datopian / comparotron Goto Github PK

This is part of the original outline for the idea from 2010/2011

The Compar-o-tron B helps users to discover and share the proportions between different classes of government spending. This satisfies the need to contextualize individual items, policies or functions of government by contrasting them with one or many more tanglible other items.

Originally at openspending/openspending#31

Images

A first mockup done for original WDMMG project. One might do things quite differently for this version ...

Functionality

• The Compare-o-tron helps users to find spending classes by filling a shopping cart.
  • This can be filled either while browsing the site in normal mode (i.e. via treemaps, bubblecharts) or through a direct search function.
  • Search results may already be presented as bubbles. Search should have auto-complete.
  • Care should be taken to warn the user if they attempt to include nested items (e.g. "Defense", "200 new Tanks" - which is part of the Defense budget).
  • The selected items can include: entries, classifiers, entities. Each of these needs to be assigned a unique, "typical" value, e.g. for "Defense" in COFOG this could be "annual expenditure in 20xx", for "Mineral Oil Taxes" in the German FKP it could be "annual projected revenue for the current year".
  • The selected items should also have color and icon specifications associated.
• After selection a few items, these will be presented in a joint graph as bubbles.
  • Each compare-o-tron receives a unique URL, either by saving the cart to the DB or by URL-encoding it.
  • The user creating the compare-o-tron may also want to comment on the diagram.
• A gallery of existing compare-o-trons is available.
• Compare-o-tron can be embedded into another article, e.g. a news story.

Implementation

The key features for compare-o-tron are:

• Named items (things that can be added to the cart)
• The cart
• The ability to display non-related bubbles.

The following would be one option to implement the back-end for named items:

1. Introduce another section in the mapping with the following format:

"named_items": {
"cube_query": { ... }
"name_key": "some_dimension.label",
"color_key": "some_dimension.label",
"weight_factor": 0.5, # will be used to scale volume.
"default_color": "..."
}
(rinse, repeat for icons if needed)

1. Add an extension point to generate_views in the loader
2. Hook into this and generate a db.dataset_name.named_items collection with the named attributes and amount from the drilldown.
3. Query this collection via a custom controller.
4. Visualize as bubbles.

More Information

• page in wiki: http://wiki.openspending.org/Visualization_Comparotron
  • Mockup: see attached image.
    • RP: items on left side are results of search so far. You can drag these across to right. Should then be able to hide search list and share with friends.
    • RP: note this is mockup and does not have to determine final design

For overview of the idea see the README.

Needs: User flows and Features

• Create: use a simple markdown file with frontmatter, edit it in a text editor, and push it to github (Even simpler: hand-craft this in a drawing app!)
• Show: let's use a static site generator to build the site and some basic JS (or even CSS) for the visualization

Future stuff

• Show
  • show total views
  • comments (?)
• Edit
  • Auto color (or auto offer a color palette)
  • Icon selector (auto select?)
  • Font selector (auto select)
• General
  • Extract figures people enter into a place where they can be searched and reused

Design

Info architecture

/
/@{username}/{slug}
/@{username}/
/add

Domain Model

• Factlet
• Compare: a comparison involving
  • We could also allow a single figure "compare" even though a bit odd given the name

Structure of a "compare"

---
title: XYZ
factlets:
  - title: 
  - value: 
---

ABC

*ABC*

Plan: Tasks

• Skeleton repo (maybe use vuepress as quick to look nice an we like vue)
• Stub one page
• Set up deployment
• How do we do the drawing of the shapes (circles, squares etc)
  • SVG (+ JS lib?)
  • CSS? https://css-tricks.com/the-shapes-of-css/

Future

• Find icon source (noun project terms are so restrictive its difficult to describe it as open source anymore)
  • icons8 also seems you have to pay to get access to stuff ...
  • fontawesome

NTS

• finding numbers (if automated) is hard (where do you get GDP of burkina faso from etc)
  • But no reason this can't be hand done ...
• Where do we store data?
• Aside: Unsplash for data ... => curation at the start ...
  • What's equivalent of a photo? A single data point i think (or, just, maybe a time series)
  • Unsplash started in classic MVP way: just a blog (with dropbox for downloading)

• military spending vs overseas aid in the US
• crime rate in nz vs philippines
• coronavirus mortality vs flu mortality
• wages vs education
• Deaths in WWI vs WWII https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties
• gambling spending vs movies etc #2
• Probability of cot death vs probability of being hit by lightning (big square with pixels being probability)
• Risk of dying in various profession eg repairing electricity pylons vs driving a cab vs ....
• Murder rate in US vs NZ
  • US: 5/100k (2018). 5.0 per 100,000, for a total of 15,498 murders. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/table-12
  • NZ: 0.7/100k (2018). (35 homicides with pop of 4.8m => ~0.7/100k) https://www.police.govt.nz/news/release/new-zealand’s-lowest-murder-rate-decades plus tables in linked doc https://www.police.govt.nz/sites/default/files/publications/homicide-victims-report-2018.pdf
  • See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Inspiration R. Shiller p.53 of Irrational Exuberance:

The amount people in the United States lost in gambling in 2000 was more than they spent on movie tickets, music recordings, theme parks spectator sports and video games combined.

Data: Christiansen Capital Advisers: Gross Annual Wager 2003 - Revenue By Industry, Dollar and Percentage Changes from 2002 (pdf)

NB: unfortunately that PDF is now unavailable and 30m of fruitless searching did not turn it up (it appears all of those papers have moved to University of Las Vegas though i suspect PDF disappeared simply due to bitrot https://www.library.unlv.edu/speccol/finding-aids/MS-00561.pdf?utm_source=September+2017+Center+for+Gaming+Research+Update&utm_campaign=September+2017&utm_medium=email

Originally Jan 2013 and posted in rufuspollock/ideas#28