Pivot tables

 This week, I explored different ways pivot tables are used in real workplaces, and it made me realize why they’re such a powerful tool for anyone who works with data. A pivot table basically lets you take a large set of information and instantly reorganize it so you can see patterns, totals, and comparisons that would be hard to notice on your own. Instead of scrolling through thousands of rows, the pivot table summarizes everything for you in a clean, clear layout.

One useful example is sales reporting. A store can take a spreadsheet of every transaction and quickly summarize sales by month, product category, or even employee. This makes it easy to see which products perform best during certain seasons. Another common use case is budget tracking. A pivot table can group expenses by department, show totals, and help identify which areas are overspending. Teachers can even use them to track student performance, such as taking a long list of grades and summarizing scores by assignment, unit, or skill.

Overall, pivot tables save time, reduce errors, and help people make smarter decisions based on the patterns the data reveals. They turn raw information into something meaningful, which is why so many industries rely on them.

Pivot Tables

By: Halle Richard

    Pivot Tables are used to summarize, analyze, and explore large datasets by rearranging raw data into a readable table with rows, columns, and metrics. Common pivot table cases include analyzing sales data by region, summarizing survey results, tracking expenses, and analyzing website traffic sources. A pivot table summarizes a list of individual household expenses to show the total cost for each category, such as "Utilities" and "Groceries". The good part about creating pivot tables is that you don't need to write any formulas. You can simply use drag-and-drop features to make these interactive tables. 

                                            Figure 1                                                        Figure 2

    In Figure 1, we see an example of a pivot table. It is separated into 4 categories: year, category, product, sales, and rating. If you're looking for a specific item, you can identify it to obtain further information on that item. In Figure 2, we see another good example of a pivot table. This table represents sales from the past three years, separated into nine categories.  Pivot tables allow you to reorganize and group data into many different ways to compare, find patterns, and answer unanticipated questions. Pivot tables are essential to data analysis and informed decision-making. 

Why should we use a pivot table?

Imagine that you are the leader of an office retail business. Here is your dataset where you keep track of every single shipment, including shipping classes, sector, location, product type, sales, quantity, discount, and profit. Here are ten of them. 

There are questions that you ought to ask: what shipping class is most commonly selected, and for which types of products, are consumers or corporate buying the most what region of the country is buying the most, what category and subcategories are selling the most and which are most profitable, etc. Note that I am no financial analyst but even from a layman's perspective these are worthy questions when every business is playing the game of big data. Now with ten shipments, doing this manually wouldn't take too long, but we need to plan for when we'll have thousands and maybe millions of shipments. Pivot tables can be quickly implemented to do all of this data compiling so that we can leave our mental processing power for actual analysis. For example, I made these within a minute. The first one counts quantity while the second merely displays the values as a percentage of the column total. So it means that 58.84% of furniture shipped through standard class delivery.

To answer the first question, there was no difference between categories with respect to shipping classes. What else can we glean? We can see that. in ascending order, it goes same-day, first, second, and standard was most popular and technology, furniture, and then office supplies sold the most. I am not sure if we can do anything with the distribution of shipping classes, but let's consider the fact that office supplies sold the most. We should then see if they are the most profitable:

It appears that technology made us the most profit while also being the least category sold. This tells us that technology is a high-margin category, meaning that it has a high sale price and a low production cost, and the other categories are comparatively lower-margin. As the leader, you should use this data try and market more technology to increase quantity sold and thus profit. Furthermore, you should conduct an investigation into your other categories to see if you can potentially increase margins; it may be that you can't but it's still worthwhile to look. 

These are just a few of the questions that we can answer by creating a few pivot tables from our dataset. You may think this was rather trivial but I assure you that pivot tables can be manipulated and advanced into more complex forms that fit whatever inquiries you have about your dataset. I assure you that learning how to make pivot tables is absolutely worth the time as they can analyze enormous datasets very quickly and leave with the important statistics. Pivot tables also update as you update the dataset so there is no need to recalculate. 

The example we covered today was a sample dataset from Kaggle (https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/ishaanthareja007/samplesuperstore) and I used it because I wanted to show you how we can transform a raw dataset into a simple but informative table of numbers. I'm sure I could have just shown you a pivot table but I felt that it was necessary that you understand the whole process to get how useful pivot tables are. 

