Tag Archives: charts and graphs

From NOAA’s September 2022 Global Climate Report:

The September 2022 global surface temperature departure tied September 2021 as the fifth highest for September in the 143-year record at 0.88°C (1.58°F) above the 20th century average of 15.0°C (59.0°F). The ten warmest Septembers on record have all occurred since 2012. September 2022 also marked the 46th consecutive September and the 453rd consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th century average.

A few highlights:

North America had its warmest September on record, surpassing the previous record set in 2019 by 0.30°C (0.54°F). The Caribbean Islands region had its sixth-warmest September on record.

Hong Kong had an especially warm and sunny September, where the average temperature, mean maximum temperature, and mean minimum temperature were each the second highest on record for the month.

After an unusually cool summer, Greenland experienced record-breaking temperatures for September at multiple stations along the west coast, making for an exceptionally warm September. In Paamiut and Qaqortoq, this month’s average temperature exceeded any of the three previous summer temperature averages.

Times series data is available on the page.

The Economic Policy Institute article CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978 by Josh Bivens and Jori Kandra (10/2/2022) include the chart here. Definitions first:

The realized measure of compensation includes the value of stock options as realized (i.e., exercised), capturing the change from when the options were granted to when the CEO invokes the options, usually after the stock price has risen and the options values have increased.

The granted measure of compensation values stock options and restricted stock awards by their “fair value” when granted. (Compustat estimates of the fair value of options and stock awards as granted are determined using the Black-Scholes model.)

CEO’s are doing better than the mere top 0.1%:

Over the last three decades, compensation grew far faster for CEOs than it did for other very highly paid workers (the top 0.1%, or those earning more than 99.9% of wage earners). CEO compensation in 2020 (the latest year for which data on top wage earners are available) was 6.88 times as high as wages of the top 0.1% of wage earners, a ratio 3.7 points greater than the 3.18-to-1 average CEO-to-top-0.1% ratio over the 1947–1979 period.

One outlier (he has the money to buy twitter I guess):

In 2021, Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla Motors) exercised $23.5 billion worth of stock options that would have expired in 2022. Under our “realized” methodology, this would have made his pay almost 1,000 times that of the average large-company CEO. Including him in our sample would have resulted in an increase of CEO pay in 2021 relative to 2020 of over 300% (the “average” for the sample would have been just under $100 million).

Because inclusion of this extreme outlier would have made this year’s numbers incomparable with previous years’ numbers, we opted to exclude Tesla and Musk from our sample entirely.

The article is excellent not just because of all the other graphs and access to data but they thoroughly explain their methodology.

According to the pew article Growing share of Americans say their side in politics has been losing more often than winning by Ted Van Green (10/3/2022) overall 72% feel their side is losing more. There are, of course, differences by party:

 Today, about eight-in-ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (81%) say they feel that their side is losing more often than winning politically, up from 74% who said this in 2021. In February 2020, with President Donald Trump in the White House, just 29% of Republicans said their side was losing more often than winning, while 69% said it was mostly winning.

This makes some sense. When you control the presidency you are winning more. Yet,

Still, two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic leaners (66%) say their side is losing more than winning, up from 60% in 2021.

In early 2020, and at earlier points in Trump’s presidency, much larger majorities of Democrats said they felt like their side was losing more than winning. For example, 80% of Democrats said this in February 2020.

Controlling the white house doesn’t seem to be helping the Dems. How sustainable is a society if majorities always think they are losing?

As always, pew has a methodology section which can be used in a stats class.

According to the Our World in Data article Wild mammals are making a comeback in Europe thanks to conservation efforts by Hannah Ritchie (9/27/2022) many mammal populations have increased as the chart shows.  The Eurasian beaver is thrilled:

The Eurasian beaver has made the most remarkable recovery. It’s estimated to have increased 167-fold, on average. There were likely only a few thousand beavers left in Europe in first half of the 20th century.⁶ Today there are more than 1.2 million.

Obtaining these estimate is a challenge and interesting:

For example, the result for Eurasian beavers is based on studies of 98 different populations. The grey wolf is based on 86 studies. For the Iberian lynx, high-quality time series were only available for 7 populations.

