HW 02 – Visualizing Data with Matplotlib!

United States’ GDP Over Time

In this bar chart, I used GitHub user jdorfman‘s awesome dataset on US GDP to chart the growth of the the US economy since 1960. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a measure of the collective value of all the goods and services produced in an economy over a set period of time, and is widely recognized as a decent indicator of economic health. So while it’s encouraging to see that our economy has expanded so much, I’ll also include this link to an article on green GDPs, an alternative measure of economic output that factors in the envirtonmental cost of economic activity. Food for thought!

China vs. India – GDPs Over Time

Another interesting economic story is comparing the economies of China and India, two similarly populous nations whose economies have diverged in scope as different priorities around economic independence, trade, and state intervention in markets have been embraced. Using two more datasets (China and India) from the World Bank’s GDP Data Bank, we can see this divergence. I’ll leave the wonky explanations for the economists, but it’s certainly an interesting demonstration of government policy’s effect on the economy. China and India have nearly identical populations, but people power clearly does not directly translate into economic might.