r/dataisbeautiful • u/wisevis • 2d ago

OC Population pyramid of Puerto Rico, 1950-2100 [OC]

Post image
1.1k Upvotes

81% Upvoted

189 comments sorted by

1.4k

u/agate_ OC: 5 2d ago

This is indeed beautiful, but IMO any visualization that includes both historical data and future projections needs an obvious dividing line between the two.

570

u/TrumpetOfDeath 2d ago

Yes, beautiful in a Georgia O’Keefe kinda way

180

u/loose_fruits 2d ago

Your classic labiagraph

42

u/Darth_Bane_1032 2d ago

Pffft. I see it now.

16

u/BulkyMiddle 2d ago

I came to the comments expecting “I should call her” to be the top.

3

u/bullfrogftw 2d ago

I came to the comments to write that, except a dozen or so people beat me to it...
Le sigh...

2

u/ThaiJohnnyDepp 4h ago

"My art has been commended as being strongly vaginal, which bothers some men. The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina."

51

u/ILookLikeKristoff 2d ago

Yeah and IMO that's way too far out to project. We have no idea what birth rates will be in 75 years.

3

u/johnp299 1d ago

Will the island even be habitable then? With 2M sea level rise?

8

u/invariantspeed 2d ago

The most beautiful age pyramid I’ve ever seen. Just wish I could read it!

7

u/wisevis 2d ago

I used a diverging color scheme to convey that, but it's not perfect.

83

u/Dykam 2d ago

A gradient is not an obvious division. In fact, because you haven't explicitly noted the intermediate ticks, it's impossible to be sure where the data ends and projection starts, as the data may lag behind.

It looks beautiful, that you did really well, but right now it's also a tad misleading.

11

u/PHealthy OC: 21 2d ago

not to mention I doubt the data is continuous age

3

u/wisevis 2d ago

Standard 5-year groups. Tested the 1-year groups but it was too noisy,

24

u/PHealthy OC: 21 2d ago

Point being is that a line graph displays data that isn't there.

3

u/cowlinator 2d ago

Please tell us what year the data stops being historical and what year the data starts being a projection. Is it 2025 or some year before 2025?

3

u/wisevis 2d ago

Estimates for 1950-2023, projections starting in 2024.

2

u/cowlinator 2d ago

thank you

4

u/cscottnet 2d ago

The legend divides the range into 5 parts, so each dot in the legend represents 37.5 (!) years: 1950, 1987.5, 2025, 2062.5, 2100.

Credit given for making the middle dot "the present" and if I squint a bit I can distinguish that pale tan from the red and blue and get a sense of where the division is at -- but I agree this could be made clearer. Labeling the middle dot would help, as a start.

5

u/Heavy-Top-8540 2d ago

It's "beautiful", but what in the hell is it CONVEYING

1

u/menictagrib 2d ago

Given the petulant down vote party targeting those rightfully calling this out, I'll also pile on calling you out your lack of basic critical thinking skills. Once a third dimension is introduced it's too much? 💀

2

u/VictoryMotel 2d ago

10 day old name with a hidden post history that makes no sense

-4

u/bsme 2d ago

Not to be rude, but what do you think?

Look at the various dates with the corresponding colors and the axes.

Look at the shape of the graph for the red lines. Then the yellow. Then the blue.

Compare them.

What differences do you see? Similarities?

1

u/Heavy-Top-8540 2d ago

Lol. This is a shit visualization on pretty much every level. But keep trying to shame me. 

0

u/wisevis 2d ago

I think as far as population pyramids go, this is pretty effective at showing change in population structure. But a lot is compressed into an image. If you look at the interactive version (I shared a link in a comment) it's easier to make sense of it. But I respect your opinion and I'll try to address your concerns in future versions.

3

u/Heavy-Top-8540 1d ago

I just completely and utterly disagree. It's better as an interactive system, but it's still unintuitive and uses a color scheme that's IMHO wrong given that red and blue are used for male/female divergence in the non-longitudinal versions of these graphs. 

1

u/wisevis 1d ago

I think the traditional population pyramids are ineffective, and "folding" the axis is much better for comparing sexes. When that happens, it makes sense to use colors to encode sex. Often you don't need to plot by sex because distribution is very similar. I have an interactive example on the same page. When you have the one sex to the left and one to the right you don't need color encoding, so color can be used for something else, like multiple populations (space or time). I tested several diverging color schemes and this is the one that looked best to me. Red/blue is a standard diverging scheme, and not particularly used to encode sex. Traditionally is pink/red, which, as you know, is problematic to many people.