 

Pivot Tables

by Nicole Cardillo

What are pivot tables?

Pivot tables are spreadsheets that take large datasets and condense them into smaller tables that summarize key information from the raw data. This makes it easy to identify patterns and trends within data. This is especially great for those who are not experienced with Excel spreadsheets because pivot tables do not require complex formulas.

Examples

The following spreadsheets are examples of pivot tables and why they are important in visualizing large datasets.

Figure 1

This pivot table in Figure 1 from ExcelJet is a prime example of why they can be useful tools. Instead of analyzing a long list of qualitative data like the data displayed in columns B/C, the pivot table shrinks the given information into a small spreadsheet that provides us with quantitative data. This type of data is ideal in creating visualizations like bar graphs or pie charts. For instance, when creating a column graph from this pivot table, we can easily see which color is favored by most, rather than trying to read the information directly from the original table.

Figure 2

Figure 2 also displays an ideal use for pivot tables. This can be especially helpful for large businesses who want to visualize where their products sell best, geographically. Here we see sales from each region for given days. The pivot table neglects the information that is not needed for their analysis, such as the date, instead summing the sales of each region that is organized in a table. Pivot tables have the ability to "handle large quantities of data in a single go. These tables allow you cut through thousands of data points and consolidate the information into straightforward, quantitative results" (Lorman Education). Consolidating a great amount of data into one cohesive table is quintessential in setting a foundation to create visualizations that tell a story and allow viewers to analyze patterns.

Ultimately, pivot tables are a fantastic tool for displaying a summarized version of large datasets. They provide viewers with simple data points to analyze, rather than picking apart raw data to find the key information that they need. 

References

Excel Pivot Tables. Bruns., D. (2023). Exceljet.net. https://exceljet.net/articles/excel-pivot tables

‌The 6 Benefits of Using a Pivot Table in Excel | Lorman Education Services. (2022). 

Lorman.com. https://www.lorman.com/resources/the-6-benefits-of-using-a-pivot-table-in-excel-17423 srsltid=AfmBOoqzdBKmrxCx2megk9IO_pr6PYmqyfpQcmB0LWdUNbceNpbSfgc-

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Pivot Tables

Pivot Tables: Are they helpful?

Starting off, the pivot table allows you to move big datasets within a table. Not changing the actual data sets, you can use them again while also adding more data. Making it very convenient!

Use-Cases

Pivot tables help analyze sales, such as which product sells the most in a particular city or on a specific date, or they can help identify patterns. Perhaps people prefer to purchase certain items before the holidays; I've included an example of what they could look like above. This can even help places save money! By comparing stats, they can see whether or not selling a product is worth it, or if a store placed in a certain city is making enough profit to stay open. The Units show the amount of stock that is still available in the store itself or in the warehouse, making it aware if more should be ordered or not. Making these kinds of things more organized helps people understand the information much better.

Other cases...

 - Academic Grading

 - Social Media

 - Library Tracking

 - Personal things (tracking anything what you eat with details like calories and etc)

Blog Post 6: SANKEY

SANKEY: Amy Clark

The Sankey is a visual that represents the primary energy flow such as oil, natural gas, solar, hydropower, through their transformation into gasoline. fossil fuels, electricity and diesel, so they can be utilized by different companies in the economy. The Super Sankey chart use to show the flow of different energy sources has its ups and not so much confusion, but at first glance in your head " what is this ". I think it is an interesting piece to look at. The chart looks like a piece of artwork that should be in an art museum. 

The representation on the flow of energy is somewhat unique, because it does display the full details of what the chart is trying to convey to the audience, even though it was made in such short time , but the detailed colors of what they represent gives a understanding to the chart.

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Amy Clark

 Benchmark Comparisons

Benchmark:

A benchmark is a standard or point of reference against which things may be compared to, also to evaluate or check something by comparison with a standard,basicaly reference points used for comparison

My search on benchmark comparisons was very long and frustrating, but I did get some pics and websites to share.

This chart is the breakdown trends in the value of loans extended from large and small banks in the US.

