Compelling examples for first class

[DaveBackus]

It's helpful to show students what they'll get out of the course, what their output might look like. So I thought we might collect some figures that we think are compelling in some way. Some of this will follow from the inherent interest in the data, but we might also mix in some interesting hi-tech stuff. If things cross your mind, add them here for future reference.

My current list, not filtered for quality, is

• Emerging market indicators: indicators of business conditions by country from the World Bank, end with radar chart
• Business cycle indicators: leading and contemporaneous monthly indicators of US economic growth
• Demographics: current and projected age distribution of populations by country. can we make this dynamic? GIF?
• Equity returns: distributions of returns on Fama-French equity portfolios, what would $1000 in 1950 be worth now?
• Term structure of interest rates: dynamics of the term structure if interest rates. Sarah did a dynamic version in plot.ly, but that takes some setup.
• Options: prices of puts and calls by strike, implied volatility smiles.

I'm not particularly attached to any of them.

[cc7768]

This was a kind of cool link and had some neat data

https://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2014/06/10/is-seattle-really-seeing-an-uptick-in-cycling/