A few weeks ago, we tweeted about the chart below, posted by Yale professor Chris Blattman on his blog. The graph was first posted on the Aidwatch blog, here. Click to view:
The graph’s original author criticized the new, trendy “3-D” approach to development, writing that we must “hold our politicians accountable when they sacrifice Development big-time to achieve small-time (or sometimes illusory) Diplomatic or Defense goals.”
Jérôme Cukier, the OECD’s data editor (OECD numbers were used for the pie chart), thankfully decided to respond. He used Tableau to create interactive graphs of aid flows to fragile states: a few screenshots are below, but Cukier’s actual post is worth a full read. Nice to see an awful graph transformed into something similarly simple, but much more useful and informative — click on each image to view in full size, and click here to read Cukier’s description of his process.
Hi Eliza, I just wanted to say that I liked the original pie chart despite the fact that it’s hard to read, or rather because it’s hard to read. that clutter of illegible country names bears a strong meaning: they are not important enough to be mentioned in a proper way. I find this approach very interesting.
http://www.jeromecukier.net/?p=410
thanks, jerome