There was a collapse in the 2nd quarter of the Silicon Valley, the cause of shrinking loan supply, commercial and industrial loans decreased, this took place in April, but in May they had a come up after the Federal Reserve extended some additional support

I chose this bench because not only was it eye-catching , but this is great news to know about what was happening in our banking systems.

This image is of about the drought in that threatened to rice production in 2023.This year, drought has compounded difficulties with a winter wheat crop that was already damaged by extreme cold. (Farmers in Kansas normally plant a wheat crop in the autumn that grows during the winter and early spring, with the grain harvested.

Our chart tracks the percentage of fields with conditions described as “poor” or “very poor.” The line is well above the last decade’s 25-75 percentile range, let alone the average.

"Kansas is the number place for wheat production in the US," says the USDA, because of the very cold conditions, the crops that were planted in the autumn and grows in the winter and early spring with grains in the summer are damaged, they are going to have to abandon those crops. 

I chose this, because I wanted to know what really happened with this issue about the agriculture and I find the information to be very knowledgeable.

I found both Benchmarks (10) Charts of the Week: Bank stress, US drought and China’s shoppers | LinkedIn.

Infographics in field of study

 How can infographics Enhance communication and learning in your field of study?

Examples of insightful infographics.

This is an example of what Social Workers do, social work is a profession dedicated to improving the overall well-being to families, communities, and individuals. The issues that social work addresses is that of helping individuals' healthcare, child welfare, mental health, poverty, etc. Social Work is about advocacy. support and empowerment, it is important to understand the vital role social workers play in trying to help others live a better life in their communities.

Infographics is the connection between logic and emotion, it helps the audience see the story or message being conveyed with an image. The image that is shown below is from Venngage . It Is a helpful website that can help you choose or create templates for any visualization date base project

https://speakawesomely.com/infographics-in-communication/

https://infograph.venngage.com/templates/search/socialwork

This image is from good therapy.org 

I chose to post this,because it gives a little more insight on the field of social work is not limited. a social worker can work in many different settings

https://www.goodthherapy.org

Blog Post 6 Sankey

 US Energy Flow Super Sankey

In 2017, Otherlab was hired by the Advanced Research Project Agency of the Department of Energy (ARPA-e) to "review all available energy data sources and create an ultra high resolution picture of the U.S. energy economy." Upon their findings they created this massive diagram. It shows all the energy flow in the United States economy from the primary energy sources. The width of each "flow" show the size or amount of energy use or loss. This shows the reader where the biggest gaps are in energy. It is important because the U.S. energy field is huge and complex. As they stated, energy use on a national scale is measured in quads, so 1 quad is equal to 1% of the country's total annual energy use.

This research diagram makes the energy world a bit more tangible to understand. Although complex, when you see the diagram is starts to make more sense. Instead of saying "we need to use less energy" we actually need to use energy more efficiently and effectively. The US Energy Flow Sankey helped me understand the energy system in a way that raw numbers never could. One of the biggest things that stood out to me were visually how obvious the inefficiencies are. The massive width of rejected energy flows is shocking. It makes it clear that a large portion of the energy we produce never actually becomes useful.

I also found it interesting how interconnected the system is. The Sankey diagram does not just show energy sources, it also shows how they split off into different sectors like transportation and industrial. Each sector has its own unique challenges and opportunities. Transportation relies heavily on petroleum, while electricity has a wider mix of sources.

Lord, P. (2025, March 10). US Energy Flow Super sankey. Otherlab. https://www.otherlab.com/blog-posts/us-energy-flow-super-sankey 

Sankey Diagrams - Davinia Brito

Sankey Diagram - Davinia Brito 

Advanced Research Projects Agency reviewed all available US energy data sources and produced a "Super Sankey" diagram of the American energy economy. This idea was used to collect energy as it flows from primary energy sources such as coal, gas, oil, hydropower, solar, geothermal, and nuclear. These will all transform into intermediate forms such as gasoline, diesel, or electricity and then into sectors of the economy. 

The diagram shows how the width of each flow in the diagram corresponds to the size of the energy quantity. This helps identify key major losses, for instance, in generation or transmission, and also where interventions might have the largest impact.

Sankey Diagrams- Christopher Eng

Visualizing the US Energy System 

    The US Energy Flow Super Sankey from Otherlab presents an extensive attempt to display all US energy movements, starting from natural resources and ending at their ultimate uses. The ARPA-E-funded project combines data from multiple sources, including the US Energy Information Administration and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to generate a highly detailed visualization of energy movement across the economy. 