This means, for example, that the value of 16,705% for the Eurasian beaver means that there was, on average, a 16,705% increase in the numbers of beavers in each of the 98 populations that were included in this study. This does not mean that there was a 16,705% increase in all populations. Nor can we say that there was this level of increase for Eurasian beavers as a whole because we do not know the change in unmonitored populations, and the number of beavers in different populations will be different.

From a QL perspective it would be nice if the available data included the starting population size. It is also worth noting.

There are more than 250 European mammal species, so the ones that we covered here represent just 10% of the continent’s mammals. The fact that these species are doing well does not mean that all species are.

This article seems like it could be the basis for many projects.

If you go to NOAA’s Coastal Inundation Dashboard you can navigate the map and choose a station site. For example, here is the graph we get from selecting Naples FL.

If you’d like more information click on the Station Hope Page link at the bottom of the window that pops up when you select a station. From there use the top menu to select Station Info and then Data Inventory. On the next page select one of the categories by clicking on a bar. That will then take you to a page where you can select a date range and download the data by clicking the Data Only button on the bottom right.

Note that this is one location and others, even nearby, have different surges.

From Pew’s article Key facts about U.S. Latinos for National Hispanic Heritage Month by Jens Manuel Krogstad, Jeffrey S. Passel and Luis Noe-Bustamante (9/23/2022):

The U.S. population grew by 23.1 million from 2010 to 2021, and Hispanics accounted for 52% of this increase – a greater share than any other racial or ethnic group.

There is a great QL point here in that:

The 19% increase in the Hispanic population was faster than the nation’s 7% growth rate, but slower than the 23% increase in the Asian population.

In other words, the  Asian population grew faster but from a smaller count. There are numerous graphics in the article.

From the eia article Nuclear power provided about 10% of California’s total electricity supply (9/19/2022) by Slade Johnson and Katherine Antonio:

In 2021, three nuclear power plants supplied about 10% of California’s electricity. Diablo Canyon, located in San Luis Obispo County, is California’s last operating nuclear power plant, and it supplied over 8% of California’s electricity in 2021.

The graph provided is a little misleading because it is in-state generation but

California has the largest state economy in the United States and is the fourth-largest electricity producer in the nation, accounting for about 5% of U.S. utility-scale electricity generation in 2021. Because more electricity is consumed in California than is produced there, about 30% of its electricity supply is imported, and 36% of its nuclear electricity supply is imported,

In a state that an only generate about 60% of its electricity needs, one nuclear plant generates 8% of its needs. The article has links to the data.

From NOAA’s August 20022 Global Climate Report:

The August 2022 global surface temperature departure was the sixth highest for August in the 143-year record at 0.90°C (1.62°F) above the 20th century average of 15.6°C (60.1°F). The ten warmest Augusts on record have all occurred since 2009. August 2022 also marked the 46th consecutive August and the 452nd consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th century average.

Highlights:

The contiguous U.S. had its eighth-warmest August on record. For the second month in a row, the contiguous U.S. monthly average minimum temperature was record warm.

Spain had its second-warmest August on record after August 2003.

The Royal Meteorological Institute confirmed that Belgium had its warmest August since records began in 1833.

Time series data is available at the top of the page.

The Fraser Institute does an annual economic freedom report (9/8/2022), which ranks countries and interesting also states in the U.S. The main page includes an explanation of what goes in the economic freedom score. The most recent data, 2020, and the sub scores are available to download. The U.S. ranks as #7 overall, but as you can see by the map here there is considerable variable by state. They have put together an excellent interactive page, which is where the map here comes from, to explore the results in a number of formats. Great Stats/QL information here.

The Pew article Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022 by Emily A. Vogels, Risa Gelles-Watnick, and Navid Massarat (8/10/2022) is filled with data on teen social media use. I was a little surprised by the graph copied here and less surprised by this:

In addition, the share of teens who say they use the internet almost constantly has gone up: 46% of teens say they use the internet almost constantly, up from only about a quarter (24%) of teenagers who said the same in 2014-15.

I found this concerning:

In addition, the share of teens who say they use the internet almost constantly has gone up: 46% of teens say they use the internet almost constantly, up from only about a quarter (24%) of teenagers who said the same in 2014-15.

There are numerous charts and a methodology section. This article seems great for a stats or QL based course.