The stimulus, mapped

Edward Tufte created this "Lights-On Map", animating the grants under the American Recovery and Investment Act (more commonly known as the Stimulus):

Click the image to see the lights come on over time.

It's a nice visualization of the distribution of the stimulus projects over the country and time, but I'm actually surprised that it doesn't do a great job of representing how the funds are distributed: it seems that each "light" is one project, regardless of the amount it was funded for. I wonder if that was proposed, but was deemed too politically risqué to demonstrate the concentration of funds in certain districts.

Recovery.gov: Lights On Map

Comments

[Stephen]

The interesting thing would be to see the funds as a function of the population density-- or income distribution.

[stat arb]

This is going on ilovecharts.tumblr.com, 4 sure.