Social Network Visualization of the Presidents of the USA
I recently attended a MeetUp of the Los Angeles Semantic Web & PHP Meetup Groups. It was a presentation on the Factual API. Factual is a very cool company building a platform for “open source data.” I pulled down some data to test and created the following visualizations, which reveal…well, something about American Presidents. I’m not quite sure what that something is, but it’s interesting to me. What do you think?
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Interconnectivity of Presidents Over Time
This shows the shared connections to universities & branches of the military over time. I have grouped them into groups of 5 presidents at a time, which are the ones highlighted in yellow. This is the most interesting case I found. The middle of the 20th century appears to be the least interconnected.
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Presidents & Their Colleges / Universities
This is interesting because it is not, as I would have hypothesized, all Harvard and Yale folks. In fact, the Harvard / Yale crowd is most best represented at the beginning of the country and in the last 50 years. A lot of presidents did not attend college.
followup: State Money visualizations for California
As a followup to the last blog post on State Money in Florida, here are the visualizations I rendered from the State Money data on California:
Top donors with donation sizes indicated by link thickness; republican = red; democrat = blue.
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Top Republican donors. One does NOT donate to Gov. Schwarzenegger.
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Why does this guy support the one Democrat?
State Money Analysis: Florida in 2008
Over the last month, I’ve been working with Edwin Bender and The National Institute on Money in State Politics (NIMST), which operates FollowTheMoney.org. This not-for-profit organization provides a database similar to the Sunlight Foundation’s database of political donations, but NIMST focuses exclusively on state elections.
Their data has been featured prominently in many publications. Most recently, I came across it in the New York Times article “Health Lobby Takes Fight to the States,” which cites the NIMST report “Take $2 Million…and Call Me in the Session Health Care Interests Gave Healthy Doses of Contributions.”
This is an excellent use of this type of data. I encourage you to read the article and the report.
For a test run, NIMST gave me a sample set of data to process in Jute. Admittedly, I have not perfected the analytic techniques here and there is a lot more work to do to make the data relevant. Edwin Bender said to me in a prescient email
“Clay Johnson of Sunlight Foundation said recently that data visualizations are a dime a dozen, but meaningful visualizations are priceless.”
These are the top 5 donors to state candidates in FL in 2008. The largest donations went to the FL Republican Party. These donors give a large number of $500 donations (shown in orange).
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So this is my first attempt at meaningful visualization. I give myself a “B-” on it. I took the data from FL, a state where I’m familiar with state politics after playing a prominent volunteering role with my mother’s unsuccessful run at the state house in 2008.* In the following visualizations, there is a very simple visual index: REPUBLICAN = RED; DEMOCRAT = BLUE; $500 DONATION = ORANGE.
The interesting about this is:
1) The top donors in the state are largely bi-partisan in their giving. Why? Do their recipients sit on influential committees? Is there a specific piece of legislation they wanted to support? A specific fundraising volunteer who brokered these donations?
2) There are a surprising number of $500 donations. Why so many?! What is the significance of a $500 donation to a state official? UPDATED: ”$500 is the legal limit for a campaign contribution to an individual candidate. That amount can be given once during the primary and once during the general election.” according to Linda McDonald, my mother.
Why? I’m not sure. I hope this blog post will help me find out.
FYI: you can access this data set in a network document called “state money FL v1″ by using the Jute guest account. Or, request your own account and I’ll share the data set with you.
Top 2 Donors in FL State Politics in 2008
These are the top 2 donors in FL state politics. What is their political bias?
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Paul Tudor Jones, II
Mr. Jones supports candidates from both parties and both parties' state offices. Why?
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Guy M. Spearman, III
Guy M. Spearman, III also supports candidates from both parties and both parties' state offices. Why?
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Whole Network Analysis: Top 5 FL Donors
Whole Network Analysis shows a surprising number of $500 donations among the top 5 donors in FL state politics in 2008. $500 is the maximum donation permitted.
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Assumed Industry Affiliation
By extrapolating industry affiliations from the companies where donors self-report that they work, we can look at trends of how industries' money flows to parties. This is not really a factually valid analysis--just an exercise in using Jute to crunch NIMST data.
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Finding meaning in this data…
This data set is just a trial, and this blog post is just to get some initial feedback. My hope is that we can elevate this into a funded research project, analyzing trends in the NIMST data, and finding specific, relevant examples that we can publish. Also, I’d like to work with a campaign to help them in their fundraising and strategy development.
There is a lot more than needs to be done to “take this to the next level.” That includes:
Cross-referencing this data with other data sets, like: which campaigns actually won seats in the State Legislature; which committees the elected officials sit on and chair; which federal candidates these donors supported; and, ideally, which candidates I know (or my clients know) and how they can leverage existing relationships to get value out of this analysis. (That last one comes from existing, internal databases.)
But for now, I hope you’ll help me find meaning in this data. If you’d like access to more analysis from other states, or you are interested in publishing this material, please contact me via email or via phone at 828/545.9539.
