World Road Fatalities

Hello everyone,

In the wake of the recent air disasters that had unfortunately befallen one of the best airlines in the world. Some of us couldn't help but wonder whether it is still safe to air travel?

Sentiment towards the Malaysian Airlines have grown increasingly negative since MH17, especially from foreigners. Having huge reputation as one of the best airlines in the world also did not help in staving off detractors. MAS has taken such a huge toll that recently, it had a massive reshuffling under its new owner, Khazanah Nasional Berhad.

However, we should be practical in judging and reacting towards the sentiment. Let's look at a few details:

1. MH17 was shot down - there's nothing anyone could do about it.

2. MH370 was a very rare occurrence - If we acknowledge the conpiracy theorists, How many airlines pilots in Malaysia is that geeky to have his own Flight Simulator at home? I bet you know the answer.

3. Forget air disasters, people die from traffic related accidents a hundred-fold compared to a plane crashing. You should be more afraid to drive your car, or take a bus!!

So you see, sentiments aside, Air travel is still the safest way to travel by far, and condemning a particular airline for something unprecedented that had happened to them is too cruel. Mas is a victim, just like the lives that was lost. We pay our respect to the deceased.

Now to ponder furthermore, below is a Viz detailing traffic related fatalities as of 2013. As I said, when entering a car, you should be very afraid  :). The green represent the least number of fatalities, and Red represent the most. The bubbles are the rate of fatal accidents occurring per a subset of population. Color represents  the number of traffic fatalites per 100,000 people. And the size of the bubble, represent the number of fatalities per 100,000 vehicles. When you look at it, it makes sense that China and India, even though they do have the biggest total number of fatalities due to their population count. They are one of the moderates in fatalities per 100k of vehicles and population. This is most probably due to the number of population who could not afford to buy their own vehicles. I'm just surprised to see Africa leading the number of deaths per 100k vehicle. Does this mean that they have too much cars that even a baboon can go around driving? 

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160 Years of Missing Aircrafts

#pray4MH370

Sadness, grief, and a burdening sense of missing someone you dearly love. That's how I imagine what the families and friends of the ill-fated Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Being a Malaysian, its the first time we had an incident this big involving our national carrier. And being in my 30s, its the first time I witnessed such a disaster albeit only on the media, however I can really feel how the whole nation is crying.

For the uninitiated, at 0122 8th March 2013 local time, Malaysia Airlines FlightMH370, a code share with China Southern Airlines lost contact with air control towers in Malaysia and Vietnam. After signing off with the Malaysian air traffic control, the flight was supposed to report their status with Vietnam air traffic control but never did. A few hours later, the Malaysian authorities made public the incident and droves of speculations poured in ever since. At this moment of writing, which is 13 days later, MH370 is still missing and it was reported that the Australian maritime found via-satellite what could be debris from the aircraft but are still unsure.

graphic credit to The Daily News

I do not want to delve into speculation, but there are quite some puzzling details that has turned this event into an international mystery. The fact that there are signs that the ACARS and transponder were deliberately turned off, how the flight immediately changed its direction westward across the Thai-Malaysian border undetected (well it was but the military didn't know what to make of it, both Malaysia and Thailand), and somehow the plane purposefully followed a route that made radar detection difficult and then off to either the Indian ocean or somewhere in Kazakhstan; Has definitely cranked up the rumour-mill and open the floodgates of endless debates and conspiracy theories  that only increase the anguish of the families of the victims. All I want to say is that I pray that whatever fate has befallen MH370, the answer would come soon and give closure to those affected, deep in my heart, I want this to be over soon.

Please feel free to check the Viz below, detailing aerial disappearances across different modes of air travel for the last 160 years. The bar chart represents the total number of victims, click each bar to isolate the map to each time period, drill down the period to see individual years. Click the bar charts to isolate the map to a particular period of time, hover on the aircraft icons to get more details.

MH370, please come home soon.

update on 25/3/2014: on 24/3/2014, the Malaysian Prime Minister announced that MH370 ended its flight in the Indian Ocean somewhere west of Perth. This is based on data crunching done by AAIB via inmarsat. However, no physical evidence yet available till now.

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source: wikipedia
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BI and Analytics Product Comparison

Do you know how the BI users compare a product with a closer peer?
How is the detail rating and review of the products? The visual graphic below serves this purpose clearly....

Miss World: Visualizing the Winners

Hi guys,

This post is basically just to show how well you can create a Viz with Tableau, The End :)


Well, actually its a bit related on my last post "How Happy is the World". In that post I mentioned about how certain regions have a higher Happiness Index than the rest of the world, and pointed out South America as a case. I did mention that probably the women has something to do with it so I did a little digging and got this very nice dataset about past Miss World winners, and surprise surprise, the country with the highest number of winners.. is Venezuela, so maybe just maybe that statement of mine holds some truth in it :)

Take a gander at the Viz below on Miss World winners from the beginning till now.

p/s: Mind you that I do not receive any payment from the Miss World organization nor I am promoting the franchise. This is just a showcase of Tableau, and our capability to produce stunning info-graphics with the tool.

