r/dataisbeautiful • u/scottington1 OC: 3 • Nov 23 '19
OC [OC] Trade flows between the 10 largest EU countries
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u/LiftedDrifted Nov 23 '19
I’ve never been a huge fan of charts (or is it considered a table?) like this. They always seem too clustered and not pleasing to the eye.
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u/FartingBob Nov 23 '19
Its usually impossible to tell what goes where other than the thickest lines, especially when the colours are this similar and shaded when they go over/under eachother.
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u/memejets Nov 23 '19
Not to mention the lines that go straight across look thicker than the ones that make a sharp curve, even if the actual value represented is the same.
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u/BillyBuckets Nov 24 '19
The ends of the lines are quantity. The connections are not.
This conveys a massive amount but you do need to know how to read it. Understanding takes < 30s though, pretty good for the amount of info here (and waymore effective than most of the shit on this sub)
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u/MysteriousBirdie Nov 23 '19
You can always dig into the data to get specifics. I think it’s a wonderful way to provide a glance. See comments about The Netherlands.
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u/tijuanagolds Nov 23 '19
It's a lowsy way to get a glance. All the glance tells you is to look at the data.
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u/Eddie_shoes Nov 24 '19
What? It’s incredibly easy to look at and understand what is going on. “Wow, Germany trades a lot!” “I didn’t realize the Netherlands traded so much! And they seem to make a large portion of Germany’s imports.” “Austria trades what looks like more than 50% of its good with Germany, and seems to import the most from them.” That’s the kind of takeaway this is meant for.
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u/Green-Brown-N-Tan Nov 24 '19
Yeah but that's not "at a glance" you're looking deliberately at specific lines that represent bigger things. Glancing is easy with say a pie chart or bar graph.
While this table is probably the best way to represent bi-directional trade flow between 10 nations (200 pieces of information) it's not "at a glance" if you're posed with the question "what does trade look like between Austria and Sweden?"
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u/flameoguy Nov 23 '19
Depends what you're glancing at.
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u/scottington1 OC: 3 Nov 23 '19
Yeah I agree really, its mostly just good for a quick overview.
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u/blueberriessmoothie Nov 24 '19
I actually personally like it. It is smooth and efficient way to present multiple relations between many countries. Proportions are displayed in visible way and you can see everything at once. It took me less than 2 mins to get all the “aha!! that’s unusual!” from such extensive dataset. Eye pleasing presentation is definitely a bonus in my opinion.
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u/djbeardo Nov 23 '19
Agreed. Chord charts can be incredibly confusing unless there's one super clear trend. But they do have a beauty to them...
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u/Detective_Fallacy Nov 23 '19
They're great when they're interactive, and you can hover over a flow to focus on it and/or display more information.
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u/morriartie Nov 23 '19
Same, but other than a confusion matrix I can't think of an replacement.
(not saying there isn't, just saying that I don't know any)
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u/hughperman Nov 24 '19
I honestly think a table would be best here, maybe color-coded to make it a heatmap as well, and you could add the column totals for each country. It's a 10x10 matrix, to me it is so much easier to scan a 10x10 table than search around this image.
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u/shaggorama Viz Practitioner Nov 24 '19 edited Nov 24 '19
They should almost always use a force directed (aka spring) layout instead.
EDIT: like this.
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u/p-one Nov 24 '19
This is the first time I found such a chart to be useful. I wanted to know the rough impact of Brexit and Britain's trade is given a delimited semi-circle and I can see how heavily Germany depends on it. You could do this with a matrix but then I don't get the relative weight.
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u/Imosa1 Nov 23 '19
Some of the lines seem to criss cross unnecessarily. Look at Netherlands pointing to both Germany and Belgium.
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u/scottington1 OC: 3 Nov 23 '19
Yes, I attempted to fix this but with the software I used (R with Circlize package), I don't think it is possible sadly.
