Image talk:EUpopGNPmap.png

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Contents 1 Digitally retraced 2 The original idea (2004-10-06) 3 Two remarks 4 Where is the data from? 5 Needs redrawing 6 The legend is wrong 7 Slovenia 8 This makes no sense 9 Anyone want to take it on and redraw? 10 Python code to generate the figure!!! 11 code 12 Suggestion and Confusion 13 Panorama 14 New picture using GDP

[edit] Digitally retraced

Perhaps a good idea, badly executed. Do feel free to redraw. -- Kaihsu 18:59, 2004 Oct 7 (UTC)

It should be redrawn in a vector image format. --Joy [shallot] 19:31, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Do you have the means to do it? If so, please do go ahead. -- Kaihsu 19:51, 2004 Oct 7 (UTC)

Thanks to sannse, it is now digitally retraced. To be serious, though, a database with recent statistics should be compiled, and the diagram digitally generated. Feel free to beat me to it. (By the way, both the capital cities and the capital letters are not necessary.) -- Kaihsu 10:34, 2004 Oct 8 (UTC)

I'm afraid I was lazy with the capital cities - I couldn't quite read them all, wasn't sure of the placement in all cases and didn't have the inclination to figure them out - so I'm glad they are not vital;) -- sannse (talk) 12:23, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'll go convert it to PNG. --Joy [shallot] 12:26, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

On second thought, it's got a lot of anti-aliasing so the conversion won't quite work well (size-wise). sannse, can you save your original image as PNG? --Joy [shallot] 13:24, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It worked well enough after all (from 80 to 15 KB without much noticable loss of quality). --Joy [shallot] 21:44, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] The original idea (2004-10-06)

Was reading this yesterday on the train and thought we should do some useful plotting (see below).

Analysis: It's the economy, stupid The real problem about Turkey joining the European Union isn't religion, but the potentially devastating impact on Turkish jobs and output Richard Adams Tuesday October 5, 2004 The Guardian

So, we plot rectangles, one for each country. The (verticle) length of the rectangle is linear to the population; the (horizontal) width to the national income per head. Then we place the rectangles on a map of Europe, centred on the geometric centre or capital of each country.

Maybe I will do it when I get some time at home.

-- Kaihsu 10:41, 2004 Oct 8 (UTC)

Note that the current implementation has the vertical and horizontal swapped from the original idea, which is all right. We are not quite Edward Tufte calibre yet, but getting there. The positioning of the rectangles should also be minimally readjusted so they do not overlap. -- Kaihsu 14:25, 2004 Oct 8 (UTC)

[edit] Two remarks

Nice picture. Two remarks:

• spelling error: memeber should be member
• it would be nice if you could include the source data

-- User:Donarreiskoffer

The spelling error is now fixed. --Joy [shallot]

[edit] Where is the data from?

Could you tell me, where you got the data from. Some proportions seem to me not to be correct. thanks Gugganij 20:03, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I got it from an Oxford World Atlas. But by all means feel free to redraw it: the original data is no secret and widespread, including on Wikipedia. -- Kaihsu 15:08, 2004 Oct 9 (UTC)

The Oxford World Atlas really shows, that for example Austria is just half as rich (in terms of GNP per capita) than Germany, and approximately as rich as Greece? According to List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita that's not the case (well it's not exactely GNP, but those two figures are usually quite close to each other). But besides from that, I think this kind of graphical representation is quite appealing. Gugganij 22:02, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think that's just an error in the image, .at and .de should have rectangles of approximately the same height. --Joy [shallot] 00:07, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Fixed that now. If you notice any other errors, please don't hesitate to tell. --Joy [shallot] 00:22, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The population of Finland seems to be errorneous. --Oswd 18:46, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Needs redrawing

See also [1]. – Kaihsu 13:48, 2004 Nov 6 (UTC)

Can we avoid the Arial font, please? – Kaihsu 13:43, 2004 Nov 14 (UTC)

[edit] The legend is wrong

The unit that is said to be 1,000 dollars per capita can't be correct - it should be 10,000 dollars per capita, I think, or else it means that Germany's GDP/capita is around 2,500...

[edit] Slovenia

I think the heigth of Slovenia is a bit to low, since its GDP per capita is larger than Portugals GDP/capita. That doesn't seem to be the case in the image. --Gugganij 22:26, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] This makes no sense

• Don't take this the wrong way, but this map (is it a map? A diagram? A graph?) really confuses me. I have no idea how it's supposed to work. -Litefantastic 15:33, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, I think it gives you a quite good overview of the economic strength of European countries (both in terms of GDP per capita as well as total economic power - by comparing the area of the rectangles).

