[okfn-discuss] Where Does My Money Go: what should we work on first?

Wed Jun 17 18:08:55 UTC 2009

2009/6/16 William Waites <ww at styx.org>:
> 2009/6/16 Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>:
[...]
>>  * What visualization would people like to see?
>
> I'm imagining something that looks like a directed graph
> (layout options?) with node sizes corresponding roughly
> to net assets of an organization and edges coloured to
> represent funding flows and sizes.  This changes with time,
> so a time slider would evolve the picture...

Nice idea! This is a bit like something I did recently but with
technology flows [1].

In terms of implementation I guess the question is what would be the
nodes? Government departments? Specific projects? ...

Or, to let the data decide, what data on funding flows is available?

> I also think the problem looks like a social network immersed
> in a heat bath, and so can maybe be modelled as a Markov
> process with transition probabilities derived from money
> outflows. But what can we learn from and how could
> we visualize this representation? I'm not sure...

I really like the idea of including the temporal component. PESA
(which I mentioned in my previous email) has data going back a decade
or so though they have a special note saying that data may not always
be comparable.

Rufus

[1]:<http://www.rufuspollock.org/2009/05/22/visualizing-technology-flows-over-time-i/>

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