget-201...

I also tweeted that it's a shame ABC used Javascript infovis toolkit instead of d3

It's neat, but it doesn't seem like an efficient way to represent what is, essentially, tabular data. You can only hover over one item at a time, making it hard to compare data, you can't sort or organize it in any meaningful way.

They should definitively add the data as tabular data as well. However, I think this is great for people who are not good with numbers. Probably not the color blind tho, red and green bubbles hovering over each other cant be good. Add some subtle patterns to each category as well as colors.

Man, this is terrible! Are the numbers proportional to radii or areas? How to compare two bubble blobs when bubbles overlap? How to spot the proportions of colors within a blob? This changes are about what? Last year? If so, the most interesting part is how much did it changed, which is simply missing.

Slightly Tangential question for those that have used D3 or similar libraries. I'll be working on a product soon that shows web analytical data such as search terms and popular pages on the site. I want to represent that data visually. Which library would you recommend for this work?

Could they make this more difficult to do comparison? When the title says "Spot the..." you expect it is because the visualisation makes it abundantly obvious, not because it is some sort of cognitive challenge.

Are there any downsides to using d3.js? We're looking to rebuild a primarily chart-based application in the near future, and it's currently top of my list of libraries to use.

* No support for old IE.

* You have to think carefully about how you want your data to be displayed and do your own design work; D3 is a toolkit, not pre-made charts, and if your design sense sucks your graphics will too.

* A somewhat steep learning curve; but it’s the good kind of learning that teaches you to see the world in a different way.

Would love some labels on those bubbles. Would be nice to know what each of those things are.

hover over them.

I love d3, but decided not to use it because of IE. Using Raphael for my task.

Horrible data visualisation.

Cool graphic. First good data visualisation in smh. Well done guys

+1 for yet another great D3 implementation

Awesome chart, the budget not so much.

Do you have any actual criticism of the budget? It is a little off-topic from discussing the shininess of the charts.

I thought it was pretty average and most of the cuts/gains were largely procedural (much like the last few budgets). No really large changes are being made in this budget (you can see it from the chart and reading the actual numbers instead of following the media's interpretations). It is returning Australia to a surplus which may or may not be the right move. All in all it is pretty much what you would get from a team of accountants and consultants.

No really large changes are being made in this budget

Well.. there aren't any huge structural changes (unless you count the Carbon Tax), but a budget turn-around of >3% biggest reversal in over 50 years[1]. That's quite significant.

I think it was a fairly reasonable budget in the circumstances, and I think most commentary reflects that. I think the biggest opposition criticism is for holding back the cut in company tax. I agree with that, but if one takes the view that returning the budget to a surplus is a high priority I think the delay in that was reasonable given the cuts to other sectors. (I am not at all convinced the priority given to returning to surplus is required, so I guess that is also a criticism).

[1] http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/BUDGET-20...

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