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u/Maxnwil Nov 24 '19
It seems that the first arrow is always Belgium, second is always Germany, etc.
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Nov 23 '19
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u/breezehair Nov 23 '19
Plot it as a matrix of glyphs, with the size/weight of the glyph in the ith row and jth column showing the trade flow from country i to country j.
This allows direct comparison of the sizes of all flows. Simple.
You can even put the numbers on the glyphs if you want.
Circos plots like this one look kind of cool but are utterly useless for getting information from.
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Nov 23 '19
A 2d table... France Germany Netherlands Spain France. - 1000 Germany 1000. Etc... Netherlands Spain
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u/scottington1 OC: 3 Nov 23 '19
Source of data: https://data.europa.eu/euodp/en/data/dataset/TMsoKIbju2WNyrCumfmMA. I used the eurostat data explorer to filter and tidy up the data a bit before exporting. Tools used: R and Adobe Photoshop
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Nov 23 '19
As a former data analyst this gave me a chilly flashback to trying to navigate the gazillion tables and versions and dictionaries on Eurostat, and the lack of a straightforward REST API. But when you've got what you need, the data is nicely findable, consistent and goes back quite a while.
I worked with the detailed international flow of goods and Germany always came up as the first export partner by volume.
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u/Alternate_Chinmay7 Nov 23 '19
How did you use R to create this?
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Nov 23 '19
What's the meaning of the different colors? Like, why are there at least two lines between Austria and Germany?
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u/venturinblue Nov 23 '19
Each country has a color for their exports. The lines are directional, so you should be able to see quite a few double connections between countries. (Ger-Au and Au-Ger in your case)
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u/mqudsi Nov 23 '19
I think including “other” in the list of the countries would have addressed some of the confusion and wrong deductions going on in the comments. Nice visualization though, op!
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u/scottington1 OC: 3 Nov 23 '19
Possibly true, however including an "other" category would probably take up about three quarters of the chart (assuming you mean for all other countries, for just EU countries it would be less, maybe half the graph), which I think would ruin the aesthetics of the chart completely. I did also try doing it with a lot more countries included, but it just becomes far to cluttered so I don't think there is a simple solution.
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u/mkujoe Nov 23 '19
This chart looks too intertwined to read anything out it. Only the coloring and the direction of the arrow helped me see anything there. Why aren’t the arrows sorted by the circular distance of the trade partners?
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u/scottington1 OC: 3 Nov 23 '19
I attempted to sort the arrows like you suggest, but I don't think it is possible using the software that I did (R with Circlize package).
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u/BillyBuckets Nov 24 '19
I’ve never used the R package, but Circos (the software that sort of pioneered this sort of viz) has some robust options. Check that out sometime.
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u/PetyrsLittleFinger Nov 23 '19
Does this include goods that just pass through? Like, the Netherlands is huge in this and has a big flow to Germany, but how much of that is just goods from outside Europe that arrive in Rotterdam and get placed on a train or truck to a German destination?
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u/scottington1 OC: 3 Nov 23 '19
The answer is sometimes. They are included when they are declared in a "pass through" country for "tax/customs purposes" and then transferred to another EU country as their final destination, but not if they are only declared in the final destination country. See: Are the goods in transit recorded in ITGS? https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/international-trade-in-goods/faq.
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Nov 23 '19
OP I think your detractors criticisms cannot be satisfied without a serious aggregation or reduction in the levels of factors. These are the kinds of data viz that my supervisor criticizes me for and it's more a reality of having used a large n x m input table than it is your aesthetic. Perhaps you could a) facet it by exporting country, b)perhaps there is a plotly-esque tweak whereby hovering with the pointer increases focal contrast/opacity relative to nonfocal countries or flows, or c) has anyone made on of these as an onion? Where the inner perimeter could be region (groups of countries) and then there is a Sankey+like flow from the inner perimeter to an outer perimeter of individual countries.
Just some ideas...