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How happy is the world?

Hi guys,

I found this really interesting website by Global Finance regarding the happiness level of the world from some surveys done by the New Economy Foundation. They collected these survey results together into something called the Happy Planet Index. Although the topic of "happiness" to me is very subjective, but the survey did include some interesting data and and how these collected information is relative to being happy in a particular country.

3 factors are incorporated into the Index, 

1. Ecological footprint; Measured in Global Hectares (gha). It is the amount of land needed to provide for a population's resource requirements plus the amount of vegetated land needed to absorb all their CO2 emissions and in the products they consume.
2. Life satisfaction; Health as well as “subjective well-being” such as opportunities to undertake meaningful activities, inner resources that help one cope when things go wrong, closeness between friends and family, as well as a sense of community. 
3. Life expectancy.

Take a look at the Ecological Footprint, It is interesting to see that even though overall it is kinda average, meaning there are some countries with very high footprint, yet still considered happy, and in some cases like in mid Africa, having low footprint didn't do much in terms of happiness, probably because of external factors such as civil war. But overall, countries with a higher footprint tend to be less happy.

Also note that Central and South America seems to be more happy than the rest of the world, their footprint is quite low, and they live longer too. In contrast to Africa, with a somewhat similar footprint, but a different state of well being that definitely have an impact on their life expectancy.

So if you want to live longer, and be happier, pack your bags and settle down somewhere south of the border of the USA. Who knows what makes them all cheery, maybe its the massive party like Mardi Gras or the amazing places like Rio, or maybe its because of all the beautiful women over there (Venezuela has the most Miss World), I'd vote the latter :p

 Post your comments to talk about your observations.

p/s: I feel like moving to Vietnam for some reason

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Oil Prices in Malaysia

Good day Y'all,

Post election Malaysia have proven to be an unsettling one, despite the National Front getting only 46% of the votes, they have won GE13. I don't want to talk further on the controversies of the election results, but to discuss on what's happening after the election. So now, post GE13, promises have been made and they must be kept.

However, one promise that was guaranteed before the election was not fulfilled recently. After ensuring the people that oil prices, especially RON95 would not increase this year, it increased yesterday (3/8/2013) by 20 cents a liter. Of course 20 cents isn't much, but if we calculate the ratio, it is actually an increase of 10.52% and this would definitely affect transportation of all goods thus escalating costs. Maybe to the fat cats its nothing to be shout at, but an increase of almost 11% of living cost would definitely affect the people especially among the poor. I just hope this chosen step to improve our economy is justified.

One question that really boggles me, RON97 is the premium fuel in Malaysia, it is not subsidized and currently it is priced at RM2.70, RON95 is supposedly subsidized at 63 cents at current price it is at RM2.10. RM2.10 + RM0.63 = RM2.73. Is it true that RON95, which is of lower quality than RON97 more expensive than the latter? Or am I missing something here?

**Update: after much chatter in the social media, on 5/9/2013 the government increased the price of RON97 by 15 cents to RM2.85

Anyway, take a look at our Viz below showing the price fluctuations of subsidized oil in Malaysia since 2000.

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The Haze issue, who's affected?

Hi guys,

If you've been waking up to the smell of burnt forests lately, well you're not alone. Unfortunately due to some unscrupulous people who have no respect for the environment in a country that shall not be named, we have to suffer the choking hazard. Having a toddler of my own has made me very concerned, and utterly angry at these money hungry animals. Its not just the smoke that concerns me, but the sub PM10 particles (particles less than 10 microns) that's being carried by the smoke. These particles are so tiny that it penetrates our lung tissues, and get collected in our body for years, potentially causing lung diseases and even cancer. You can checkout  about PM10 particles here and also here.

The Viz below is an overview on the Air Pollution Index between 24th - 30th July 2013, data was taken from the Department of Environment Malaysia. The particular week was chosen because it had the highest air pollutant level in 2013 so far. The index has 5 different levels, the air quality level is considered good at levels 50 and below, anything above 100 is considered unhealthy, and if the index reaches 300 it is already hazardous. As a comparison, during the 1997 haze crisis, the index reached a maximum of 930, which gave a visibility of 10 meters. In the recent haze, my area of Shah Alam, reached at about 280, anything beyond 1.5 km is completely blanketed by the haze. Luckily so far it seems that the worst is over, but remembering what happened in 1997 where mortality rates jumped 70% especially for the elderly and the very young, one can never be too careful.

Move the slider to see the different dates, click the chart to highlight and filter information, and hover your mouse on any location for more details.

p/s: The sudden reduction of the index on the 26th was due to quite a decent rainfall particulaly around Shah Alam and Klang.

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