
Interactive Map: The Flow of International Trade - digitaltrees
http://www.visualcapitalist.com/interactive-mapping-flow-international-trade/
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prewett
I love the idea, and had no idea this data was available. However, the
visualization is close to useless (except it looks good on news sites). I
wanted to examine @Theodores comment about Brexit, but I can't even do
something as simple as figuring out whether the UK is a net importer from /
exporter to Europe (or approximately equal).

It makes me want to play around with the data [1] myself, although getting all
the data looks a bit involved. And it's not an easy visualization, either. Not
only is there a geometry problem and a dimensional problem, it looks like
countries might import from and export to the same country in the same type of
good. In 2015 for "26 - Ores, slag, and ash", apparently the UK imported $187m
from Canada and exported $155m to Canada. (But maybe the units are $1k, as the
UK importing $2+ billion total seems a bit low?) Not only does that seem a
little counter-intuitive--what ores is the UK even mining, let alone
exporting? Anyway, representing both directions seems challenging.

[1] [https://comtrade.un.org/data/](https://comtrade.un.org/data/)

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krona
The raw material(s) aspect can be deceptive because most of the ore that
British (FTSE listed) mining companies produce doesn't touch British shores;
I'm not sure how the visualization takes account of these details.

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Theodores
This visualisation makes a point regarding 'Brexit'. Look how much trade the
UK does with Europe and how much trade is done with the rest of the world.
Even though everything says 'made in China' far, far more trade is done with
Germany and the other large European nations.

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chris_st
Well, that's kind of pretty... but perhaps there's a better way to show
individual good flows? I see a rainbow between the USA and Mexico, for
example, but I can't really make out which colors are going where.

Perhaps if each color had its own location on each country's map? This would
add confusion, in that folks might thing the location is where the good comes
from ("Why is wheat coming out of Virginia?"), but it would allow seeing that
(say) Mexico exports "X" times more food to the USA than the other way around.

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ben_jones
It looks like the visualization was made with d3.js, can anyone explain how
one may recreate something similar, or is it hand-rolled?

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vitohuang
Yeah, it does look like d3 animation, don't think it will be hand-rolled.

Better approach will be combine d3 with reactive js like React/Vuejs for
dynamic data

This is a globe
[https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/ba63c55dd2dbc3ab0127](https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/ba63c55dd2dbc3ab0127)

then just provide/change the data

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Nanite
Looks cool but not doesn't provide much insight. I would highly recommend the
Observatory of Economic Complexity. Unsexy 2d block visualizations but conveys
relevant data very well:

[http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/](http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/)

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known
Thank you; A picture is worth a thousand words;

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LyalinDotCom
I've seen this before but it still looks like an amazing visualization at
least of the bigger picture

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lgleason
From the map it looks like the US trade imbalance with China and the EU
(imports more than it exports).

