Data Visualization

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

State by State Coronavirus Tracking

Posted on March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 by Sam Kornstein in Data Visualization, Health

I finally found a great resource for tracking state by state trends to better understand which are successfully “flattening the curve” and which are not. The site is called 91-DIVOC and is updated several times per day with 4 charts: Cases by Country Cases by US State Cases by Country, Normalized by Population Cases by State, Normalized by Population In each of the 4 charts, you can toggle to view any of 5 metrics: active cases, confirmed cases, new cases / day, deaths, and recoveries. You can also jump between linear and log scales. There are the typical caveats that the charts are only as good as the data quality, and data quality varies significantly based on country/state reporting practices

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

Boston: Built on Water

Posted on June 13, 2017June 13, 2017 by Sam Kornstein in Boston/Cambridge, Data Visualization, Greater Boston

I’ve always enjoyed looking at old maps of Boston that show how the coastline has changed over the past 400 years, as more and more “man made land” was created. I was just talking about this over the weekend with a few friends, and then today National Geographic put out a piece, “How Boston Made Itself Bigger,” with some great maps illustrating the changes. Here’s the simplest view, comparing 1630 to today: A few things: As a South Boston resident for 10 years, I’m getting tired of my mom telling me that when sea levels rise, I’m dangerously close to the water. Look mom, I don’t live in the filled in area! (and yes, I’ve checked the topographic maps as

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

CO2 Emissions by Country

Posted on September 18, 2016April 9, 2017 by Sam Kornstein in Data Visualization, General

Yesterday I was searching for some public data, and stumbled upon some good carbon emissions data from the European Commission. I decided to toss it into Tableau to visualize CO2 emissions by country – current state and trend. It’s been a while since I’ve done any data visualization outside of work. Here’s what I came up with after a couple beers.