Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik

In July I wrote a post on the power of visualization to communicate massively complex amount of data in a very effective manner. The example used as the illustration was Death and Taxes by Jesse Bachman. So it was thrilling to hear from Jesse that there was now an updated version for 2007, which was improved in many significant ways to boot.

I am inspired by Jesse’s work and have a poster of it next to my Minard poster. In this post it is a pleasure to present the 2007 version of the visualization (I don’t like calling it a graph!), some observations and an interview with Jesse Bachman.

To begin with here is a summary of the US Federal Budget, to ensure we first present the complete picture:

Total National Debt: $ 9.35 Trillion (up 7%)

Total US Budget:  $ 2.8 Trillion

2007 Federal Non-Discretionary Budget $ 2.22 Trillion

• $ 586 Billion: Social Security
• $ 367 Billion: Unemployment
• $ 394 Billion: Medicare
• $ 276 Billion: Medicaid
• $ 243 Billion: Interest on National Debt:

2007 Federal Discretionary Budget $ 983 Billion  (this is illustrated in the Jesse’s visual below)

• $ 632 Billion (up 64%): Military & National Security Related
• $ 350 Billion (up 36%): Non-Military

2007 Total Budget Deficit $ 354 Billion (hence $2.22 Trillion plus $983 billion does not equal the total budget of $2.8 Trillion)

 Here is Jesse’s representation of the numbers above (except the debt):

The focus of Death and Taxes 2007 is only on the discretionary budget only because the is the portion that Congress has to re-approve every year and it is the part on which the Congress has more control to move money around (and hence directly impact our lives).

Of course you can’t see anything! Trust me it is beautiful.

Click here for a high rez version of the image (when you get there save a copy).

Click here for a “viewer version” of the image. Use the controls at the bottom of that page to increase or decrease the size of the image.

Click here to go FAQ’s on Jesse’s official website.

Couple of things that have been upgraded from the earlier version of the visualization are:

• One extra layer of detail, from Department to Agencies to Core Expense Groups. Think: Department of Defense (439 billion) to the Army (111.8 billion) to Procurement (16.8 billion) to Humvee’s (.582 billion).
• Change in the individual budgets, red for decreases and green for increases.

When you look at the high resolution version you’ll see details like these that were interesting to me.

Department of the Air Force (130 billion):

You can see contrasts like Personnel budget going down a bit while the overall budget and other expenses went up.

The Classified segment (let the conspiracy theories start!! : )) (44 billion):

You’ll also find the cost of the Global War on Terror (110 billion) on another part of the visual.

Since not many people think about it, Department of Agriculture (tiny 19.7 billion):

Marketing and Bureaucracy up, Conservation and Research down. You don’t see it above but Farm Subsidies up as well.

Finally something dear to all of us, life. Health and Human Services:

Overall up a bit, Bird Flu preparedness is new funding which is great but most other things suffer: Cancer Institute, CDC, Substance Abuse and Mental health, Administration on Aging (though I have no idea what this department does anything to do with aging should go up probably because of the aging US population).

There are lots and lots more details that you will find interesting, regardless of your political, social, economic affiliation.

For example (I apologize this is a rant): Having been a rather poor student it is sad to see funding for Student loans and Pell grants is down in big numbers (down 18% and 27% respectively), as is funding for Higher Education (down 30%). Look at Department of Education towards top right.

Here is my interview with Jesse that covers some of my questions about the visual:

1) What is your primary motivation behind doing this visualization?

Jesse:  A few years ago I was a bit disturbed by two things, how large the military budget  is, and also how it is presented in government pie charts.  I wanted to present an image that reflected the discretionary budget, where the action is, and how much of it is spent on the military.  I had no grand aspirations of making posters or anything, I just made the graph and put it on deviantART as personal artwork.  I’ve always done lots of political artwork.

2) Given all the “feedback” from the last one you did, why would you want to deal with all that all over again?

Jesse:  The first one I did for the 2004 budget and I sold prints online, didn’t sell very well but it got a lot of comments.  I forgot about it for a year and half until boingboing.net picked up on it, for the first time.  Interest exploded and I started getting comments from people outside the deviantART community.  Professors,  military contractors, all walks of life, and they generally liked it, although there were several reasonable detractors, of which I tried to address in the 2007 version. 

