1/2/2011 Motion Charts!!

Motion Charts

I discovered Gapminder, and its wonderful Gapminder World Motion Chart:
www.gapminder.org




It is a Flash animation, displaying a HUGE amount of data, and I thought it would be excellent for displaying FHFA House Price Indexes

A Motion Chart can display Price Index movement along the x-axis, MSA Median Family Income along the y-axis, Population (size of the circles), and the color of the circles can be unique (if displaying MSAs within a State) or thematic (a different color for each Region [Nationwide data] or State [Regional data]).

Google has purchased the technology from Gapminder, and has made it available only through Google Docs. I made a data set for the 22 MSAs in Florida, plus the non-MSA area. http://dixonspatialconsulting.com/HTMLflxx.htm
Before playing I recommend you, in the upper-right, change Color to Unique colors (click on totpers), and change Size to totpers (click on Same size). Then click the play button


You can see how the Housing Index jumped out to the far right, before crashing back to the (current) middle. For more-specific insight, check the boxes for Naples and non-msaFlorida, and click play again;


This a GREAT tool for Data Exploration, and a lot more fun than this spreadsheet: