Bread for the World Institute is a nonpartisan organization based in Washington, DC working to fight hunger in the United States and abroad. The Institute aims to educate opinion leaders, policymakers, and the public about hunger in the United States and around the world.

For this Hackathon, the Institute has developed two data visualization challenges for which they need help. Below are summaries of the two challenges (here is a more detailed description).

Exposing Gaps in Data on Women’s Empowerment

Over the past few decades, we have learned a lot about the marginalization of women around the world and its costs to human development. Data authorities such as the World Bank and the United Nations have set out to develop holistic ways of measuring women’s empowerment and gender equality across countries, defining a minimum set of 52 indicators for doing so. But even the most advanced women’s empowerment indexes available today still miss critical elements of what it means for women to be empowered in the developing world. Far too many of the indicators that compose women’s empowerment indexes depend on largely unreliable, old, or inconsistent data for far too many countries. This significantly compromises the accuracy and integrity of the index and makes it much less reliable for policy makers who base decisions on it. In our upcoming 2015 Hunger Report, Bread for the World Institute will identify key missing data in current women’s empowerment indexes and explain why better data are essential to continued progress. We’ll need help from hackathon volunteers to visualize where those gaping holes in the data lie.

Women’s Empowerment and Stunting

Childhood stunting (far below average height for one’s age) is a condition that indicates long-term malnutrition. It currently affects one in four of the world’s children. When a child is stunted, she is prevented from growing, learning, and later earning to her full potential. As we begin to explore years of data on women’s empowerment from the World Bank and United Nations, we want to ask the question: Do countries that significantly improve the status of women also eventually see lower rates of stunting? Research from countries around the world has shown that when women are empowered to earn more and have a greater say in home finances, they are more likely than men to invest additional income in promoting the welfare of their children—through nutritious food, for example. Are there data that support a relationship between women’s empowerment and improvements in stunting?

Hackathon Details

HelpMeViz and Bread for the World Institute are inviting up to 25 guests on Saturday morning, June 28, from 9 a.m. –1 p.m. to work on these two challenges.  The Institute will provide the data for the two challenges and space for attendees to work; they will also provide breakfast and lunch during the event. Participants will also receive a printed copy of the 2015 Hunger Report, to be released in November 2014.

The event will be blogged live on HelpMeViz. We hope that interested people all over the world will want to lend their voice and their skills to these challenges. Data will be made available when the event begins, and visualizations, conversations, and comments will be posted to the site in real time.

If you would like to attend the event in Washington, DC, email HelpMeViz with a short paragraph that describes your interest and your skillset (statistics, programming, design, etc.) with the phrase “Bread for the World” in the subject line.

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As we enter the New Year, HelpMeViz is providing a platform for people working with all types of data and all types of visualizations to receive feedback and advice. There are now 6 visualizations under active discussion and more are on the way.

To help encourage conversation, a few clarifying points to the site’s submission guidelines are worth making:

1. It is not mandatory to include data with your submission. Many people have employment restrictions or use restricted data–providing the full data set is therefore not feasible. Alternatives to not providing the data include removing category or series labels, or adding random components to the data in order to maintain confidentiality or clear disclosure requirements.

2. For the same reason, you may request to not have your name or affiliation listed with your submission (as you may have already seen on a few of the first submissions).

3. Feel free to submit visualizations that have already been published. Perhaps you want to see how someone else would have visualized the same data or there was something with which you weren’t quite satisfied.

4. Any and all problems–no matter how big or small–are worthy of inclusion.

5. Submissions related to presentation design–especially those related to data visualization–are also welcome.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, our little blue friend is named “Billy”.

Thanks,
Jon

Photo Credit: Joybot via Compfight cc

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The data visualization community consists of people who use data and design to tackle a variety of issues and challenges. Outside of a few specific blogs and tutorials however, there isn’t a place where that community can provide in-depth comments and criticism on data visualization projects. This site is designed to facilitate discussion, debate, and collaboration from the data visualization community.

The site is open to anyone who is searching for feedback on their visualization designs, from seasoned designers and data visualization specialists to individual analysts searching to improve their graphic displays. All types of visualizations are welcome: simple, single line or bar charts to full-blown infographics to interactive visualizations.

How it works: Send the following information to HelpMeViz@gmail.com:

• Your name;
• A static image of your visualization (plus the website address for interactive visualizations);
• Your data (preferably in an easy-to-use format); and
• A brief explanation of the challenges or problems you face to. This can include technical challenges as well, for example to seek advice as to whether it would be easier to create the visualization in a different tool. (Even if you don’t know what challenges you face, but are still seeking advice, that’s fine too.)

Readers will be able to post comments, revisions, or sketches to help improve your project.

My hope is that we will all treat each other with respect and provide constructive feedback. Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or any other type of –ist or –phobic comments will not be tolerated. I will try to moderate the comments best I can, but please let me know if I miss someone acting out of line.

I look forward to seeing what comes of this and please follow the progress on Twitter @HelpMeViz.

Thanks,
Jon

PS. If you’re wondering who is running this site, I am an economist with the federal government who also creates policy-relevant data visualizations. I also conduct workshops on data visualization and presentation techniques. More information about my work and my workshops is available at www.PolicyViz.com and you can follow me on Twitter @jschwabish.

Photo Credit: loop_oh via Compfight cc

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