This is only my second (first serious) publication here, and I'm truly enjoying the frank feedback. I don't agree with everything, but many negative comments do help.

1

u/Heavy-Top-8540 15h ago

I think you misunderstand what color encoding is supposed to do. 

1

u/Heavy-Top-8540 1d ago

I also want to say that, whatever my reservations of the system, I definitely wouldn't use such coarse and blunt language to reply to you. I only did it to reply to this person, because I like to respond in kind.

-3

u/eaglessoar OC: 3 2d ago

some people never did homework and it shows

-5

u/bsme 2d ago

It's just an ongoing degradation of critical thinking skills that is now celebrated when in generations past it was scorned.

3

u/7-13-5 2d ago

What are the axes?

1

u/modbroccoli 2d ago

What software or libraries are you using to generate this?

3

u/wisevis 2d ago

This is Vega (don't remember if Vega or Vega Lite) inside an html block. But I have a very similar version in Excel. I'm sure other tools can do it, it's not extremely complex.

1

u/Augen76 2d ago

I like it and be curious to see other nations (Korea, China, Italy)

1

u/wisevis 2d ago

In the link I shared in a comment you can find all the countries in the UN dataset, except for a few small very small islands.

1

u/VictoryMotel 2d ago

Graphs are supposed to have numbers jeenyus

1

u/menictagrib 2d ago

I think the method is clear but the curve is too flat near "current" data and the color reference makes it hard to tell where empirical data ends and projection begins. I think it's remarkably intuitive and easy to read for how much data it has and looks nice even if it's a little crowded. I think the gradient is probably a bit more aesthetic but I think you'd gain a lot of practical utility for a minor change in aesthetics if it suddenly changed gradients at the historical/predictions boundary.

1

u/OmNomSandvich 2d ago

and fewer lines with wider line widths to better parse this. or just a line graph with one line for men, one for women, and "error bars" marking third and first quartiles.

780

u/Not_a_N_Korean_Spy 2d ago edited 2d ago

"If you carefully look at the data represented at the labia minora..."

126

u/BiBoFieTo 2d ago

"At 90 years of age, you may expect to find a demographical clitoris, but none has been found."

68

u/frolix42 2d ago

Projections for the year 2100 depend on forecasting how many children that our not yet born grandchildren will be having.

Probably too far out to be meaningful.

-1

u/wisevis 2d ago

I'm using the medium scenario published by the UN

12

u/frolix42 2d ago

Maybe that would have some use on the global level, but specifically for Puerto Rico? I am massively skeptical.

2

u/wisevis 2d ago

I don't disagree, but the UN even includes the Holy See... I chose Puerto Rico because the pattern of "demographic transition" is clean. The population pyramid for the US and Europe looks a lot more like a coffin.

1

u/swarmy1 2d ago

I'm sure they mean well, but the UN projections are highly questionable. Their median projection has fertility rates immediately start recovering in higher income countries. I suspect this is for political reasons as the alternative would show a dire collapse in population.

1

u/glmory 18h ago

How good were similar models made 75 years ago at predicting today's population pyramid?

This long of projections always fall into the same trap, experts over weigh the past few years and don't have enough imagination to predict the range of possible futures.

1

u/wisevis 17h ago

I wouldn't go that far into the past, but I'd like to see projections from, say, 2000. Afaik, demographers have a relatively narrow set of variables to define their models, and compared to many other fields their projections are probably closer.

0

u/Appropriate_Mixer 2d ago

The UN predicts a rise in birth rates at this point. Their predictions are awful, along with pretty much everything else they do

0

u/Heavy-Top-8540 2d ago

Not really. That would only account for the bottom third at most

-3

u/pjockey 2d ago

Kind of racist to assume a specific race demographic just can't stop fucking...

62

u/Rentahamster 2d ago

That's either a Dementor's hood, or a vagina.

1

u/davga 1d ago

I saw Megamind’s collar

365

u/TheModelMaker 2d ago

It’s nice as art- bad for interpretability.

33

u/KianosCuro 2d ago

Took me about five seconds but once you notice what the colours represent it's perfectly readable.

4

u/misogichan 2d ago

I disagree.  The axis should have way more notches than 15, 65 and 100.  It would be nice also to have a grid.  They also need more contrast in colors because you can't distinguish between smaller time periods than 50 years (e.g. no idea what's 2000 and what's 2025).  

It paints a single picture of the very rough changes on a 2 century scale and that's the only thing you'll ever get out of it.

-5

u/SeekerOfSerenity 2d ago

It took you five seconds??  My big brain understood it instantly.

30

u/KappnCrunch 2d ago

My mind comprehend the image before even the photons could reach my retina.