Sean McDonald
co-founder, Jute Networks
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*A little editorial here: Linda McDonald ran a hell of a campaign against a competitor with an exponentially larger war chest. In a district where a Dem hadn’t had a chance in a generation, she lost by a razor thin margin. And the people of the state of Florida are worse-off because she doesn’t represent them.
Jute goes (RED)
I created a custom visualization for the (RED) campaign. Let me know what you think, and share it if you think it’s important to fight AIDS in Africa.
It’s World AIDS Day today. I don’t think I need to outline why this important, but if you’d like to know more, check out joinRED.com where there are videos and all kinds information. You can even pimp your Facebook page with their tools.
Something that’s really important to me (Sean) is that all kinds of traits transmit through relationships. This is what we call “sociographic” transmission, although the academicians have yet to settle on a lexicon that deems that phrase precise. We’ll leave the vocab up to Stanford…we just analyze networks.
Anyway, what I tried to reflect in this visualization is the idea that we are all influenced by our friends and that we can influence each other. This type of incluence is–obviously–one of the most powerful forces on earth.
So take a minute, do something, and convince somebody else to go (RED).
Montana businesses networks — via implu
I recently came across implu (www.implu.com). It’s self-described as:
implu is an online tool for prospecting, networking and market research. No other site keeps you informed with daily news, custom searches and daily email alerts. No other site provides you with an executive’s business associations allowing you to network your way into new clients. No other site provides comprehensive company information on just one page.
Seems to provide a lot of interesting information by scraping the web. I pulled a CSV file from implu (and gave them big props for having an easy way to do that…) and uploaded into Jute NRM Prototype.
Nothing spectacular in the results, but it’s interesting. It would be much more interesting as a layer of data mixed with my personal data.
Montana Businesses — Whole Network
H&R Block Executives in Montana
Key Networks in Montana Zip Code 63141
What do you think?
Your network determines your behavior
In September, 2009, The New York Times Magazine ran a controversial headline: “Are your friends making you fat?” Then they went on to prove that, yes, in all likelihood, your friends are making you fat.
I encourage you to read the whole article. I’ve pulled out a few of my favorite passages below.
New York Times Magazine - "Are your friends making you fat?"
Behaviors are “contagious” across relationships
…Two years ago, a pair of social scientists named Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler used the information collected over the years about Joseph and Eileen and several thousand of their neighbors to make an entirely different kind of discovery. By analyzing the Framingham data, Christakis and Fowler say, they have for the first time found some solid basis for a potentially powerful theory in epidemiology: that good behaviors — like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy — pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses. The Framingham participants, the data suggested, influenced one another’s health just by socializing. And the same was true of bad behaviors — clusters of friends appeared to “infect” each other with obesity, unhappiness and smoking. Staying healthy isn’t just a matter of your genes and your diet, it seems. Good health is also a product, in part, of your sheer proximity to other healthy people.
Sociograms–little maps of who knew whom
FOR DECADES, SOCIOLOGISTS and philosophers have suspected that behaviors can be “contagious.” In the 1930s, the Austrian sociologist Jacob Moreno began to draw sociograms, little maps of who knew whom in friendship or workplace circles
Different classes of relationships
co-workers did not seem to transmit happiness to one another, while personal friends did. But co-workers did transmit smoking habits; if a person at a small firm stopped smoking, his or her colleagues had a 34 percent better chance of quitting themselves. The difference is based in the nature of workplace relationships, Fowler contends.
Your network is HUGE
As Fowler pointed out, if you want to improve the world with your good behavior, math is on your side. For most of us, within three degrees we are connected to more than 1,000 people — all of whom we can theoretically help make healthier, fitter and happier just by our contagious example. “If someone tells you that you can influence 1,000 people,” Fowler said, “it changes your way of seeing the world.”
Starting Point: data you can use in Jute
I was recently asked for a “Top 10″ list of data sets that might be used in a project with Jute. While there is no “one size fits all” of data sets, I thought it’d be good to compile a list of links that helps someone get started. Most projects end up combining 2-4 data sets, so it’s seldom that all of those can be identified ahead of time. It’s also important to remember that most organizations have not just an internal database, but email address books and social software accounts like LinkedIn–all of which are databases.
So, this list isn’t perfect and it isn’t complete–but it should be a good starting point.
Feel free to comment if you have any questions about a specific type of data set that is not listed here. I’ll get back to you…
Not-for-profit
Blackbaud’s ResearchPoint service culls together a variety of data points on individuals and helps you see not only there giving history, but also critical information like net worth.
Foundation Center Online A compiled list of grants and granting institutions.
NOZA Search Data pulled from across the web on major donors to non-profits, sorted by sector, location and a variety of other attributes.
Charity Navigator’s “Charities performing similar types of work” feature would be helpful on certain projects.
Guidestar A well known data provider for donors and non-profits.
Corporate / Investment
Dunn & Bradstreet / Hoovers The 800 lb gorilla of databases, D&B provides a huge range of data about companies, markets, industries and even individuals.
VentureDeal.com Tracks the deals that take place in the venture capital space around North America. Good balance of accuracy and economics at $25 / month.
