Week 37: Recreating Paying the President

Challenge

This week we’ve partnered with Makeover Monday to examine potential conflict of interest between President Trump’s personal holdings and his campaign staff and government officials using data from Propublica. We’ll also be giving you a few formulas so you can focus on the important parts of the challenge: “stacking” the squares and placing the labels of year, month, and unknown on the “axis”.

Setup

1. Create a calculated field called Size. Size will be used to size the squares. The size of the squares represents the overall area of the symbol. There are five different values each representing a different threshold of amount spent at a property.

IF SUM([Amount]) < 1000
THEN 1
ELSEIF SUM([Amount]) <10000
THEN 4
ELSEIF SUM([Amount]) < 100000
THEN 9
ELSEIF SUM([Amount]) < 1000000
THEN 16
ELSE 25
END

Requirements

• Dashboard size: 900px x 620px.
• Background color: #F9F8F7
• The data has unknown dates. Make all unknown values show up 3 months past the maximum date. If you need help see SPOILERS #1 below for the formula.
• Create the stacked rectangle plot at the Source level. Use Size to size the boxes. Place a space of 0.01 between each of the squares. Make sure the order of the boxes matches, too. *This is the key challenge this week*
• Create an “axis” that labels the start of each year as black and abbreviated month labels of April, July, and September, respectively. Also label the unknown values with “Unknown”. See SPOILERS #2: for help with the “axis”. And see SPOILERS #3 for the month label.
• Color by source_group: Donald J Trump For President: #F7C480, Other: #76B7B2, Taxpayers: #555555
• Add annotations for when Trump announced candidacy, gets nomination, the election, and inauguration. You’ll want this: ▼
• Add the annotation around incomplete/missing data.
• Add the divider and bracket on the dashboard.
• Match tooltips.
• Credit the original authors/designers and link to the original:
  Originally by Derek Kravitz and Derek Willis, ProPublica, and Paul Cronan, Mark Schifferli and Charlie Smart, Fathom Information Design

  https://projects.propublica.org/paying-the-president/.

 

Dataset

This week uses a modified version of Spending at Trump Properties from Propublica (original data here – don’t use this one). You can get it here at data.world.

 

Share

After you finish your workout, share on Twitter using the hashtag #WorkoutWednesday and tag @AnnUJackson, @LukeStanke, and @RodyZakovich.  (Tag @VizWizBI too – he would REALLY love to see your work!)

 

Track your progress

Also, don’t forget to track your progress using this Workout Wednesday form.

 
 

 
 

#SPOILERS

1. For those still learning here is the formula for the spacing the unknown values three months out from the last known month:

IFNULL([Date], DATEADD("month", 3, {MAX([Date])}))

 
2. For those still learning here is the formula on how to create the faux axis:

IF INDEX() = 1
THEN -3
END

Using this INDEX() function allows to only show a single mark and not have a bunch of overlapping marks per month.

3. For those still learning here is the formula for creating the month label:

IF DATETRUNC("month", [Date]) != {MIN(DATETRUNC("month", [Date]))}
THEN IF MONTH([Date]) = 4
    THEN "APR"
    ELSEIF MONTH([Date]) = 7
    THEN "JUL"
    ELSEIF MONTH([Date]) = 10
    THEN "OCT"
    ELSE ""
    END
ELSE ""
END