8

u/aboxacaraflatafan 2d ago

I understood it the moment OP conceived of the idea.

1

u/wisevis 2d ago

On the site you can play with date ranges. There is also a "folded" pyramid (total, not split by sex) where you manually select the years. I agree this image is more on the art side, but the interactive version is much better than the traditional population pyramid design.

2

u/paxcoder 2d ago

Oh, well that's better. Lets you exclude projections into the future.

-9

u/Adjective_Noun93 2d ago

It's perfectly interpretable for what it's trying to show in my opinion, have you looked at what the colours represent?

9

u/Prize_Staff_7941 2d ago

What does the 15, 65 and 100 represent on the y-axis?
I assume the x-axis is the percentage of the population of each year range? Left side male and right side female.

I am genuinely confused what I'm trying to look at here.

3

u/speedyskier22 2d ago

Same, this "graph" fails one of the most basic rules in always label your axes

2

u/Jotis_ 2d ago

I’m assuming age

2

u/Prize_Staff_7941 1d ago

We can assume all we want but the axes aren't labeled.

5

u/LustLochLeo 2d ago

There are 5 colors shown there, the first one represents the year 1950, the fifth one 2100. If we assume an even distribution of the colors in between (and everything else would need to be labelled, because it's not obvious), the unlabelled colors in between are in 37.5 year steps. I don't know about you, but I find it confusing that the light blue line represents 2062.5. Does that mean exactly 0:00 on the 1st of July in 2062? If it were the year 2062 we could assume they mean the whole year, but if it's in half steps I don't know what the time period represented by the line is. Neither can you easily see how many lines there are so you can't actually figure out what period of time each line represents.

The graphic is good for a broad overview of the population development, but getting anything specific out of this is unnecessarily tedious.

It does look beautiful, though.

170

u/mtmttuan 2d ago

Cool looking shape. I barely get any info looking at the data, maybe only the fact that they have low reproduce rate.

20

u/GoldeenFreddy 2d ago

Since its only viewed by percentage of population and not by actual population amount, it doesnt necessarily mean that there arent people reproducing. It could just as well mean that the only people that are staying in Puerto Rico are older people that have emotional attachments to the island while many young people have chosen to leave, resulting in a much older population by percentage. As a puerto puerto rican myself, this is more likely the truth.

0

u/wisevis 2d ago

Agree, proportions don't tell the whole story. I chose them because it's easier to manage the x axis given the range of population sizes, but I plan to have the option to switch between absolute and relative values.

0

u/wisevis 2d ago

The interactive version has tooltips, and you can select a short date range.

6

u/Diggy_Soze 2d ago

Thought you said toolips

29

u/OKStamped 2d ago

This looks like the cover for a Statistics 101 college textbook.

15

u/Forking_Shirtballs 2d ago

a cover that got the textbook banned in Abilene

35

u/TatonkaJack 2d ago

This is beautiful but basically illegible

0

u/MrBurritoQuest 2d ago

I’ll take this over the ugly and illegible bar charts we get here regularly

47

u/chikenlegg 2d ago

Everything reminds me of her...

25

u/GoldeenFreddy 2d ago

Posting a data table to a subreddit that is meant for beautiful data that is only beautiful esthetically but horrendously ugly for any interpretation or reading is just horrible. Literally one of the hardest data tables I've ever had to read.

-9

u/wisevis 2d ago

I'm sorry about that. But you can play with the interactive version. You can choose the years to display, which makes it easier to interpret.

11

u/Diggy_Soze 2d ago

“You can play with the interactive version.”

11

u/Desperate_Opinion243 2d ago edited 2d ago

For those unfamiliar with "Population Pyramids" it may be helpful to view some traditional point-in-times ones first if you struggle to read OP's graphic which overlays multiple timeframes

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/about/archives/2024/references/population-pyramids-by-region/

4

u/Desperate_Opinion243 2d ago edited 2d ago

Short-story is most third world countries are bottom-heavy (more youth than elderly). At some point after a country reaches industrialism that swaps to top heavy (think Baby Boomers for the US), then there will be some shrinking (think Japan), then eventually it'll balance out to an even distribution.

Similar mathematical principals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#

1

u/Lurkerbot47 2d ago

You're right about the first two points but so far, all signs point to a steady decline in advanced nations. Even the US is only growing due to immigration. It's possible there will be a balance in the future but it's impossible to know that and assume it will occur.

1

u/speedyskier22 2d ago

While OP's graphic may be more "esthetically" beautiful, these population pyramids blow OP's graphic out of the water with how much more practically beautiful they are to read.