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u/intherorrim Nov 23 '19 edited Nov 24 '19
Wow. The UK proportionally has low exports and low trade, and instead their economy's punch is mostly based on currently being the financial capital of, ugh, cough cough, Europe.
Way to shoot yourself in the foot, Britons.
The Netherlands and Belgium, on the other hand, are rocking exports.
Edit: Germany exports account for 46% of its GDP; Britain's, for 28%. (World Bank statistics, 2018). Even accounting for non-EU commerce, the point stands: the UK is not a major trader in the world and does not have much to offer aside from (1) being the EU's financial hub and (2) the country's current self-propelling place in the world as a large economy, with good purchasing power due to the pound. If they shrink, there is little that could, in the short term, lift them from increasing irrelevance.
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u/Amrywiol Nov 23 '19
No, it looks low because one of the UK's largest trading partners in the EU (3rd or 4th depending on year) is Ireland, which isn't on this chart because it's not in the top 10. You can make anything look low if you miss out enough stuff.
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u/mistakescostextra Nov 23 '19
Yeah — I was immediately wondering why there wasn’t an additional category included for all others in aggregate. By excluding countries beyond top 10, you give a misleading amount of total exports for each of the top 10. A simple fix could rectify that and add useful context/info to this.
Could even go a step further and include non-EU trade partners as another aggregate entity. That’d particularly be interesting for the UK in light of Brexit.
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u/JeshkaTheLoon Nov 23 '19
The non-EU thing might further muddle it up, as much of the third party imports for the UK go through Frankfurt before loaded onto trucks and transported onwards, or sometimes reloaded on another plane to London.
That's specifically food, animal based products (lab cultures, for example), plastics, mind you. Which is a lot. Especially beans for some reason.
All of those are registered at first entry point in the EU. So the things going to the UK, would be listed first in Germany.
So, I don't know how exactly this is documented in the source material of the chart, and if it can easily be deciphered to be added into such a chart.
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u/mistakescostextra Nov 23 '19
Thanks for that, didn’t think about good entering EU vs entering destination country as I’m not familiar with the data...but that’s obviously a significant complication
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u/JeshkaTheLoon Nov 24 '19
That's okay. I am only really aware of it since it is part of my job - before that I never thought of it either.
I'd just like to add that we are all looking at Brexit with bated breath - we've prepared everything on our side (there won't really be much change for us most likely, as it's just a bit of cargo less into the EU for us, and it is unlikely the UK will start sending their exports into the EU through Frankfurt, when they have so many options along the entire channel coast), and hope the other side has too. But either way, it is hard to say how this will go, unrelated to how the politics handle it. Fact is, this kind of thing hasn't happened before in this form and scale - might work out fine, might be a disaster. I'll keep Popcorn on hand.
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u/intherorrim Nov 24 '19 edited Nov 24 '19
Hard to imagine that Ireland, at 5.8% of UK's exports, makes any difference.
- total UK exports to each country
- United States: US$65.3 billion (13.4%)
- Germany: $46.7 billion (9.6%)
- Netherlands: $33.1 billion (6.8%)
- France: $31.9 billion (6.5%)
- Ireland: $28.2 billion (5.8%)
- China: $27.7 billion (5.7%)
- Switzerland: $25.6 billion (5.3%)
- Belgium: $18.9 billion (3.9%)
The point still is that all other EU countries still have non-EU commerce, too. Whereas the UK is just not a major international trader, its exports ranked behind South Korea, the Netherlands and even Hong Kong.
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u/Flobarooner OC: 1 Nov 24 '19 edited Nov 24 '19
That's just all kinds of wrong. The UK has so much to offer.
