{"id":14,"date":"2009-11-14T02:06:52","date_gmt":"2009-11-14T09:06:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thomaslotze.com\/blog\/?p=14"},"modified":"2009-11-18T01:04:34","modified_gmt":"2009-11-18T08:04:34","slug":"scatterplots-jquery-and-class-size","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thomaslotze.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/14\/scatterplots-jquery-and-class-size\/","title":{"rendered":"Scatterplots, jQuery, and Class Size"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of days ago, Nathan at FlowingData posted <a href=\"http:\/\/flowingdata.com\/2009\/11\/10\/do-we-need-more-teachers\/\">a parallel coordinates plot<\/a> showing a relationship between student-to-teacher ratio and mean SAT scores.  In the comments, a lot of people said that they would have rather seen scatterplots, and also mentioned that the percent of students taking the test could also have been a factor (due to selecting the higher-performing students to take the test).  Like the weather, a lot of people complained about it, but no one did anything about it.<\/p>\n<p>Since the data was readily available from the <a href=\"http:\/\/nces.ed.gov\/programs\/digest\/d08\/tables\/dt08_144.asp\">National Center for Education Statistics<\/a>, I thought I&#8217;d download it and just make some quick scatterplots.  Of course, this also seemed like a good opportunity to play around with <a href=\"http:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/flot\/\">flot<\/a>, a really neat javascript library for generating plots and graphs.<\/p>\n<p>The end result is <a href=\"http:\/\/thomaslotze.com\/projects\/class_sizes\/index.php\">here<\/a>.  I think it&#8217;s quite decent.<\/p>\n<p>Before you say anything, I agree: it would be better if it had reference lines for the US average for X and Y axes, a color scale to indicate color values, and used something other than HTML tables for layout.  If you cry out for them, I will add them.<\/p>\n<p>Update 11\/17\/2009: I added a color scale and reference lines for the US Average, in order to have a little better showing in the <a href=\"http:\/\/forums.flowingdata.com\/topic\/visualize-this-class-size-and-sat-scores-deadline-1124\">Flowing Data competition<\/a>.  I&#8217;m still showing my poor layout skills, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of days ago, Nathan at FlowingData posted a parallel coordinates plot showing a relationship between student-to-teacher ratio and mean SAT scores. In the comments, a lot of people said that they would have rather seen scatterplots, and also mentioned that the percent of students taking the test could also have been a factor [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thomaslotze.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thomaslotze.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thomaslotze.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomaslotze.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomaslotze.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomaslotze.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomaslotze.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thomaslotze.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomaslotze.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomaslotze.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}