What If?: I invested on the S&P since the 50's

Hi guys,

Here's another take of the What If? series. Today's entry is trying to figure out, of sorts, the S&P index of the top 500 publicly listed companies in the United States. For the uninitiated (like yours truly), the S&P 500 index is one of the indices that some investment companies offer as a fund, dubbed as "index fund", that you could invest your money in, these funds is bench-marked to the S&P 500 by holding the same share as the index. This index is traded daily thus hold a very large of historical data that goes back to the 1950s.

Now What If? You started to put money on these index funds and continually contribute on a monthly basis. Based on the historical prices of the Index up to the the time of upload, we have generated the Viz below to reflect on the potential of profit, as well as show the behavior of the index for the past 50 plus years. Imagine contributing money since the 80's or 60's or the 50's, how much your wealth would have grown.

The Data below is provided by Yahoo! Finance and generated with Tableau.

Edit: Updated our Viz with Tableau 8, and added some new calculations and controls :)

-Zan

Hover your mouse on the graph to get more info

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World Internet Penetration From 2000 to 2012

Hi guys,

Its been a while since our last posting, we were quite busy for the new year so it was kinda slow for us to find some good Viz to share with you. While lurking around the interweb I've found this very good gem of information about how the internet population have grown since 2000. Represented in the Viz below, it is an eye opener especially when considering how much the internet has grown in Africa compared to Asia. While Asia having the most population, and supposedly bloomed the Internet for the past decade, its the Africans and the Middle Easterners who have taken into Internet by storm with over 2000% growth now thats a lot. Kinda explained why my mailbox is flooded with those Nigerian scams by the minute :p (no offence to my Nigerian friends). In Asia, take a look at Afghanistan for example, a 12000% growth which undoubtedly caused by the American occupation vs North Korea which unfortunately is still trying hard to get out of the stone age. IMHO, that 111% growth would just have come up from the families of the party leaders.

For Facebook fans, surprise-surprise, Mongolia's penetration is 129% which means that all of the population has a facebook account plus some dead ones, or they have this crazy hobby of making 2-3 facebook accounts for fun. Have a look at the Viz below and do give comments :)

-Zan

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What if? : The US Presidential Elections 2012

This is a little fun twist to my earlier post on the US Presidential Elections.

Now What If, you have this illuminatic influence that could change the result of the last election?

What If, your opinions on certain issues could sway some voters into a zombie like state and control the election results to your liking?

What if, being a religious cult leader, you have 20% control of voting Americans that will follow you, either being more liberal or conservative.

Now, you do, well at least on the Viz below, see how your opinions on key issues as seen in The Sacramento Bee can influence the outcome of the elections based on the recent poll results.

You will have power to represent around 20% of American voters that might change the outcome of the recent elections.

-Zan

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US Presidental Elections 2012

Hi guys,

Just whiff up a very quick Viz on the Presidential elections, mind taking a look and comment?

I was following the polls on CNN just now and  thought, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if I can show this in Tableau?"

So I started looking for the election results which is abundant on the interweb, and took this data off Huffington Post (credit to their very nice visuals on the campaign).

I just directly copied their tabular data into Excel, cleaned up a bit because they were using graphics in the table, then connect to Tableau and build the dashboard below. I know the data is a bit inaccurate (which I have corrected) due to my own stupidity for not checking out Florida lack of knowledge in US polling calculations.. I'd appreciate your comments.

p/s: What's up with Florida btw?

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-Zan

Malaysian Political Map 1986 to present

For Malaysian Voters nowadays, more and more in their minds right now are the 13th General Election of our beloved country. Since end of last year, political soothsayers have been throwing out dates like ripe rambutans during season. And unfortunately, they have been wrong every time. With the current government's term expiration draws closer and closer, never have we seen the GE being delayed to such extent in the last 50 years. Some speculate that the ruling government is trying to delay its inevitable demise. While some think that the Prime Minister is ensuring that all the wheels have been set for the new National Transformation Project to ensure its continuity for the next 10 years.

Therefore, we at Venture have come up with the Viz below to reflect on our country's political history for the past 20 plus years.

Heads Up, some brief info on Malaysia's major parties, do indulge:

BN- Barisan Nasional or the National Front, the ruling party of Malaysia since its Independence
DAP - Democratic Action Party, the ruling party for many capitals cities like Kuala Lumpur and Penang.
PAS - Parti Islam Semalaysia or Malaysian Islamic Party, the islamist party ruling Kelantan for most of its years and have been getting termendous support in the Northern region.
PKR - Parti Keadilan Rakyat or People's Justice Party, the evolutionary parti of KEADILAN which was formed during the Anwar impeachment case at the turn of the century.

(data courtesy of the Prime Minister's Office http://www.pmo.gov.my)

-Zan

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Malaysian State Government since 1986

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The Dawn of the Megatall Skyscrapers

At the dawn of the new millennium, mankind have been racing to show their mark in the world. Traditionally it was the Euro-American countries dominate the skyline. But in recent years a new trend has emerged by the rich Middle eastern conglomerates and new emerging powers such as China and India, they too want to show their supremacy in the skies and literally touch the heavens.

Back in the 80s and 90s, tall skyscrapers were the "in" thing, and american corporations were dominating the skies with 150+ meter towers. However, in the late 90s and well into the new millennium, we welcome the era of the Supertall, beginning with the likes of the Petronas Twin Towers (452m) to the Taipei 101 (509m).

Then, the Chinese came into the race with the Shanghai World Financial Center (492m) and several Supertalls in the pipeline, until the Emirates put everything into overdrive with the Megatall Burj Khalifa (828m) at the turn of the decade. Soon, we'll see the first kilometer high and mile high towers literally scraping our clouds, and who knows far we'd go from there. Take a gander at the Viz below by Venture Software:

(data provided by EMPORIS)

-Zan

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Viz provided by Venture Software Solutions

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Multi Level Marketing Revealed!!

This entry today could put off some people, especially those who are hardcore in the business we call Multi-Level Marketing or MLM. Of course by no means I'm trying to be critical of this type of commerce (although I have my own stories of vampirical parasites latching on my dear wallet for a few months just to get "bonuses") ,

Its just so happens that I stumbled upon a website called MLM  The Truth, read the contents, and although some of the facts and figures need some work, I felt that its a good source of alternative info for those who are just considering to join an MLM company, halfway in, or even those hardcore upliners to just think a bit on the actual cost it took to make money in this kind of business.

Now again, from these figures I'm not giving a bad connotation to the MLM business as a whole, being an ex-MLMer myself there were good moments and I learned a lot about fishing (if you catch my drift). But if you are new to this concept, maybe you should just take a look at the Viz below just to be little prepared on what's coming.

-Zan

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Images and data courtesy of MLM The Truth, dashboard viz by Venture Software Solutions

So I hope nobody was offended, heck you are welcome to laugh. Put some comments there at the bottom for our entertainment, cheers ;)     -FFA

p/s: To get the real dirt, for Malaysians I believe you guys are already familiar with Aidid Muaddib's blog, its partially in Malay, and don't even talk about the truckload of swearing there, but the info is golden.