    The image illustrates that electricity production and transportation systems account for the majority of the energy supply, while significant amounts of energy are lost as waste. The Sankey design effectively demonstrates impact through width because it directs users toward essential areas for change. The diagram illustrates the areas that require the most attention for policy and technological advancements.

    The page contains an explanation section that describes the purpose of developing this tool for researchers and policymakers to analyze energy system structures and evaluate new technology and policy scenarios. The project establishes its connection to previous national energy flow diagrams, which began in the 1970s, as these diagrams served decision-makers who required a rapid understanding of energy challenges within an hour. 

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The Otherlab Super Sankey demonstrates how this chart type enables the visualization of complex U.S. energy systems, yet its detailed information requires scale and interactive elements, as well as additional visual aids, for proper understanding.

SANKEY Diagram

The data visualization in the Sankey Diagram 
 are very mis constructed there's a lot of reading that cannot be seen. There's also color of choice on the print to be faintly on the light side making it hard to read. There is much labeled data that is being displayed, and it is not making a reference to what is being portrayed. 

I showed a data visualization that is more readable and organized that looks better to insert data. I think having made adjustment for this website it would look more appealing and to the point. 

I think the project they are working on are really resourceful and having display to be more organized would really help on the visualization. 

Visualizing Energy Flow Data

Taking a look at the Diagram for this week assignments, there is a lot to process here. In my opinion some of it works, and some of it does not work. So let me break that down a bit further.

This diagram looks like it shows proportional flows through a system, where the width of each flow band represents the amount of energy being transferred. This way, at least to me works, because it makes it immediately clear where the largest energy flows are and helps identify the most impactful areas for potential improvements in decarbonization efforts.

While that is very impressive in its level of detail, I did find that it has some serious practical limitations. The diagram is so complex and dense with information that it requires a wall-sized display to properly understand, which somewhat defeats the original goal of helping busy policymakers quickly grasp the energy problem.

I think the data could potentially be better through similar types of visualization approaches rather than relying solely on one massive diagram. A stacked area chart could show changes in energy use over time, while a some form of a treemap could probably handle the complexity of the information without all of the clutter that makes this diagram so difficult understand.

Overall, the diagram is impressive in as a data visualization and represents countless hours of meticulous research, but I don't think it's the most practical tool in the grand scope of things. Trying to show absolutely everything at once can mean that nothing stands out clearly enough to drive the point across.

Source:
U.S. Energy Flow Super Sankey - Otherlab

U.S Energy Flow Sankey Diagram

A Sankey diagram is a type of visualization that demonstrates the movement of one set of data values to another set through a connected line where the significance of the connection is measured through the lines width and magnitude or the the darker the shade of color the line is, the more values that correlate between its transition to different states. The US Energy Flow Super Sankey website showcases a Snakey Diagram that maps the flow of energy from where it orginated from natural to renewable sources of energy and how it has been transformed and distributed across the various sectors (i.e, transportation, residential, industrial, etc.) of the US to power the country's way of life. 

Figure 1.1: Sankey Diagram - Website Verison

Figure 1.2: Complete US Energy Flow Sankey Diagram

While the inital image of the diagram at the beginning of the website, as shown in Figure 1.1, is only an incomplete screenshot of the full Sankey diagram. Whereas the full visualization linked here and as shown in Figure 1.2 (It's fairly large so the image may not be as clear with details), does a great job highlighting the complex and diverse range of how various types of energy soruces produced from natural gases, coal, nuclear power, solar power, hydropower, and other sources are distributed into core sectors of the US from commerical, resdential, industrial, and government. But as shown in Figure 1.3, the energy is distributed even further as the diagram shows how the sectors divide their energy across their respective operations. 

