Some of the top schools got caught coordinating some time ago, and the Feds came down hard on them. They don't do that any more.

Where did you get that idea? The data set doesn't provide any support for it.

The don't include the number of transmitters per square mile. That is much higher as well and has a huge influence on the ability to deploy 5G in rural areas.

The drought is also expressed in soil and groundwater storage. That is still low. Is there a way to get at that part of the California drought story?

It is a good set of data. But in terms of #dataviz, it has too much unnecessary animation for me, gets in the way of looking at the images. More to impress web designers than to help visualize the data.

They hired a lot more than they laid off, so just doing layoffs is misleading. If the goal is to have people understand tech employment dynamics, this is not an effective visualization.

UC Davis is quite a bit bigger than either Brown or Dartmouth and has larger and similarly successful research programs. This is not an undergrad ranking, but overall university role.

USNews needs occasional movement among the top three so that the new ranking gets some press coverage. Once you get below the top 20 there is so much random variation that meaningless changes in a few statistics results in seemingly large moves.

Qatar, Saudi and Greece are the outliers on the chart. They don't have domestic defense industries. Greece is NATO.

US and China are both happy to lend them money to buy our weapons.

How much is that target driven by the desire of the US defense industry to sell more stuff?

That industry has a lot of influence on policy, and a policy that increases sales and profit is great for business.

The western states, then territories, had different shapes then. It would be appropriate to use the contemporary state lines in the graphic presentation when competing on r/dataisbeautiful

You almost get to the 1980s, so stopping there seems intentional. You want to see some inflation number, run this back to 1980!

But it does make a point about countries and oceans relative size. It is important when doing data visualization not to have your graphic make points you didn't intend, or points that are contrary to the one you intended.

Which projections are best suited to communicating the information you want to communicate with this data visualization? It is worth being familiar with them so that you know which is most effective.

If the map is about exports from India, then a projection that represents India accurately and centrally should be a priority.

For data visualization (for which r/dataisbeautiful is a showcase for best practices), it is good to spread out the informative material and minimize (or peripheralize) the unimportant. A projection that wastes half the space on parts of the globe that are not part of the story fails to do so.

Why use a Mercator projection? It is the projection that makes India, and its major customers, the smallest.

Pie chart. Because each is a subunit of the whole.

Why a Sankey chart? I'd expect someone accustomed to taxonomic trees to use something less tree-like for this different conceptual separation.

I don't know if it is peace so much as strict control, with other consequences disregarded.

>30-100 bucks is fair price for a fun evening. I just want the most bang for my bucks.

Calculating a value-maximizing betting strategy for that goal would be interesting. Betting $1 every other spin would stretch the funds but not the fun.

It is a good system if you want to win often. It is a bad system if you want a chance to get a big win. All systems are bad if you want to make money gambling--it is entertainment you pay for.