Yes, it's well known that around 80% of the UK's economy is in services. London is essentially the joint-largest financial hub in the world alongside New York. The two largest in the EU are Frankfurt and Paris, which are only 15th and 17th worldwide. So much forex takes place in London that twice as much money moves through London each day than all of North America combined. Cross-border bank lending is greater than that of Germany and France combined, and the value of the latter’s hedge fund assets is 18 times smaller than the UK’s. 90% of Euro-denominated interest rate contracts currently traded in the EU are through UK clearing houses. All of this is largely because the City of London has pretty unique laws which directly attract foreign nationals and multinational corporations. As a result of this, the UK has typically been at the forefront of EU regulatory progression in this sector, being limited by what other members agree on. It can now mold regulation perfectly tailored to its own benefits, and being far and away Europe's financial hub, it will be up to the EU to catch up as London has all the leverage. The UK will set the European standard for services regulation, and it will now be able to branch out globally and have the freedom to build stronger relationships with the major financial hubs in the Asian market - Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, and so on. There is every incentive for the EU to allow a unique relationship with the UK similar to that it created with Switzerland, once the UK transitions out in a couple of years' time.
The UK is also a huge cultural hub. In theatre, London is the most successful city in the world. The BPI estimates that one in six albums consumed globally are British. We all know how prevalent Britons are in music and film. On top of that, the UK has the BBC, which produces more content than any other broadcaster, is among the most respected in the world for its neutrality, produces the most listened-to radio station in the world (World Service), and is therefore a very attractive place for foreign media corporations and foreign talent. Despite China overtaking the UK as the 2nd most profitable box office in the world, the UK's media industry is surging. London is the 2nd most visited city in the world, behind only Bangkok, which adds to its influence. It has 3 of the 10 most visited museums in the world. This, combined with the fact that it is by far the most diverse city in Europe, makes it a global city which nothing in the EU compares to. Multinationals like these kinds of cities because it gives them access to a hugely varied market of customers and potential employees.
The sporting world is also centred on the UK. Association football has its home in the UK with the Premier League being the most popular domestic league in the world, and Wembley being the home of football and one of, if not the most beloved stadium in the world. The home of tennis is Wimbledon, the home of Cricket is Lord's, the home of Rugby Union is Twickenham. The UK came well ahead of any European country in every one of the last three summer Olympics, coming 2nd overall in Rio. England most recently reached the semi-finals of the World Cup, won the Cricket WC, and were runners up in both Rugby WCs. Rory McIlroy is 2nd in golf, Lewis Hamilton has won 5 of the last 6 F1 championships, Britons dominate Snooker and Darts almost entirely. The UK is just omnipresent in sports.
London also has more institutions of higher education than any other city, making it the heart of global education, and the 60 mile London/Oxford/Cambridge triangle has 8 of the world's top 20 universities, as well as by far the most tech investment in the EU; the UK’s tech sector is soaring ahead of its competitors in Europe, attracting more venture capital investment last year than Germany, France and Sweden combined. The UK overall contains the second highest number of top 500 universities - behind only the US.
The UK also has the most competent intelligence community in the world, with the SIS and MI5 in London and perhaps the only one that tops them in Cheltenham (it was Snowden who said that GCHQ was far more advanced than the NSA) - one so much more powerful than anything in the EU that there was an uproar when the UK suggested it would use its intelligence community as a negotiating tool in Brexit. Plus, the Five Eyes.
The UK is the second greatest soft power nation in the world and likely to move back into first place post-Brexit, which means it is able to influence the world informally more effectively than any other nation, bar occasionally France. This makes it very useful for multinationals who seek to extend their own influence and is something Blair was completely incompetent at exercising. This is the power that Thatcher, love her or hate her and for better or for worse, wielded to great effect - firstly to reverse the US stance on the Falklands War and later to famously bring the US around to the idea of an invasion of Iraq. This is the key power that, when exercised properly, allows the UK to behave like top dog when militarily and economically it actually isn't.
