At this link you will find one of the best animated data visualizations you’ll ever see. It’s a map of the world with timed animation representing immigration into the US from 1820 to 2013. It only takes a few seconds. Watch it. What better thing are you going to do in the next two minutes?
It’s an elegant way to see the geographic distribution, timing, and scale of millions of peoples individual choices. Two relaxed minutes of watching colored dots will give you a better understanding than what you started with. In an ideal world, nobody would debate immigration in the US until they’d watched it. Twice.
Also, like most good visualizations, it’s beautiful.
Hat tip to Maggie’s Farm.
Canada?
See what I mean? I had no idea of that either. I learned something from that little visualization.
Heretofore, I figured we gained Dan Aykroyd and Pam Anderson but had to accept Alanis Morisette to get ’em so it was a statistical wash.
The little dots tell a story I didn’t know. In retrospect I’ve seen Tim Horton’s on this side of the line so I should have known operation “move south and thaw out” was quietly in progress.
Pamela Anderson. She’s misunderstood. She was pursuing her dream of sugah daddies and was just singing her favorite Christmas greeting.
Ho Ho HO!
We have a lot of Canadians and a lot of Canadian tourists in the Summer, but hey Alaska. Canada is right next door. That they were the majority of immigrants for 50 or so years is really interesting.
But why were they all migrating to St. Louis? I mean, it’s not a bad town, but fer Chrissakes why there?
}:-]
And we also got Justin Beiber, so it’s clearly a net loss. But then there is Mark Steyn, and Captain James T. Kirk, so…
Watching the numbers, the years with an eye to racial history you see some sad trends… 1840-1880 the Irish immigration, the blatant hate directed at the Irish (No Dogs, No Irish signs). 1850s-1890s the Chinese immigration (building the railroads, Chinese exclusion acts) the 1920s-1930s and Mexican immigration (reefer madness!)
Points out how stupid all of the fear and doubt was in hindsight.
Yeah you can see that. Plus who knew that Canadian immigration was a thing? I’d never heard much about it. I never associated Mexican immigration with “reefer madness” but then again I did like Cheech and Chong so there’s that.
It’s a complex thing, which is why I like the presentation. I knew there were pauses in the flow but didn’t really have their timing clearly in mind. Nor did I realize current trends exceeded past trends in absolute scope by so much. You could listen to politics all year and not learn as much as two minutes of dots in motion. Amazing.
I sent you money. Now get back to the squirrels. Dammit 🙂
You’re right! Squirrels as soon as I can!
BTW: You’ve done a good deed. I had a post in mind that was tangentially political. I was about to write it and then a tip came in and I forgot all about politics once more. Well played.
the bear needs a real pal. Pair him up with a timid chipmunk:)
A great post…learned a lot…..now please…..back to the Squirrels !