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The website of the National Academic of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The source data is provided by Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy and from its reports and studies.

Within my limited time, I tried to look for some knowledge about our energy system, as well as how the authors can tell us by visualization in 4 main parts

• How we use energy
• Our energy source
• The cost of energy
• Energy efficiency

1. How we use energy

Among four economic sectors of residential, commercial, transportation, and industry; I consider ” Home & Work” that include about 40% of the energy consumed in the United States in 2015. Instead of carefully read information, it is easy for me to understand how much useful energy is in our life along full data by visualization with the pie chart. The data chart also shows the comparation of different way of consumptions in 2015. I will be more interesting to know the demand trend of different types of consumption with the line chart.

2. Our energy source

Of course, this part I am very consider. I want to know what on the hand of U.S. Energy system and its capability. Also, I like the way the authors express the direct and indirectly supply from energy sources to consumptions.

It is happy to hope we have enough affordable energy in the future. I love U.S government, because they love their people. They always take care us from how to reserve to supply enough energy for our life and every fields in U.S. They know how to invest to exploit nature energy sources in long time due to decline in other limited energy sources, as well as to look for the solution to limit the waste of energy in the process of production, supply, and consumption. On the other hand, if we significantly dependent on the energy source of other country, we can lost some favorited points in our competitive advantage position. The photograph helps me to have this pride emotion.

3. The cost of energy

We need to consider the cost of energy, but I did not see any charts and photograph yet.

4. Energy efficiency

We hope the stable energy in future, but how to ensure and solve the problem. If increasing supply can make our headache, why we don’t think about reducing its demand by its efficiency? The authors of the website pointed out that “the demand for energy has not been growing as rapidly as the economy, resulting in significant drop in what is called energy intense“

The above chart shows U.S. Energy Intensity Projected to continue its steady decline through 2040. The chart author used was the right chart for the right data to effectively communicate with us about an important consideration in our country.

Now, for the issue of energy in United States of America, the government expect the contribute from fields of technology, economic benefit, research, as well as government mandate and others.

Thank you. `

Reference

The National Academic of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2020). What You Need to Know about Energy . Retrieved from http://needtoknow.nas.edu/energy/

So off the bat I imagined I was in for a somewhat dull interactive, because how could you possibly top a website called snakey, even though I had no idea what it was about.

I was pleasantly surprised! Mostly because I have a vague and slightly threatening interest in nuclear chemistry (threatening in the sense that I’ve read a lot of books on the subject and vague because come on… there’s a lot to know and I’m a neuroscience student with a full time job. I’m busy). In the technical sense, I’m fully aware of the problems nuclear energy has and can cause (hi, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima) and that it isn’t exactly the lowest cost form of renewable energy but I was excited nonetheless.

Naturally the first place I went to was the nuclear energy system tab. As previously mentioned I knew that it isn’t a super popular form of energy but I was surprised to see that the data had gone up from the Three Mile Island incident back in 1979. The thing about nuclear energy (other than the extreme danger to those around a reactor if something goes wrong, or the massive amounts of radioactive isotopes that spread through the air and ecosystem in the event of an explosion) is the safe storing of radioactive waste. Uranium has a half life of 4.5 billion years and even then it only gets broken down into radian-226. Uranium waste is highly radioactive and notoriously difficult to store, so it makes sense that it isn’t the most popular form of energy.

Now, for the design.

This website still feels like it’s in a beta version. I’m not a wiz with coding or anything but just by looking at it and comparing it with other websites that have been beta’d (Instagram, Twitter and Facebook all were beta at one point) it just feels outdated. I checked to see the copyright year, just in case this website was out of date but it wasn’t. It just looks old. I find the use of clunky graphic and text boxes to be unappealing visually. Having your data pop up in front of your graphic kind of defeats the purpose.

The Sankey Energy Visualization was good way to express energy consumption data to an audience. But it is more involved and requires a bit more effort in order to understand what is going on. The basic set up of the cables going to each industry such as commercial, residential, industrial, and transportation do a look a bit messy but require some focus to follow to each catagory. Below is a picture of the basic set up of this interactive visualalzation.

However, once understood, the Sankey Energy Visualization becomes a great source of information. One thing i did find intresting was that the entire nation relies on nuclear energy for electricty. I found this out by clicking on the nuclear energy tab. One thing that was not suprising was that regional energy system of MA, OH, PA and WV relies on coal for their main soure of electricity. This wasnt to suprising as these regions are dominated by coal. Below is a screen shot of how i found that out

All togther The Sankey Energy Visualization is a great interactive data visualization as long as you take a couple minutes to nagivate through it and understand it fully!

So this week we were asked to come up with a perfect case for the use of a pie chart. So…….

