Charts & Data

Presidents and the Market

Posted on November 1, 2020November 1, 2020 by Sam Kornstein in Charts & Data, Data Visualization, Economics, Markets

I suspect most presidents have less influence over stock market performance than the media suggests. And today – probably more so than at any other time in my life – the performance and health of the largest companies comprising the stock market is not a good measure of the overall health of the economy. But regardless, taking a step back and looking at market movements over multi-year periods can provide a helpful perspective. And so as we near Tuesday’s election, I enjoyed seeing and reflecting on this Axios graphic: I expect many people would look at this and spin it to support the political narrative they want to be true. And some of those narratives are probably right. But I

Under the Hood of the S&P 500 Rebound

Posted on August 24, 2020August 24, 2020 by Sam Kornstein in Charts & Data, Economics, General

There’s been quite a bit of debate about what’s driving the rather unexpected stock market rebound in the midst of a global pandemic (e.g., Fed actions/policies, stimulus, large businesses benefiting at the expense of small businesses, some business models are benefiting from the new norms at the expense of those that don’t, etc.). In my view, it’s probably a bit of each of those, but dominated by the sad fact that a large cross-section of non-public small and medium businesses will not survive, and large public companies that can weather the storm will ultimately be able to fill the supply void, and even buy their assets/IP for pennies on the dollar. Case in point – my dad never used Amazon

Good Data on the Coronavirus

Posted on March 15, 2020March 16, 2020 by Sam Kornstein in Boston/Cambridge, Charts & Data, Data Visualization, Greater Boston, Health

As things have escalated quickly, I’ve found several resources that provide extremely valuable data and perspectives. The first is this article on Medium by Tomas Pueyo. Everyone should read this, and he’s helpfully had it translated into 26 languages. It’s the single best synthesis I’ve seen of everything going on. He starts with this summary: When you’re done reading the article, this is what you’ll take away:The coronavirus is coming to you.It’s coming at an exponential speed: gradually, and then suddenly.It’s a matter of days. Maybe a week or two.When it does, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed.Your fellow citizens will be treated in the hallways.Exhausted healthcare workers will break down. Some will die.They will have to decide which patient

When do you go to the hospital after labor begins?

Posted on May 6, 2017May 6, 2017 by Sam Kornstein in Charts & Data, Data Visualization, General

Two weeks ago Laura gave birth to our first child, Mason West Kornstein. Everyone’s doing really well, and it’s been a blast so far. As soon as Laura went into labor at 2:00 am early Thursday morning, she began tracking her contractions so that we could tell how things were progressing and decide when it was time to go to the hospital. By 8:00 am we were curious to better understand how quickly things would advance. The doctor had told us to wait until contractions were five minutes apart for an hour before coming to the hospital. That was fairly straightforward guidance, but we had no clue whether that time would come in a few hours or a few days. And we didn’t know

The Best Combination of a Map and a Chart

Posted on January 2, 2015January 1, 2015 by Sam Kornstein in Charts & Data, General, Greater Boston, Maps

I love maps and I love charts. So I was particularly excited to find this great chart of the world’s population by latitude, which obviously resembles a map (because most people live on land): This is a much more eloquent way of combining latitude and longitude population charts, as I’ve previously posted about here. At the bottom of the post, the creator links to whackdata.com, where Ryan Brideau posted some R scripts that take publicly available data and create similar population map charts. Ryan does a great job describing why the chart is so interesting: “What I love about it is that, in the absence of any traditional map features, the outlines of countries and continents are immediately apparent. And as long as you are familiar

From Out of Nowhere

Posted on November 12, 2012November 12, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Charts & Data, Current Events, Technology

Via Barrons via The Big Picture, interesting trends in the computing space: I find it a little bit funny that the graphic says, “from out of nowhere, smartphones have passed global PC sales.” The slope of both smartphone graphs shifted sharply upward the month the first iPhone was released and haven’t changed since. I’d say the passing was rather predictable at any point after the iPhone came out until it happened. Even if PC sales had maintained their trend growth, that only would have delayed the inevitable by a few months.

Obama Sings Sweet Home Chicago…

Posted on February 21, 2012February 21, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Charts & Data, Music

…with B.B. King and Mick Jagger! Via James Fallows:

My Favorite Economic Dashboard

Posted on June 25, 2011June 25, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Charts & Data, Current Events, Economics, Markets

An update of one of the simplest and most useful economic dashboards I’ve seen. You need to click through, but take a quick look: I would still love to see a dynamic version of this, updated daily. It’s not quite as relevant as it could be when it’s released June 22nd with data as of May 31st. Nonetheless, I like it.

How Many Households Are Like Yours?

Posted on June 24, 2011June 24, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Charts & Data

Via Chartporn, the NYT will tell you many households are like yours: I’m not sure why, but if I were a betting man, I would have guessed that more than 0.2% of the households in the country were like mine.