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jsoma / playfair-projects

Common repository of projects for Playfair
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Koch University Funds: Return on Investment? #155

Closed ghost closed 8 years ago

ghost commented 8 years ago

I found a dataset of the total Koch brothers contributions to US Universities, from 2005 to 2014.

After an exploratory analysis, I decided to look most closely at George Mason University, also-- I found all their tax returns for the relevant years, so I potentially have a lot more information on what money they receive, what portion of it comes from the Koch brothers, and what they spend that money on-- since they have to make it public. Also how much money they pay to board members and the names, lots of things to explore. I am choosing to copy/paste and fiddle with the data with regular expressions in a text editor, but I am also open to employing other strategies.

Further questions to ask the data:

-Exactly how much quantifiable influence do the Koch brothers have, as a percentage of the total revenue for George Mason? Just how big is their seat at the table?

-What things do they spend all this money on? How much money do they have anyway?

-Are there perhaps any changes, say in board members or otherwise, that have precipitated such a steep rise in donations from 2012 to 2014?

Questions for feedback:

-I'm terrible at picking colours, and I'm not sure an area graph is the best way to represent this. It's yearly amount of money donated, so it could be pretty boring pretty easily...

koch_donations_by_institute_2 koch_donations_by_institute koch_donations_by_institute3 koch_university_contributions

Planned visualizations: Would still like to compare this data to something different, like election data or maybe some indicator of conservative-ness, like amount of churches per capita, or something like that. I'm just focusing on Virginia, where George Mason is, so I could get pretty granular.

I haven't seen any visualizations at all in any of the articles I've read, though there certainly has been lots of research using this data.

Ángel Cabrera assumed the presidency of GMU in 2012. According to the tax returns, he got paid 625,957 in 2014 by the George Mason University Foundation. Yep, the one in my chart up there. Maybe I should look at how he's so lucky at getting the Koch brothers to give huge amounts of money to GMU, and what is so attractive about GMU to the Koch brothers, like here! My pitch was (use the number): #96

Story issue checklist

gcgruen commented 8 years ago

I like the third one in blue shades more than the other two. I also think it is legitimate in this case to use shades of the same colour, because it's all within GMU, right?

Maybe you can add a little more annotation within the filled areas what these institutions actually do, as a service to your reader, so he/she doesn't need to start googling what these are about. (Maybe if enough space, you could this way also get rid of the legend)

Would also like to repeat a feedback you gave me once: "The y-axis label is currently the only vertical thing, maybe make it horizontal as well!" :) There's enough space on top of the y-axis to do that.

Font-wise, I feel all of you text bits have the same weight right now, although it is in different sizes. Would suggest to either experiment with bold/non-bold (ie for the headline) or to go for a different font for annotation. What font-combinations work well? If you google "Webfont combination" several posts come up. Soma once recommended this post, I also found this one and this one inspiring (totally revised my fonts after that - now on my favourite font Raleway that comes in so many different weights (8, I think), so that you I stick with one font and vary via boldness)

jowang0319 commented 8 years ago

I prefer the third one! The first two were pretty as well but the third one makes me feel more consistant. Maybe the bar chart should have the same color scale as the area chart to show that they're actually in one same project. Also I think you may need to add some summary inside the graphic as I spent a lot of time to read the text but they're not in the graphic:)

snajmabadi commented 8 years ago

What an interesting project! I agree with the previous two commenters in liking the third color scheme. One small suggestion: Maybe you can make the bars in the bar chart a neutral color, like grey, with only the George Mason University bar in a turquoise that matches with the turquoise colors in the third area graph. This could serve the dual function of highlighting the largest donation recipient, and also tying that bar to the area graph, where you provide more detail about that donation recipient. I would also consider making the axis labels consistent between the two – for example "Dollars, in millions" (instead of "Donation (millions)" and "Tens of millions of dollars").

ghost commented 8 years ago

Thanks for the feedback @gcgruen, @jowang0319 and @snajmabadi !

Will ponder font combinations. Hmmn.

I think I also like the 3rd one's color scheme, but I was thinking a stacked bar graph might better communicate the actual increase in money because then you don't lose anything on the overlap.

Re: Dollars, in millions, Donations (millions), and Tens of millions, honestly I just have no idea how to put that on an axis without sounding awkward, or saying "billions and billions" in a Carl Sagan voice in my head... I'll try something until it sticks!

I think you're right, a unified color scheme across the two works much better, so trying this:

bar_unified

stacked_unified

snajmabadi commented 8 years ago

That looks so good! I love the stacked bar and the percent increase!

gcgruen commented 8 years ago

The consistent color scheme looks amazing!!! And thumbs up for varying font weight!!

Well, at least in science I learnt the standard format is the version having the unit in brackets. There are probably reasons for and against it.

The least thing I would do is to add "US" in front of dollars. US is not the only country whose currency is called dollar, right? It's maybe kind of clear that this refers to US dollar, but it certainly doesn't hurt neither to put it ;)

But this is me being overly picky. Feel free to ignore (or go for revenge ;)...)

jsoma commented 8 years ago

Those are gorgeous. In my heart of hearts I liked the blue/red/yellow one, but the blues are definitely nice too. Keep the non-blue colors in your back pocket for a time when you need something to be distinctly categorical!

Font size: I would work on trying to standardize to maybe max 4 font sizes - headline, subhead, axis text and annotations.

Grid: I'm conflicted about a grid for the last one! It seems like since you have the labels it would be nice, but they'd really clutter things up. Maybe use direct labeling since they don't really need to compare the different bars inside of a year anyway? I guess in theory a really light dotted grid couldn't do that much harm, though...

image

Headline: I like your font! I'd make your artboard a little bigger and push them up to give them room to breathe, though. I would maybe not say "influence is getting stronger," but something like ...they're getting all up in there more. Implying their attempts to change things but not necessarily editorializing that they're succesfully changing things? (although obviously....)

Colors: I adore how you made the unimportant bars gray and the important ones blue, and then carried the colors through. Wonderful.

Axes: I think if you use an axis in one bar graph you should use an axis in both! You could probably direct-label the largest four in the horizontal one. Or maybe the axis looks better? Guess I'd have to see it!

ghost commented 8 years ago

This is the opera that the Koch brothers gave 100,000 to: http://www.vaopera.org/about-va-opera/va-opera-staff.html

gcgruen commented 8 years ago

I think a flow chart could be great for showing how they hand back and forth the money among them. However you might most likely need to do that completely in Illustrator bc there doesn't seem to be code for it. Maybe you can think of how to reduce the data to the minimum information needed to tell the story of the one institution breaking out of that pattern -- so you don't have to do all of this manually.

playfairbot commented 8 years ago

Closing since pull request #200 has been accepted