Ross Perez

50 million Americans currently live without healthcare. This unfortunate statistic has driven our elected representatives to create a solution, and two competing bills have emerged. Although each bill is hundreds of pages long, the Congressional Budget Office is charged with providing accurate (and digestible) estimates on the cost of these bills. Each proposal has a trade-off: the House version offers considerable coverage, but at a high cost. The Senate version has offered a bill with low cost per capita, but with less overall coverage. We have arranged them side-by-side in the visualization below for easy comparison.

With unemployment approaching the record highs of 1983, many of us are wondering how recent unemployment compares with other decades. We’ve taken the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data and created a visualization that allows a side-by-side comparison of the peaks and troughs in US employment by decade, going as far back as 1948. There are some interesting findings: forsaking the past year and a half, unemployment in the 2000's has been considerably lower than the 1990's. Highlight multiple decades to see how they compare to each other.

Ever wonder who gets to see the inside of the Oval Office? Now you can, thanks to a White House data release of recent visitors. For example, Paul Krugman, the noted economist, has only visited once—but for more than 5 hours. In the middle of a financial crisis, it is not surprising that economists get a big slice of the President’s time. Explore the parts of this data that interest you by clicking on either a person or room for more detail.

Tuesday the 27th marked the first update of our Travel Trends site. With fresh data from QL2, we can begin to notice price trends in purchase date as well as flying dates. As the countdown to Thanksgiving continues, it will be fascinating to see if prices continue their upward trend or if last minute shoppers will have the last laugh.

Use this guide to find the best fare, compare to the price you already paid, or lament on waiting until this week to purchase.

$787 billion dollars- it is likely that you have heard that figure mentioned in the past year. This is the final price tag for "the Stimulus", or The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Unfortunately, the program is so monolithic and the figures involved are so large that even the most inquisitive minds can be quickly overwhelmed. Instead of trying to tackle everything at once in a visualization, we decided to dig deep into just one program: The Broadband Stimulus fund.

GDP, unemployment and interest rates. At times, it can seem these are the only economic factors anyone pays attention to. However, the Chicago Fed has created the National Activity Index, which takes into account over 85 disparate variables that combine to show one broad view of the economy's health - and it usually comes out before GDP calculations do.

With the most recent DOT/NHTSA car seat ease of use data posted on data.gov, we created this viz to help parents choose a car seat that they can actually operate!

As part of our month long look into government data, we have created a viz that examines graffiti data posted by New York City on their Data Mine. The differences between boroughs is striking: Brooklyn has more graffiti incidents than Queens and Manhattan put together.

If you happened to be in Concrete, Washington on Sunday last week, you might have felt a slight rumble under your feet at exactly 9:56:05 PM. Barely noticeable, chances are you would have attributed it to a closing door or bad floor joist, but your dog may have barked or a picture frame may have shifted a quarter of a millimeter at the 2.2 magnitude quake. Despite their potential for massive damage, thousands of earthquakes pass every month with only machines taking notice. Enjoy this recent data set from Data.gov and see whats been shaking in your neighborhood.