I had some questions:

1. What is a pie chart exactly?
2. What are Pie charts Good for?

To answer my first question i started doing some research, it turns out that The pie chart has been around for over 200 years. It was first invented in 1801 by Scottish writer on political economy William Playfair (1759-1823), nowadays known as the inventor of statistical graphs. At the time Playfair believed “making an appeal to the eye when proportion and magnitude are concerned, is the best and readiest method of conveying a distinct idea” and the pie chart and bar chart were born. Some people believe that he also invented the line chart, but that story is better left for another time.

https://infogram.com/blog/the-infamous-pie-chart-history-pros-cons-and-best-practices/

Pro and Cons

The problem with Pie charts has a lot to do with our physiology. we as human beings are good at telling the difference between lengths but not so much when it comes to comparing angular differences. Meaning that compared to say a bar graph pie charts are not as efficient at getting their points across due to the extra time it takes for interpretation. as well as the need for more chart elements like clear labels to aid with quick interpretation of the graph.

However if you want to visualize pieces of a whole then a pie chart is your best choice. So for this assignment I decided I was going to breakdown a product i use often and turn its respect constituents into data points for a pie chart that i will post shorty.

Coconut Oil

The product I chose to to break down for my data is coconut oil. I’ve always know that coconut oil had many health benefits. But hypocritical to that notion, I’ve never really know what was in it? I use coconut oil as a moisturizer so I’m going to focus on the fatty content.

A quick google search for ” fatty composition of coconut oil” gave me this :

Coconut oil is made up of 7 know fatty acids plus one unknow acid

1. Caprylic-7%
2. Deconoic-8%
3. Lauric-48%
4. Myristic-16%
5. Palmitic-9.5%
6. Oleic-6.5%
7. Other -5%

So I plugged those numbers into excel and this is what i got as my data table

	Fatty acid Compositon of coconut oil
Acid	Percentage
Capryilic	7.0%
Decnoic	8.0%
Lauric	48.0%
Myristic	16.0%
Palmitic	9.5%
Oleic	6.5%
OTHER	5.0%

Then i turned those lovely points into a pie chart.

Interesting enough Lauric acid had the biggest portion of coconut oil’s fatty acid of composition, coming in at 48%!

Due to the fact that im more interested in how each component compares to the whole i believe this is a better option for a visual even when compared to the beloved bar graph.

This was a very fun activity and I look forward to doing more like it for my individual project.

Lollipop charts are perfect to use in similar situations that a bar graph would be used. Lollipop charts are great for comparing different sets of data in a category. This is especially a good chart for showing data with large number values: a long tall “lollipop” can help emphasize the data. It gets the name “lollipop” from its bars with circles at the end that mimic a lollipop. The biggest con of lollipop charts is the circle which can be hard to tell the exact value its marking.

The below chart I found on google is a great example when to use a lollipop chart. The data is all in the higher percentages with emphasizes the old age retirement of the government officials. The chart also projects the long term increase compared to the current 2012. Since the circles land right on the lines the graph values are easy to read.

Pie charts are really good at displaying data in a simple form. They are easy to look at and they are not overwhelming with data. They are meant to be simple and are amazing at displaying part-to-whole data.

This chart took me no more than 5 minutes to make and I think it’s pretty self explanatory. I think the different kind of eating habits for women. The data set is just made up but I did it just as an example to show how simple it can look. I also changed the colors so that it’s easier to identify the different sections. I think it is so easy to read and it is visually appealing to the eyes.

Pie charts are best used when depicting parts of a whole in data sets. I made this chart below to show the data I found on the American Veterinary site. This data is perfect because it shows the percentages of different pets owned in the United states. The different pet categories are the parts of a whole pet ownership in the united states. The different parts add up to a 100% perfectly because it is the whole ownership broken down. https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/reports-statistics/us-pet-ownership-statistics

The above example (found on google) is a perfect example of when to use a pie chart. This chart depicts the grades from a whole class broken into the different letter grades. This is a perfect way to see what percentage of the class did well and how many did not . This may help a teacher determine if a test was difficult for students.

This week we were asked to create a lollipop chart and then blog about our experience.

First things First, what the heck is it?

The Lollipop chart is way of taking a column graph/ chart and making it less visually overwhelming. I dont know about you but my visual appetite is big, so the simpler the better, especially when conveying a non-artistic message is you “point”.

while working on previous assignments we strived for simplicity by simply deleting the elements of the chart that were not helpful in getting our point across.

we deleted tick marks, lightened grid lines and even removed an axis line. so, what Left?

All that ink making up each bar. Some research has shown that this “ink-friendly design impacts readability and leads to faster response times and greater accuracy

Date	Calls
1-May	877
2-May	794
3-May	833
4-May	708
5-May	587
6-May	667
7-May	515
8-May	842
9-May	896
10-May	632

To make my own i started with 10 simple data entries then i inserted a clustered column chart.

The hardest part for me was those darn grid lines, so after my 25th time of reading the instructions i finally got it.

This was the hardest chart to figure out how to make but the easiest once to figure out how, it is a pretty straight forward data visual.