I decided to continue this project on a grander scale because it seemed to permeate beyond fellow artists… it resonated with concerned citizens.

3) What tool did you use to do the visualization? Why did you choose it?

Jesse: The graph was contracted entirely in Photoshop.  Due to all the photos and no real need for vector data this was the easier solution for me.

Unfortunately, government budget data is rarely in usable excel format so all the figures were plucked by hand from various PDF’s usually 100’s of pages long.  A friend wrote a simple program to calculate the diameter of a circle whose area is proportional to the master circle. All I had to do was input the items funding in billions.

4) Since our blog readers are all analytics people would you like to share some tips on why you choose this particular format to depict the data? Did you try others before you settled on this one?

Jesse: Well for me, the importance of the graph is not the amount of dollars spent but the relationship to other programs.  Dollar amounts in the billions are largely incomprehensible to the common tax payer without any frame of reference.  So I wanted everything to be proportional to the master budget, so that an item with a relatively minuscule budget looks relatively minuscule.  The bubble format was the first idea I had and it seemed to work out. 

Actually the hardest part of the creation was finding images to represent each item.  Some were obvious but others were agonizing, I mean what does one visualize when they think “operating program”?  Also, due to the connecting lines and all the text needed, arraigning the bubbles became quite an irritating jigsaw puzzle.  Places where I had to sacrifice form for function are the defense wide and HHS bubbles. 

Also I tried to maintain a clockwise alphabetical order for the departments which added some difficulty.

5) I noticed you are using Google Analytics to track your website, are you watching any key metrics? (Sorry had to ask, we are web analytics geeks!)

Jesse:  Not at the moment.  Boingboing.net caught me a little off guard since the site only went up on Saturday.  I do use a separate script to track my to-the-minute refers (Link: http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/refer/index.php).  I pretty much try to join any discussions I see going on and try to correct inaccuracies.  Also, this will help me avoid redundancies when I start some push marketing.

6) You have worked very very hard with a lot of very complex data. Any tips for the rest of us who do reporting and analysis (of course of a lot less important data)?

Jesse:  I always like seeing data thats not a pie, bar, or line graph.  A little forethought into the design elements can transform a mundane xyz axis into artwork people would want to put on their walls.  Or at least stand out in reports.  Be creative.

– – –

I have to admit that for me it is a lot more art than to many other people. You can buy a 24” x 36” poster for Death and Taxes 2007, click here.

I thank Jesse for taking four months to create this wonderful work of art and also for taking the time to do this interview for our little blog.

PS: Two months ago I became a citizen of this great country. I am very much on a democracy high and into exercising my rights (what can I say democracy is a drug). So one action I am going to take is utilize a service on the official site to send a copy of Death and Taxes to my US Congress representatives. For only $10, including shipping, you can write a letter and send the poster to your representative (the site will print your letter and mail the poster for you).

You could be a Democrat or a Republican or a Green or a Libertarian or simply an American. You will find things on the poster that will relate specifically to you, things you would want to communicate to your Senator or Congressman / Congresswoman. Click here for this service and exercise your wonderful right.

PPS: Click here to see my web analytics chart that is just a tiny implementation of the principles from Jesse’s visual.

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[There is a updated version of this post, please check out:
          Tips For Measuring Success Of Your Blog (365 Days In Numbers).]

Due to the sheer diversity of blogs and relative youth of the medium there is a lack of standardized approaches towards measuring success of blogs. We have standard web analytics packages we use, we have technorati and alexa to give us rankings and we have our feed stats.

But this does not make things easier, for example how do you relate the web analytics data with the feed data (after our friendly debates over what analytics stats mean)?

This post attempts to provide one point of view on how you can measure success of your blog using a trinity mindset. If I miss anything I have come to realize you are all very adept at using the comment feature below! : )

(Analysis Tip: Never start your analysis of what is possible with what you have. Always start your analysis with “critical few” / “existential”questions. Two benefits: 1] You’ll actually report/analyze what is important 2] You will look good.)

