For Fun: Half Marathon

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On Sunday I ran my first half marathon at the Alexandria Running Festival. It was a beautiful, cool, sunny morning, and I managed a time of 2:04:18. I've never been a running superstar, so I was really pleased. A big thanks to all of the event organizers and volunteers for putting on a great race and keeping the energy up on the course.

As race day approached, I was struck by just how small a component of running a half marathon the actual race is. Don't get me wrong — running 13.1 miles is daunting, particularly for someone who hasn't raced in a few years. But the vast majority of the hard work, stress, anticipation and strategy come weeks and months earlier.

The chart above shows the full half marathon: the 13.1 miles I ran on Sunday plus the 12 weeks of training that made the final 13.1 possible. I liked the idea of arranging the data in a circle rather than a linear time-series chart, mostly because training process is very cyclical. Each week has a pattern of long, short and mid-distance runs, and once the final race is finished it's time to start gearing up for the next challenge (for me, it's the Marine Corps Marathon's Run Amuck on June 8). Plus, I thought the circle would look cool.

To create this chart in Illustrator, I first made two standard column charts using the Chart feature, one each for the distance and pace-per-mile data. Then I copied the individual columns onto a grid of circular "spokes" that I drew manually (if there's a way to have Illustrator generate a grid like this, I'd love to learn it!). The concentric rings showing the mile scale for the distance data and the minute scale for the time data were drawn to fit the columns, rather than the other way around. Overlapping the distance and time columns meant I overlapped the scales as well. It's a little crowded there at the center of the chart, but I hope it works.

Data Source: Personal records
Chart Tool: Adobe Illustrator

Extra Credit — Budget Variations

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I'm a fan of Google's interactive charts and tables, and I think the ones in the last post turned out pretty well. The ability to scroll over a line or column segment to see more data is especially handy for packing in the details while keeping the chart clean.

Even with that great feature, some of the budget data were still hard to display — particularly in the smaller spending categories that are hard to find when you're mousing over. So I tossed the data in Adobe Illustrator so I could have a little more flexibility with the design. It's still hard to read in spots, but it's nice to have control over the labels and segment colors.

Illustrator also lets me add a few design flourishes, like these paths highlighting the redistribution of budget outlays among spending categories:

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Data Sources:2014 - H.Con.Res. 25 PCS, (113th Congress); 2012 - H.Con.Res. 34 (112th Congress); 2000 - H.Con.Res. 68 ENR (106th Congress). Accessed through THOMAS between May 14, 2013, and May 20, 2013.

Chart Tool: Adobe Illustrator

Assignment 1: Show the Data — U.S. Federal Budget

There have been a lot of stories coming out of Washington lately, and the federal budget really hasn't been one of them. That will likely change soon. As of May 15 Congress can begin considering appropriations bills for the 2014 fiscal year, meaning between now and September we can expect to hear more about how much money federal agencies will have to spend in the coming year.

Despite its seemingly unlimited pockets, Congress is required to abide by specific spending limits each year. Who sets these limits? The President's Budget gets a lot of attention when it's released each February (or April as was the case this year), but these budget recommendations are just that — recommendations. Congress actually sets its own spending limits with an annual budget resolution, usually passed in April.

By law, once the president has released a recommended budget, both the Senate and the House of Representatives draw on that document and their own priorities to draft separate budget resolutions. Once each house approves its own resolution, they swap notes and hammer out their differences in a report that becomes a binding outline of next year's spending. The final budget resolution is the basis for appropriations bills that portion out money to specific agencies.

Of course nothing's straightforward in the Congress, and lawmakers have failed to agree on a final budget resolution for the last three fiscal years. A budget resolution for 2014 also appears to be dead in the water. 

So how much does Congress have to spend in 2014? Well, it depends where you look.

Fiscal Year 2014 Outlays by Category (in millions of dollars)
Technically, when Congress fails to pass a budget resolution the previous year's resolution remains in effect. The last successful budget resolution was Senate Concurrent Resolution 13 (S.Con.Res. 13 ENR). It was passed for the 2010 fiscal year but includes spending levels for 2011 through 2014. In years when no final budget resolution is passed, the House sometimes formally adopts its own resolution as binding for the purposes of making appropriations.

The charts above show spending levels for 2014 outlined in S.Con.Res. 13 alongside those proposed by the House and the Senate in separate resolutions this spring. None of these is a definitive guideline for next year's appropriations, but it's fun to compare them.

It's also fun to compare spending levels for each category over time.

Notice how Homeland Security got its own spending category in 2005. The Overseas Contingency Operations/Global War on Terror category was originally called Overseas Deployments and Other Activities when it showed up in the 2008 budget.

U.S. Federal Budget Outlays by Category, 2000-2012 (in millions of dollars)

Data Sources: 2014 - S.Con.Res. 13 ENR (111th Congress), H.Con.Res. 25 PCS, (113th Congress); S.Con.Res. 8 ES (113th Congress); 2012 - H.Con.Res. 34 (112th Congress); 2011 - H.Res. 1493 (111th Congress); 2010 - S.Con.Res. 13 ENR (111th Congress); 2009 - S.Con.Res. 70 ENR (110th Congress); 2008 - S.Con.Res. 21 ENR (110th Congress); 2007 - H.Con.Res. 376 EH (109th Congress); 2006 - H.Con.Res. 95 ENR (109th Congress); 2005 - S.Con.Res. 95 (108th Congress); 2004 - H.Con.Res. 95 ENR (108th Congress); 2003 - H.Con.Res. 353 EH (107th Congress); 2002 - H.Con.Res. 83 ENR (107th Congress); 2001 - H.Con.Res. 290 ENR (106th Congress); 2000 - H.Con.Res. 68 ENR (106th Congress).
Accessed through THOMAS between May 14, 2013, and May 20, 2013.

Chart Tool: Google Docs

What's going on here?

Welcome to Drawing Tables. This blog is a “learning experiment” — a chance to play around with data visualization techniques and programs while building up some additional design skills. I hope to dive into a wide range of policy areas and bring a little creative perspective to numbers and data. Most importantly, I hope to have fun.

Because I work best with a little structure, I’ll be drawing on Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and a few other sources to create a kind of syllabus to guide the design projects. I’ll explore different chart types, graphing and design software, and best practices for information design.

Who am I? I’m a former journalist, a policy wonk, writer, editor, researcher, graphic designer and sometime photographer always looking for new ways to tell a story. I’m also a chronic perfectionist, which I hope to challenge at least a little bit with this blog. Design is hard. Data is tricky. I’m learning as I go, and things could get a little ugly.

And that’s going to be OK.

— Laura