Figure 1.3: Petrolum Distribution Across Transportation Sector

For example Transportation, which primarily relies on petrolum as its source of energy, distributes its energy primarily into highway-related operations than non-highway operations, where the petrolum is divided across types of vehicles from light-duty to frieght trucks. And the flow contiunes from there. I also really liked the Waste set as shown in Figure 1.4 that eletricity loss across each of the sectors, noting how the wasted energy becomes greater, in terms of width, the deeper into the sector's subsectors of energy division the diagram goes, especially for the Industrial Sector. It is an great way to quickly compare the overall waste occuring across each of the United States' sectors as the various energy sources are distributed from a macroscale of the overall core sectors of the country to a microscale operations or aspects of each sector's subsection 

Figure 1.4: Waste of Energy Across Sectors/Sector Subsections

While the highlighting feature for the complete version of the Sankey Diagram is useful in helping in clarify and isolating specific details of the data as shown in the last two figures, for the overall diagram, I personally find it difficult to follow the smaller connections. As these smaller connections can get easily lost among the larger and more prominent flows of energy distribution, especially as it divides further into the sector's subsections of energy distribution. For example, in Figure 1.5, the distribution of energy across to government sector and its respective subsections such as the various Federal departments (Such as, the Department of Energy). Although due to the design principles of a Sankey Diagram, I understand that the smaller the connection in terms of smaller widths and lighter shades of color, the less significant the connection is to the larger narrative of the US energy flow across each of its core sector. 

Figure 1.5: Energy Flow Across Government Sector

For improvements of the large diagram, I would suggest simplifing the Sankey Diagram by seperating the further subsections of both the produced and distrubuted energy sources and the core US sectors into additional diagrams. Helping the audience being able to read the flow of energy clearly without being overloaded, with each diagram covering different versions from the macroscale view that demonstrates the flow of energy from the primary sources of energy to the primary sectors of the US, to the microscale view that can clearly highlight how much energy is distributed to each subsection of a sector or how much energy is wasted across the subsections. In conclusion, a Sankey diagram is another powerful tool in data visualization that needs to be carefully designed to effective communicate the narrative of how the data is changed or distributed into another state in a organized format that does not obscure vital pieces of information that can be easily deciphered and understood by the audience without much non-visualization assistance. 

U.S. Energy Flow Super Sankey- Armani Johns

    A Sankey diagram is a type of chart that shows how energy, money, or materials move from one stage to another. The width of each line represents the size or amount flowing through that path. The one shown on this site focuses on U.S. energy systems and how energy moves from its sources to where it’s used. It’s a creative and detailed visualization meant to help people understand how our country handles incoming energy.

           (forgive the quality of my screenshots, this was an issue i could not fix even with editing)

    Right from the start, the chart feels overwhelming. There’s so much going on that it’s hard to focus on one thing. Even though everything is color-coded and labeled, the sheer amount of data makes it messy. It’s one of those visuals that looks impressive at first glance but also takes real effort to interpret.

    The “generation losses” section stood out to me. There’s this huge stream of bars flowing off the bottom of the image, and I assume that’s meant to represent wasted or lost energy from the process of generating electricity. In real life, this happens all the time because energy can’t be fully converted, some of it is always lost as heat or inefficiency (thank the laws of thermodynamics) in the system. It’s a powerful visual reminder of how much energy we actually waste as a country.

    

    Now, this part of the graph has a lot of different sections, but if you look closely, you’ll see a string that goes from mining to extraction all the way up to ventilation. I think this part of the graph is a testament to how much detail and effort was put into this visualization. It’s easy to miss at first, but it shows the smaller, interconnected parts of the energy system that people don’t normally think about.

    I’m kind of stuck between calling it both beautiful and messy. It’s got far too much detail, but it’s also a really cool illustration because of the fact that it has so much detail. I wouldn’t say this is the perfect or even optimal way to visualize data, but for what it’s worth, I love how detailed and colorful it is. It might not make everything clear, but it definitely makes you appreciate the scale and complexity of our energy system.

 Blog Discussion: The US Energy Flow Super Sankey

The visualization on the site shows a Sankey diagram that maps out how energy moves throughout the United States. A Sankey diagram is a type of chart that uses the width of connecting lines to show how much energy is flowing from one stage to another. In this case, it shows where our energy comes from, how it is transformed, where it gets used, and how much is lost along the way.

