If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m kind of a nerd. I heard on the news the other day that home prices are falling once again, and my first thought was “I want to see that graphed!” rather than “Oh no, the economy is collapsing!”
I grabbed the Case Shiller Home Price index information and plotted it as a simple time series in a Line Plot. Easy. But paraphrasing the words that Tina Turner sang: “I never do nothin’ nice and easy.”
Somewhere around the third set of dishes I loaded and unloaded into/from the dishwasher this weekend, I decided to look at the American Time Use Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and see what the differences were in how working parents spent their time. This gave me a useful outlet through which to channel my feminist rage, other than crying and screaming "This isn’t fair!”
I’m a horrible world citizen. Assuming one needs to know how to say more than “Where is the bathroom, please?” I can only speak one language. I can barely identify major countries on a world map, and I know very little about their currency, political systems, and standard of living. This is incredibly embarrassing, so it needs to change.
I thought I’d start with something simple and quantifiable: average high temperatures. I chose several cities that I wanted to learn more about, and I also plotted my current city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States. Because, once again, I feel the need to relate this information to me.