ECONOMICS

Monetary Exchange Google Map

Using Google Maps API and perl with gnuplot, daily updates on select monetary exchange rates (updated daily by the Federal Reserve and processed nightly with a cron script) are graphed and visualized on a global map here.

County by County Unemployment from 1990 to AUG 2010

Using perl to splice data provided the the Federal Department of Labor, an animated map showing the change in unemployment between 1990 and the most recent statistics is shown below. Please note that this is an animated SVG image. Only browsers capable of showing animated SVG (e.g. Chrome, Safari, Opera) will show the data properly. Other browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer) plan SVG animation support in future upgrades. If you do not see the map evolving with time and unemployment rate, then you are not using a compatable browser: The default SVG file can be found from Wikipedia. The unemployment data can be found from bls.gov. I wrote a set of perl scripts to process the data from bls.gov and introduce it into the SVG file. Due to spelling discrepancies of a handful of counties between the two lists, and a bug involving how certain city/counties are co-listed, the gray spots on the map indicate the need for refinement of the code. Since this was a demonstration of concept, that remains homework for anyone interested in pursuing this method of data presentation. Fixes for the code would include matching the spelling differences between the SVG map and the bls data, and fixing the bug involving the way Alaska and Virginia name their county-equivalents, as well as differentiating further between cities in the bls.gov list and counties with the same name.