The diagram starts with the different energy sources such as natural gas, coal, oil, solar, wind, nuclear and hydro. These connect to different systems that convert energy such as power plants and fuel refining. From there, the flows move toward end-use sectors like transportation, homes, industry and commercial buildings. One of the most striking things shown in the Sankey is how much energy is lost or wasted during conversion and transmission. The wasted energy appears as very large flow bands which shows how inefficient parts of the system are.

What the Sankey Does Well

• Shows the big picture of the entire US energy system all at once
  
  

• Displays scale clearly because wider flows immediately show what uses the most energy
  
  

• Reveals inefficiencies by showing how much energy never reaches meaningful use
  
  

• Helps identify where change would matter most, for example improving vehicle efficiency or power plant performance
  
  

This type of diagram helps us understand that the energy system is not just simple input and output. There are many pathways, steps and losses. It allows a viewer to see how complex the system truly is.

Challenges and Limitations

• It is hard to read unless it is viewed very large because there are many lines and labels
  
  

• It can be overwhelming for new learners because everything is shown in one place
  
  

• It only shows one moment in time and does not show how energy use has changed year to year
  
  

• Tracing a single flow can be confusing when lines cross or weave together
  
  

The Sankey format is strong for showing flow size and direction, but it can become too dense if there is too much information shown at once.

Possible Alternatives or Improvements

• A simplified Sankey that shows only a few major flows for general audiences
  
  

• A zoom-in Sankey for each sector such as transportation or home energy use
  
  

• A time-based animation that shows how energy sources have changed over decades
  
  

• A treemap or pie diagram for showing which parts of society use the most energy, without focusing on the flow process
  
  

Final Thoughts

The Sankey visualization is a powerful way to represent how energy moves and where it gets wasted. It makes clear that a large amount of energy never becomes useful work and is lost as heat or inefficiency. However, the amount of detail can be overwhelming if the viewer does not have guidance. For a complete understanding of the US energy system, the Sankey should ideally be paired with simpler supporting visuals and explanations.

Overall, the Sankey diagram is a strong tool for professionals and researchers, but it benefits from breakdowns and simplification when presenting to wider audiences.

Sankey Diagram

 Sankey Diagram 

    By; Halle Richard 

    A Sankey Diagram is a type of flow diagram where the width of the connection lines is proportional to the flow quantity. It makes it useful for visualizing how a resource moves through a process or in this case how U.S. energy flows. These diagrams can help explain complex processes, highlight significant factors and show losses or efficiencies. Sankey diagrams are beneficial since they simplify complex data by visualizing the flow of quantities which makes it easier to identify major transfers and patterns. These diagrams are powerful for decision-making in areas such as energy analysis. 

Taking a first glance at this diagram, I was very lost. It looked like text thrown onto a graph with many colored lines. I was unsure what I was looking at when I saw it. But with further reading I was able to see that the diagram represents all of the energy flows in the U.S. economy from primary energy sources such as coal, natural gas, oil, hydropower, solar, geothermal and nuclear power through their transformation into intermediate sources such as gasoline, diesel and other intermediate fossil fuels. The interactive graph gives more data of each variable as well. I think the Sankey diagram was a good tool choice to display this data. An alternative option could be a tree map. The data in this case would be displayed as a set of nested rectangles, where the area of each rectangle is proportional to it's value. 

Evaluating the US Energy Flow Super Sankey

US Energy Flow Super Sankey

When I first explored the “US Energy Flow Super Sankey” I spent several minutes zooming in on the web version and then reviewing the overview. The diagram maps every major source, transformation, and use of energy in the U.S. economy, using the width of flows to show the magnitude of energy in quadrillions of BTUs. The diagram is very extensive, so it took a lot to see what flows where.

I found that the Sankey diagram is effective in showing the full complexity of the U.S. energy system, especially in the way the flow widths represent the magnitude of energy moving from sources through transformation processes to end-use sectors. This makes it easy to identify which parts of the system have the largest flows and where major inefficiencies occur, particularly the large portions of energy lost during conversion and transmission. However, the visualization also presents several challenges. Its level of detail makes it difficult to read without zooming in or using a large physical display, which limits accessibility for most viewers. The overlapping colors and numerous branching pathways can also make it hard to follow a single energy source through the system, especially for audiences without a technical background. Because of this, the Sankey format, while powerful, may overwhelm some users, and a simplified or interactive version might communicate the main insights more clearly.