We start with the “critical few” questions about what constitutes success. IMHO this simple list would apply to most blogs:

1. So what have you actually contributed?
2. Is anyone consuming your blog’s “great” : ) content?
3. Are they engaging in the conversation?
4. Are you making a dent in the world? (Are you standing out amongst the 70 million blogs on earth on this day?) (Are you contributing to world peace?)
5. What’s in it for you? (Are you making money? Are you making friends? Enemies? Are you getting Job Inquiries / Letters from your fans? Has someone proposed marriage? : ))
6. What are your “cost” metrics? (Is the cost, inputs, worth the answer to #5?)

It is quite possible that some of your six questions for blog success could be different , but it is important that like the Trinity they cover Experience, Behavior & Outcomes and like any website they cover Cost and Benefit.

I am going to use the actual data of this blog to illustrate how you can answer these questions for your blog and measure success.

# 1 So what have you actually contributed?

From my wordpress GeneralStats plugin…..

The contribution of this blog is roughly 1,400 words in each post over the last four months. The contribution of course is ideas and tips and controversial statements and things that might make you think. I hope.

So is this good? The plan at the start was to post roughly twice per week. But I am surprised at how long each post is (you are the judge if that is a reflection of quality, long posts could just be a manifestation of my inability to be succinct).

# 2 Is anyone consuming your blog’s “great” : ) content?

(Analysis Tip: When reporting numbers sometimes it is beneficial to filter out “uncontrolled” / “non-repeatable” factors.  Outliers if you will. The reason is that you don’t want to set expectations you can’t meet and because you want to show a real trend sans those non-repeatable factors.

In my case one of the blog posts got “digg’ed” in August. Completely unintended and something that won’t be repeated, I think, so all numbers from being digged have been excluded. If they had been included Total Visitors and Readership would increase by roughly twenty thousand.)

Content consumption is simply how many people (Total Visitors or Unique Visitors or anything else you like) are visiting the blog (no reflection on quality yet, more on that below). The challenge on a blog is that the content is on the website and also available via RSS. So how do you know true content consumption?

My proposal is to compute a metric called Blog Readership (and its “web analytics” equivalent Blog Unique Readership). It is derived from two different sources, the web analytics tool and the RSS tool, (and one leap of faith).

1. Get Total Visitors (or Visits or Visitors) from your Web Analytics tool.
2. Get the Average Daily Feed Subscribers for each month. (I use FeedBurner for RSS stats).
3. Get your Monthly Feed “Subscribers” number (sum of each day’s subscribers from FeedBurner).
4. To get a best estimate your Feed’s “Unique” Subscribers multiply your feed subscriber number by 4. (Sort of inspired by Greg Linden’s reference. Update: Please see Greg’s comment below and also my reply for more context.)
5. Now your Monthly Blog Readership = Total Visitors + Feed “Visitors”
6. And your, again best estimate, Monthly Blog Unique Readership =  Unique Visitors + Feed “Unique” Subscribers.

Abracadabra you have a classic Web 1.0 metric to measure the world of Web 2.0. : )

As all practitioners of Web Analytics know we have to make the best of the data we have access to and to paint a complete picture the best we can. I believe that above is a good first pass, if you have a moment I would love to get your feedback on the computation of this metric. Please poke holes in the logic (and bonus points on why some cells are blank).

So is this good? Regardless of the number above, any column or row, this far exceeds any estimation I might have had for the number of people (or “visitors” or “cookies” or “visits” : ) who would read the blog. But since I did not have a goal for this metric I don’t know if I can declare success. I also have no idea what other blog readership is so I can’t benchmark. I would declare this one neutral.

This does highlight an important part of declaring success: Have goals (they can be aggressive, conservative, anything but something you can hang your hat on.).

# 3 Are they engaging in the conversation?

Blogs by their inherent nature are social and one core reason for being is to engage in a conversation. This could take many forms but one of the simplest forms is readers having a conversation with you via comments on your blog or via posts on their blogs etc.