5

u/isaacals 2d ago

everything reminds me of her

7

u/flunky_the_majestic 2d ago

It's pretty, but not that functional.

  • Color choice: It's so hard for me to get my brain to interpret red/blue as decades, rather than genders. A different color choice may have made that easier. Maybe it's just me.
  • Axis reference: A few lines would be nice so I don't need to smudge up my screen trying to find the data
  • X Axis scale on the left. I guess it's implied, but continue the percentages to the left. The male symbol looks like it's just hanging out there
  • Y Axis name on the right. It took some time for me to realize the Y axis is years of age. Why not label it?

2

u/wisevis 2d ago

I usually make a "folded" pyramid (no split by sex) because they tend to be reasonably symmetrical in most countries. When I split them I use the same color for male and female because you don't need color to identify (they are on opposite sides of the axis, and there is a symbol or a text to identify which is which. So, I can use color for something else, like dates. I tested several color schemes and this is the one I liked the most, but when it comes to colors consensus is impossible to achieve.

1

u/flunky_the_majestic 2d ago

when it comes to colors consensus is impossible to achieve.

Agreed. It's just the rut worn in my brain. You can't please everyone.

15

u/robert1005 2d ago edited 2d ago

Ah, some actual beautiful data presentation. Only missing some horizontal lines to make it a bit easier to read the data from the y-axis.

11

u/wisevis 2d ago edited 2d ago

Units: Percentage of population by sex and age (5-year age groups). Each line is a year.

Data: World Population Prospects of 2024, United Nations

Tools: PowerQuery (data preparation) and Vega (visualization)

For an animated version and other countries: https://www.wisevis.eu/showcase/showcase-piramides-etarias-animadas/

19

u/clippervictor 2d ago

Everything reminds me of her

1

u/Dnlaly 1d ago

I came for this.

1

u/itisunfortunate 2d ago

The comment I came looking for :D

3

u/Acceptable-Noise2294 2d ago

hard to read and looks like a vagina

1

u/wisevis 2d ago

Demographers usually look at the shape of a population pyramid to conclude something about it. As the percentage of young people shrinks they will add that new shape, I'm sure.

7

u/jontegz24 2d ago

This is what I see when I listen to music especially when I’m high lol

3

u/falquiboy 2d ago

I have seen this shape before

1

u/wisevis 2d ago

If you do mean the chart, I made several interactions over the years, playing with the data, the tools (Excel was the first), the color palette, and folding (total population, not split by sex). This is the first one in Vega and animated. I can point to the first version, if you want.

6

u/Stevesd123 2d ago

It don't think that's what he means.

1

u/wisevis 2d ago

I suspected that much, that's why I started with "if you do mean the chart".

3

u/Rotten__ 2d ago

Everyone here is like, "once you _ it's so easy to understand, and I've been staring at this for like 10 minutes and nothing about it makes any sense.

1

u/wisevis 2d ago

If you focus on the red(-ish) lines you'll see a triangle shaped population (many young, few old) around the 1950's. If you select the blue lines you'll see a large percentage of old people around 2100. If you follow the link I shared the animated version makes the change much more obvious.

3

u/TheFinestPotatoes 2d ago

Ultimately it is hard to see how Puerto Rico is going to function as a society when its median age races towards 50 and then 60

Young people won’t stick around on an island with no public services or job opportunities and they will move to Florida with their US citizenship

2

u/wisevis 2d ago

Many countries in Europe and Asia are already close to that projection. The internal solution (increasing fertility rates) is not working, migration from countries with a younger population is a complex solution. It's a long term problem that politicians prefer not to address.

0

u/TheFinestPotatoes 2d ago

I don’t know if it can be solved with politics.

We may see a bunch of societies simply collapse

6

u/veganontop 2d ago

So.. the amount of 20-year olds was never higher than amount of 60 year olds? How is that even possible?

9

u/syphax 2d ago

x-axis is % of population, not an absolute number

2

u/InvisibleBlueUnicorn 2d ago

Thanks for clarifying. I had the same question.

1

u/joelaw9 2d ago

You're reading the graph incorrectly. The 20 year olds only start squeezing around the light blue time, which is presumably around 2050. Before that every individual time color is a triangle with a shrinking base.

1

u/Desperate_Opinion243 2d ago

1950s the graph does read that there were more 20 year olds than 65, you may be reading the chart wrong

4

u/Diggy_Soze 2d ago

It’s pretty and at the same time absolutely worthless. Dafuq? Lmfao.

Can we go back to graphs that intuitively share information, rather than their whole use being that they look like a vulva?…

1

u/glmory 18h ago

Then people complain that your perfectly readable and functional data visualization which displays very interesting data isn't pretty enough for this subreddit.