The Director’s Database A database of corporate governance.
Dow Jones Factiva
Politics
FollowTheMoney.org (National Institute on Money in State Politics) Tracks political donations and money flowing through lobbyists in all 50 states. Allows users to see which lobbyist represents which clients. [API]
OpenSecrets.org Provides a variety of data points focused on exposing the role money plays in political influence. Available for personal use or for purchase. [API]
Data.gov As part of the Obama Administration’s plan to make government more transparent, they have created this site to open up unclassified government data. Currently, there’s only 597 data sets, but it grows every day. Hoping to find a history of the Toxic Release Inventory in American Somoa? Data.gov is for you…
LittleSis.org “We bring transparency to influential social networks by tracking the key relationships of politicians, corporate executives, lobbyists, financiers, and their affiliated organizations.” [API]
Aggregators
iWave Prospect Research Online Aggregates ZoomInfo, NOZA, Guidstar, High Net Worth Alert, HEP GiftsPlus, Prospects of Welth, Foundation Finder and Pro Data. I’ve never used this service, but it looks very promising. If it really does provide all that for a $3k subscription, it’s a great deal! (Interestingly enough…they have a caveat that their service is available exclusively to not-for-profit purposes.)
StrikeIron has created web services out of a range of popular data products, ranging from address verification to business intelligence / market research data.
WealthEngine Aggregates regulatory data, voluntarily reported data and statistically modeled data to provide a view of an individual’s habits, interests and resources.
Free & Open Source Data
DBpedia Converts Wikipedia into a database, which allows for interesting things like seeing the connections between Presidents and their Cabinets. (And the million other interesting things you can find in Wikipedia…)
Datamob.org Datamob highlights the connection between public data sources and the interfaces people are building for them.
InfoChimps.org An “open marketplace for data” where people access huge data sets and obscure data sets: from corporate reporting to the top 100k crossword puzzle words of all time, you can find almost any type of data here.
Swivel.com Web community of data enthusiasts who create many types of chart / graph visualizations for the data sets they submit.
Get specific!
It’s important to remember that some of the best data comes from local and / or localized data sources. Chamber of Commerce directories, business council directories member-based organization directories (think: churches) and alumni databases can all be very valuable in expanding your network.
Another incredible set of data that is too diverse to list here is Industry Trade Association data sets. Whether it’s the rubber industry or the Green Building Council, getting access to the key players and their association’s local, regional and national structures will benefit your network data by leaps and bounds.
Good lists / other blog posts about data.
Trust Networks’s wiki of networked data sets. (Awesome list!)
Relationship Visualization: MIT’s flora style
Check out this concept from MIT Information Design Ecology group. It tracks your communication with selected people and shows you an indicator–a plant–with the health of the relationship. Brilliant concept.
MIT's Social Garden app
How can we help?
Case study
The team behind the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client has started heavily promoting their Mozilla Service Week, which is coming this fall. Among the projects they suggest that their fan base–largely technologists–take on in local communities are:
- They teach senior citizens how to use the Web.
- They show a non-profit how to use social networking to grow its base of supporters.
- They help install a wireless network at a school.
- They create Web how-to materials for a library’s computer cluster.
- They refurbish hardware for a local computer center.
- They update a non-profit organization’s website.
It’s a great project and I encourage anyone reading this to get involved.
(I’ll point out that, Mozilla does plenty to make the world a better place by creating an open browser and making it successful and widely-adopted. This initiative won’t come close to that level of impact, but it is noble.)
The big picture
This is a great segue to one of the defining questions of our age: who will teach the millions of Americans and billions of people around the world how to put the best technologies of our time to use in their own lives? There are lots of follow-up questions here, including: who is responsible for doing so? should all technologies be designed in a way that they are “intuitive enough” for anyone to use them? should the end user play a role in maintaining the technology or is it OK to have a driver/mechanic (user/expert) relationship with core technologies like a person’s computer? This list goes on and on…
How can we help?
The question for a startup like Jute Networks is: how can we help ensure that all people have access to technologies that make their lives better?
We help most by making our company successful. Jute NRM is a truly innovative user interface for complex relationships data. The better the interface, the more valuable that information is to a broader audience. In a world with more data than our greatest minds know what to do with, data visualization’s great promise is to increase all people’s ability to at least understand data that impacts their lives and potentially make better decisions that increase their quality of life.
From an action-oriented perspective, we’ve got to start finding clients that really need our help to fulfill their missions. Large non-profits, innovative startups…any operation that lives and dies by its relationships. In a perfect world, our clients will be dedicated being the change we want to see in the world (to paraphrase Gandhi). We believe in a progressive approach to business, government and stewardship of the earth. We believe that entrepreneurship and technological innovation offer great promise to create a more perfect union, domestically and the world round.
If you need to get more value out of complex relationship data and your organization seems like a fit, contact me, Sean McDonald, today.
Infographics Awards
We’re big fans of Infographics here at Jute Networks. Our hats go off to Amanda Cox and the team from NYTimes.com who won International Infographics Awards this year.
Read more at Flowing Data.