Bubble Chart Tutorial

Posted by Todd Bryant in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Select your x axis, y axis, bubble size and set colors to unique. If we use # of immigrants and unemployment rate for each axis, we’d expect to find a correlation, so bubbles should move from lower left to upper right or the reverse. Is it true?

To create, we need the data formatted as so, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AseK2cPi8K7fdFBCcl9lVWg3NnFBUVI2RFpmLVNxU1E&usp=sharing

Choose countries that have data and create your own starting with a Google Docs spreadsheet

Can’t use date ranges in Google Docs, must provide an average year for each decade. We’re dividing decade totals of immigrants by 10 to get an average year. Also need average for unemployment

To speed up data entry, use Excel to add years in decade and divide by total to get average unemployment

To make for easier viewing select columns you don’t need, right click and hide in Excel

Will frequently encounter problems when using historical data. Consider Germany was divided. No unemployment rate given for China, so couldn’t use them. West German population is a guess for 1990 since reunified. No data for Mexico unemployment in the 1960s, found 1970 is 7.0, http://bls.gov/opub/mlr/1994/11/art1full.pdf We can enter that in, or leave it out. If we leave it out, Mexico won’t appear until 1975 With all of these assumptions, it’s important to inform the reader.

Once you have the data, create a Chart -> Trends -> Motion Chart

To export to put on a blog post, click the arrow in the top right of the chart and choose Publish.  Can paste that code into any html page or blog post.

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