[edit] Anyone want to take it on and redraw?

Over the Christmas holidays? – Kaihsu 15:52, 2004 Dec 22 (UTC)

I am now doing this in earnest with a Python script and xfig. Will post results shortly. – Kaihsu 14:47, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)

[edit] Python code to generate the figure!!!

Python code for generating Image:EUpopGNPmap.png using xfig. To be improved. – Kaihsu 14:59, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)

fig2dev -L png -b 20 euromap.fig euromap.png

– Kaihsu 20:32, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)

All right, now things should work pretty well with the fig2dev command above. Looks something like this:

Image:Euromap.png

Someone else should collect the data. – Kaihsu 20:45, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)

[edit] code

#!/usr/bin/python

##################
# created by Kaihsu Tai, 2004-12-26
# drawing
# "a diagram showing the population and GDP per capita of EU member
#  states and candidates"
# using Python and xfig
# http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:EUpopGNPmap.png
#
# The xfig file format "the fig format" is described at
# http://www.xfig.org/userman/fig-format.html
#
# Running this script using Python generates a file named "euromap.fig".
# Then, please run
#   xfig euromap.fig
# to generate the figure.
##################

# the data; to be expanded
data = [
  ["population/1 000 000; GDP/10 000 EUR", 70, 0, 10000, 1000000],
  ["Austria", 48.13, 16.22, 30000, 8150836],
  ["Belgium", 50.7837, 4.4916, 28396, 10309725]
]

tail = 9000
popscale = 1e-4 # scaling factor for population
gdpscale = 1e-2 # scaling factor for GDP (gross domestic product) per capita
longscale = 1e2 # scaling factor for longitude
latscale = 1e2  # scaling factor for latitude

# function to abstract the drawing process
def draw(args):

  # passing the arguments
  [name, long, lat, gdp, pop] = args
  # long = longitude of the capital of the state
  # lat  = latitude of the capital
  # or of an appropriate location such as the centre of the territory
  # gdp = gross domestic product per capita of the state
  # pop = population of the state
  # calculating where things should be drawn
  top = tail - int(long * longscale)
  bottom = top + int(gdp * gdpscale)
  left = int(lat * latscale)
  right = int(left + pop * popscale)

  # generating the drawing command for xfig
  msg  = ""
  msg += "2 2 0 1 0 7 50 -1 -1 0.000 0 0 -1 0 0 5\n"
  msg += "  "
  msg += str(left) + " " + str(top) + " "
  msg += str(left) + " " + str(bottom) + " "
  msg += str(right) + " " + str(bottom) + " "
  msg += str(right) + " " + str(top) + " "
  msg += str(left) + " " + str(top) + "\n"
  msg += "4 0 0 50 -1 16 12 0.0000 4 105 300 "
  msg += str(left) + " " + str(top) + " "
  msg += name + "\\001\n"
  return msg
# ends definition of draw()

# the main program
file = open("euromap.fig", 'w')

# write the header
file.write("""#FIG 3.2
Landscape
Center
Metric
A4
100.0
Single
-1
1000 2
""")

# draw the data
for each in data:
  file.write(draw(each))

# done!!

[edit] Suggestion and Confusion

This is really one of the most confusing graphs that I have seen. At first I thought that the rectangles were showing the intersection of ranges of population. It took me a while to even find the legend since the legend looks exactly like the other thirty rectangles. Now that I've seen it for a while I understand that the location of the rectangles is roughly equivalent to the physical location of the country but this is not obvious or mentioned since the rectangles dont form a profile of europe.

This graph should be reformatted as a cartogram, where the size of each state is proportional to the population and the color is proportional to the GDP. This is the same information as it is now, only it would look a LOT better.

-Ast

[edit] Panorama

I have received a map from the EU called Panorama of the European Union, with data from 2005-01. I will see what I can do. – Kaihsu 08:51, 2005 May 3 (UTC)

[edit] New picture using GDP

Hi, I did not like Image:EUpopGNPmap.png because it is based on GNP which is a bad number to compare (it says a little about a country itself). That's why I created a new one based on GDP: Image:EU-GDP-Population.png. I guess, it is better now. Miraceti 23:38, 30 May 2005 (UTC)