Data Versus Information – Financial Bailout (Part 2 of 2)
- Data Versus Information – Financial Bailout (Part 1 of 2)
- Data Versus Information – Financial Bailout (Part 2 of 2)
In the first post on Tuesday, I discussed that the original set of data (shown below) didn’t go into some of the basic things I would do mentally when first seeing the matrix.
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The figure below shows the same data set with the 2007 revenue spent on lobbying removed. I don’t think there’s too much value in the trend from what I can see, especially with only two years worth of data. What I think may be valuable is the ratio of money spent on lobbying to the bailout awards.
To better see how the bailout awards were given, I looked at the money spent by these companies in 2008 on lobbying compared to the awards. I computed a lobbying return, which is highlighted below and sorted in descending order. Bank of America faired the best by spending just over $4 million on lobbying and getting a $35 billion award. I’m sure there are many other factors that come into play and data needed to do a full analysis, but these are just the types of things I do when looking at data.
I think sorting is one of the most useful formatting tools you can use when displaying data. Yet, I often see it not used correctly. In the original matrix, the sort is descending based on the 2008 lobbying spend. Maybe it’s just me, but the first thing I did was visually sort the data by bailout award in descending order. That’s really what we’re after, right. I want to know who got the largest bailout. Now the context of the article plays an important part of the way the data should be displayed, which I’m not going to get into. The overall message is to be conscientious of the sort and ensure it makes sense for what you are trying to depict.