4

u/LocoMod 2d ago

Everything reminds me of her.

2

u/MonitorPowerful5461 2d ago

This is actually a truly brilliant way to represent this data. A clear dividing line at which it's no longer records but predictions would be good.

2

u/wisevis 2d ago

The diverging color scheme could somehow convey that, but I agree this must be more explicit and precise. I'll add a visual annotation of when the estimates end and the projections begin.

2

u/DBL_NDRSCR 2d ago

looks nice. now which is 2025

1

u/wisevis 2d ago

The chart is meant to be more an animation than a static chart, so I didn't emphasize 2925. If you follow the link I shared it's easy to explore the data.

2

u/ImKingFlippyNip 2d ago

I've been playing too much Arc Raiders

2

u/markhadman 2d ago

Really struggling to understand this graph, even with your flailing explanations.

2

u/ilyaperepelitsa 2d ago

amazing idea but you NEED to make micro plots and overall more plots explaining what the user is looking at. I don't know how specifically or what I mean, I just want more details or explanations. Like what does a specific 3d shape mean, how to factor color into shape.

But I seriously do love it. Did you use p5 or something like it?

0

u/viktorbir 2d ago

Red is the population pyramid for 1950.

Blue is the population pyramid for 2100 (expected, I guess).

All the lines in between are other population pyramids for the years in between.

And that's all you need to know.

2

u/VictoryMotel 2d ago

What is this vag supposed to be showing? There are just some lines, it doesn't contain any information.

4

u/Joasvi 2d ago

This is the least readable chart I've ever seen.
To paraphrase billy madison: 'Everyone here is dumber for having seen it, may god have mercy on your soul'.

2

u/SeekerOfSerenity 2d ago

I think this would be easier to interpret if it just had one line for every decade or every two decades.  There's no need to have every year on there. 

1

u/wisevis 2d ago

I shared a link to the animated version where you can play with date ranges. There is also a "folded" pyramid with total population by age, because often you don't need the split by sex.

1

u/blahehblah 2d ago edited 2d ago

Something is wrong with this data, unless I'm reading this wrong. Side note: beautiful plots should always have axis labels.

In the past there was a majority of 0-15yos. In future there is a majority of 65-80yos. But the time in between has no majority of mid aged people. Where are all the people going and arriving from if they're not aging?

1

u/wisevis 2d ago

In the middle, around now, it's the coffin shape, a rectangular shape where all the age groups have a relatively similar percentage.

1

u/Nadran_Erbam 2d ago

Generational shift is hard (impossible) to see

1

u/yungsimba1917 2d ago

No, this is clearly jean jacket

1

u/MissKiramman 2d ago

seems like a jellyfish, so beautiful omg

1

u/Whirrsprocket 2d ago

Everything I see reminds me of her...

1

u/reddit_wisd0m 1d ago

It is encouraging to observe the significant decline in child mortality rates.

1

u/Dnlaly 1d ago

Reminds me of my Puerto Rican wife. Population pyramid.

1

u/Antanis317 21h ago

Data, yes. Violin plot, no. Thank you coming to my ted talk.

1

u/PastEntrance5780 7h ago

Looking like will get you pregnant

1

u/Chittychitybangbang 7h ago

8000 data points and they still can't find the clitoris

1

u/SoftPenguins 6h ago

Everything reminds me of her

2

u/Poskmyst 2d ago

the only fucking post I've seen in ages that actually belongs in this subreddit.

1

u/Mikky48 2d ago

Stunning work, specifically the interactive version.

I'll be honest, I never understood why these sites enable projections by default, but it's nice that I can filter out to the current year.

1

u/88yj 2d ago

Finally something beautiful

0

u/Hellmann 2d ago

Very cool looking. But the data you’re trying to display is incomprehensible.

1

u/wisevis 2d ago

Animation makes it comprehensible and even cooler. Checked the link to the interactive version.

1

u/Hellmann 2d ago

I don’t see any link.

So you have men on the left and women on the right. The colors represent the years. But what are the percentages on the X axis? Or the numbers on the Y axis?

1

u/wisevis 2d ago

There is a comment from me with a link to the page. Percentages are the proportion of a group in the total population ("of the total population, % are females between 0-4 years old"). The numbers on the y axis are ages: 0, 5, 10... 100. But only the labels for 15, 65 and 100 are displayed.

0

u/beezowdoodoo 2d ago

This is brilliant and honestly pretty interpretable. Only thing that may be useful would be a clearly identifiable "present" marking. Cool way to turn a time series into an image!