The GeneralStats plugin shows roughly 9 comments per blog post with each comment containing 100 words (manually eliminating comments contributed by me).

So is this good? My goal when I started the blog was to get three comments per blog post so a small amount of success on this metric (so far). I am amazed and humbled by how much you have added to the blog, almost as much content as I have via your comments.

(You all get credit for this, thank you very much for engaging in a conversation.)

# 4 Are you making a dent in the world? (Are you standing out amongst the 70 million blogs on earth on this day?) (Are you contributing to world peace?)

Since it would be unwise to simply declare anything based just on our own data,  think of this as external validation of your blog’s “accomplishments”. 

My suggestion is to tap into two resources. Technorati since it “specializes” in blog ranking and Alexa (even with all its issues) since it uses “traffic” to creating website ranking. Between the two you have yourselves a trend (remember even with quirks in the methodologies the trend can be very meaningful).

So is this good? Luckily for this I had a goal as well, to be under technorati 10k by end of year 2006. So this one is good. For Alexa I had no goal but it is a great metric to check on the competition. Alexa has issues but hopefully they afflict you and your competition the same way.

As to world peace, I would like to think the blog is making some contribution! : )

# 5 What’s in it for you? (Are you making money? Are you making friends? Enemies? Are you getting Job Inquiries / Letters from your fans? Has someone proposed marriage? : ))

I have a habit of saying at every speaking engagement that every site owner should answer the question: Why does your website exist? In 20 words or less. The reason this question is so important is because it will dictate the answer to the core Outcomes question.

For your blog Outcomes will be leads, positive word of mouth, cost savings in PR expenses, new customers, more revenue, publicity in newspapers etc etc.

But much to the chagrin of my wife Jennie, and a few others, my answer to the why question for the blog is: I really don’t know! :) This is something I just wanted to do and now I am doing it. A recent post by Seth Godin represents my motivation for blogging very well, the post is here.

The number on the right, even if not really worth anything, is nice in terms of tracking. But by any other measure I am quite a bit richer. I have made many new friends (and those who know me in real life know that I need friends : ) and I have felt the affection from all the readers in the responses to Damini’s post. I have received some presentations to give feedback on and I have received two technical support calls on my work phone number (!!).

So is this good? I think it is all good and I would certainly declare this particular blog measure a success from my perspective, even if I can’t qualify anything and it is all a qualitative read.

# 6 What are your “cost” metrics? (Is the cost, inputs, worth the answer to #5?)

The finance MBA in me would never let you get away without stressing the value of cost-benefit analysis. : ) In #5 you figure out what your benefits (outcomes) were from your blog. Don’t forget to measure the cost.

Costs could be 1) software and hardware 2) salaries / cost of contributors [or time you put in] 3) opportunity cost [what you give up so that you could do this].

For this blog:

• Cost for blog hosting and serving is $9.95 per month.
• No cost of salaries etc, simply time investment. 15 hours per week (more according to those close to me : ). [If a Software Engineer, and I am not one, makes $75 per hour then this time investment is $58,500 per year, you can compute a number like this for your blog.]
• Opportunity cost is harder (since I am not a business that could invest the resources elsewhere). But roughly it is
• All the TV missed (no Jon Stewart or Iron Chef post blogging)
• Time I take away from
• work (none) 
• kids (used to be some but now none)
• wife (still a bunch, thanks Jennie)
• good night’s sleep (still not enough)

 So is this good? Again the lack of goals makes it harder to judge success. In any scenario I underestimate the cost it would take but given the benefits I would say that the costs are worth it (again a qualitative read).

For your business it would be optimal to create a framework for cost upfront and then post launch do the cost benefit analysis (especially in context of opportunity cost: click here).

Bottom-line: Plan to contribute something of value that will set you apart from your competition, have goals before you start, measure if anyone is consuming your content and having a conversation with you, how are you doing in terms of external benchmarks (and no they are not out to get you) and finally don’t forget periodic (based on your business) cost benefit analysis.

So what do you think about all this? Do you think this six question framework will allow to judge success of any blog from a holistic perspective? Do you have alternative suggestions? Please share your critique and comments via the form below. Thanks.

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