Some alternative displays could have been a tree map to show the relative size of each energy source and how sources compare to each other at a glance or a flow chart which could have fewer branches, grouping similar flows together while maintaining the idea of flow direction without drowning the audience in tiny, detailed paths.

Stanky Diagram

 Thoughts

Starting off, I was checking out the site called Otherlab. It looks very unique. They are involved in creating renewable energy and utilizing energy-saving technology, as well as employing a lot of robots. First, I checked out the Sankey diagram of the United States energy system. It looks very messy at first, but it seems to fit the standards of the website itself. It’s very expressive and hits the goal of displaying data for what it’s about. I’m submitting a photo of it below. I'm gonna try to make it as big as possible without making it ‘too’ big. Diving deeper, I think even though it’s messy, I really like the take on the data for it. They have color slots to show what goes where, so it’s not too messy. It shows how everything is connected by color code and the line design/flow.

Moving forward, I explored the other tabs offered on this website. They explained how they were an independent research and design lab, combining creativity with rigor. Making new solutions in renewable energy and robotics for the market. For many years, they’ve raised millions in research funding, having 12 project partners as well. Some of these partners are NASA, Google, and the US Department of Energy. Battery-powered, floating wind turbines, and many other things are included in their project. Mentioned before, their goal is to help reduce carbon emissions and create cleaner energy.

Thoughts on the Energy Sankey

It is hard for me to decide where to begin with this creation by Otherlabs, a Sankey diagram of the United States energy system. I suppose that I should clarify that the picture on that website is an incomplete screenshot of the full, interactive, and updated version accessible through the link in the caption underneath; I will be mainly discussing the new version. My perspective is that while the Sankey is the best type of visualization for what Otherlabs was contracted to do by the United States Government, several of the design choices are preventing any audience (layman or energy expert) from being best able to see a clear picture from which to draw a conclusion; this visualization is the epitome of clutter. So what can be done?

The Sankey begins with the sources of each type of energy, mainly production and imports. The first thing I can note is that the stations (terminology from Chapter 9 referring to each rectangle in a column) are not sorted. Furthermore, why does petroleum drop to the bottom of the next column; this causes so much unnecessary overlap! The numbers are also not needed; if I wanted them I would click on the appropriate station. Additionally, unlike within the screenshot within the original post, the strips here are bordered by a thin line that and that adds to much of the clutter, especially when later strips become so tiny. 

I much prefer the coloration of the original without the borders. I don't know what else is at play but the original is simply so much more aesthetic and legible; perhaps it is also the color scheme and the transparency levels because in the new version, some strips are too faint such as in the beginning and some strips are too opaque such as in column 5. 

One thing I want to note is that in the top bar there is a layout dropdown button in which you can choose to remove spacing and I find that this is more facilitative of size comparison within a column because it effectively turns it into a stacked column. Otherwise, with the spacing, it makes some columns look bigger than others and it impedes spatial reasoning. 

NOTE: The spacing is required for the later columns because otherwise, the text labels will overlap and the stations will be indistinguishable. This can be fixed by replacing the hyperspecific text labels with general category labels; for example, replace all the NAICS categories with just NAICS and add variations in color for that group to differentiate stations. Although Otherlabs was contracted to show the entirety of the energy system in fine detail, fine detail prevents seeing the big picture. 

As you can see here, in the interactive version, when you zoom in, the text doesn't shrink accordingly, so you are unable to see the detail of the visualization. Furthermore, within the later and taller columns, I have no idea how they're deciding to decompose each category into hyperspecific stations; they need to label each column with how they're choosing to break it down. 

 

Furthermore, I love how within the last column of the screenshot, so much of the text is so small and illegible that, drawing a silver lining, we just refuse to try and read it and only focus on the big picture. 

In the end, it seems that all of my suggestions roughly align with the original screenshot. What is more is that as a mere layman and not the intended audience of an energy expert, I really only see the use of the Sankey in looking at each column and seeing it as a stacked column, and I can't make the most of the pattern of flow between stations. Thus, I would much prefer a series of pies or stacked bars/columns rather than this, especially an interactive version where you can click on each slice to access a deeper level of specificity with its own pie/stack. I would love to see what conclusions an expert in the field could glean from the super Sankey.