Here, we look at the plot of General government debt-to-GDP ratio as of the year 2020. This ratio is a measure of gross debt of the general government as a percentage of GDP. It is a measure of the sustainability of a government.
Florish is an online data visualization tool which helps create embeddable graphics.
For this exercise, the data used is as before, the OECD Data which consists of information related to the government debt by country for 1995 - 2019. The attributes used are ‘Location’, ‘debt-to-GDP ratio’ and the ‘Year’.
The following is a grid of line type visualization which indicates the Debt-to-GDP Ratio from the year 1995 to 2019
The following visualization is a bubble chart which can be filtered by location and includes a time slider for the year. With this, we can look at the changes in Debt-to-GDP Ratio over years for each individual location.
Hit the play button, choose a location and observe the progression!
Comparing the use of grid of line type visualization and the bubble chart viusalization for the same data (government debt by country for 1995 - 2019),the grid of line type visualization gives us no comparative analysis between countries across the years. It is a static plot which shows us general trends.
The bubble chart visualization on the other hand allows us to filter by country while progressing through various years to track the changes in the Debt-to-GDP Ratio. Thus, the insights obtained from each of the visualizations are different.
Talking from data visualization standpoint that is focused on insights,the bubble chart viusalization is more effective and provides insights on a more granular level. It is also insteresting to use the ‘Play’ button on the bubble chart to visualize the changes which enhances its interactivity.