It’s been many, many years since I’ve cared about the NBA Finals.  But one of the two teams is from my home town of Oklahoma City.  In the past few years, the city in which I grew up went from having no basketball team, to having a mediocre basketball team, to having a great basketball team.  It makes me vicariously proud, like the first time I saw my daughter write her…

A few years ago, I was in rural West Texas looking for headstones of family members in a cemetery.  Fun way to spend a Saturday, right? It was nearly record-setting heat in July, and I didn’t bring enough water with me. The search took longer than any of us had expected and by the time I was thirsty, I was starting to feel awful. I found a rusty faucet in the ground and frantically turned the handle. I didn’t care if it was treated water that was safe to drink or not. It was wet, and that’s…

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m kind of a nerd. I heard on the news the other day that home prices are falling once again, and my first thought was “I want to see that graphed!” rather than “Oh no, the economy is collapsing!” 

I grabbed the Case Shiller Home Price index information and plotted it as a simple time series in a Line…

Published February 16, 2011. 

I was on the drive to work this morning and thought “I want to make a bubble plot!”  Luckily, I was able to contain my enthusiasm and arrive at work without running any red lights. 

However, I did not know what information I wanted to show in my bubble plot.  I’ve seen Hans Rosling present quite a few bubble charts, so using some kind of country data or US State…