Axios Data Visualization on Uninsured

If you’re like me, you’re watching the both sides of the Congressional healthcare debates sling statistics, money, and tweets at one another. So I found last month’s mapped visualization by Axios to be mesmerizing in the way that it did one thing very well: show how the rate of uninsured Americans shifted under Obamacare/the Affordable Care Act. It doesn’t discuss issues of federal costs, personal expenses, or caliber of coverage, but it does a great job of showing one shifting variable over time: percentage of people with some sort of health insurance versus those with none at all.

The screengrab below shows a static image, but click through to the Axios site so you can see the interactive GIF and see the colors change across time.

Then ask yourself some data viz questions:

  • Axios’ graphic measures by county. How might this look different if it measured by state?
  • How does the color palette influence how you feel about the data? Would more emotional colors like blood-red impact your interpretation?
  • Can you track back to the original data source (a division of the U.S. Census) and try out these questions?

 

About Kristin Fontichiaro

Kristin Fontichiaro is the principal investigator of this IMLS-funded project and a clinical associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Information.