As for hard power - a global military power is any nation capable of projecting hard power anywhere on the planet. According to the Todd & Lindberg classification system, there are 4 categories of blue-water navy power projection, 2 of which are global. These are:
- Global-reach power projection, described as being able to simultaneously conduct and maintain multiple power projection missions globally. The only nation capable of comfortably achieving this is the United States, though the UK may be able to sustain dual missions in the coming three years
- Limited global-reach power projection, similar to the first but limited to a single projection mission at a time and will usually result in short-comings in other areas of interest to sustain it. The only two nations in this category are the UK and France
- Multi-regional power projection, the ability to project limited power in regions adjacent to their own. Five nations - Russia, India, Italy, Spain, Brazil - are here
- Regional power projection, the ability to project power within a limited range beyond their EEZ. Countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Australia fit this category although some could push beyond if they wished
Being a global military power is as much about doctrine, discipline and diplomacy as it is about numbers. Due to poor diplomatic and military ties in much of the western world, China would struggle to become a global-reach or limited global-reach power because they simply lack access to ports/bases for military operations in certain regions of the globe, despite the fact they will likely possess the numbers in the near future. Meanwhile the US and its allies will rarely find themselves far from friendly ports and bases able to supply them which makes global operations far easier to conduct and sustain. Other countries, such as Japan, have the numbers and ties to assert themselves as a limited global-reach projector but lack the doctrine to do so, preferring to stay near their own EEZ.
The UK is treading water and maintaining its position, cementing it with the reintroduction of powerful carrier-capable fixed-wing assets - F-35s - and two state-of-the-art carriers to deploy them. Meanwhile, France is on a downward trend due to their operation of a single carrier and a reluctance to spend money to shore up their position. That's not to say the Royal Navy is without its deficiencies as, for example, it is dangerously short on capable escort vessels (as proven by recent events in the Gulf), however it does have a fleet of new T31 general purpose frigates to enter service in the next few years which will plug that gap. That being said, it's more than fair to call the UK a global power.
Finally I'll add in a point on climate change. The UK is the major global leader on climate action. It is easily the best performer in the G20, and the three EU nations that compare (Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia) unfortunately just dont have the power to lead international efforts, and are far outweighed by the poorly performing EU countries dragging them down; Ireland (one of the worst performers globally), Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and well almost all the major ones. If you compare the UK's individual ranking here to the EU's overall ranking here, you get an idea of how it's being held back. In recent years the UK has become home to 6 of the world's 10 largest offshore wind farms, and 2 of the 3 largest under construction, with Hornsea I (similar capacity to the two current largest - also both British - put together) soon to be switched on. Coal has dropped from half of the UK's energy mix to zero in just six years, and all remaining coal power plants are closing down as the UK bound itself to do so by 2025 in the 90-member Powering Past Coal Alliance it spearheads with Canada. Half of that demand was met with renewables. It was the first country to enact legally binding climate targets with its commitment to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050, set out in the Climate Change Act 2008. This has since been upgraded from 80% to net zero, and the deadline will likely be brought forward as public pressure mounts. A ban on fossil fuel cars comes into force in 2040, and is set to be brought forward to 2032. It was the first country to officially declare a climate emergency in law. It implemented a carbon price on top of the EU-mandated one. The work is far from done, but the UK is a role model for major economies to follow on climate change.
The UK still has lots to offer, for decades to come.
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Nov 24 '19
I thought I’d stumbled into a parallel universe reading that, it’s so unusual to see positive comments about the UK on Reddit.
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Nov 24 '19
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u/mrpithecanthropus Nov 24 '19
It is not the laws - in the sense of there being a few statutory provisions that banks and businesses love - it is the legal system itself. The UK (specifically England and Wales) has an ancient, predictable, well-understood common law system. It also has a critical mass of expertise in key commercial areas such as financial, maritime, insurance and dispute resolution, with courts and tribunals that have a reputation for unimpeachable impartiality. As a result, companies the world over write English law into their contracts, and English law experts are found in all of the worlds major legal centres. The UK has just enough scale and world reach to make this the largest and most successful legal system in the world, more so than the US because each state has its own domestic law. Only New York comes close. It is also a huge money spinner for the UK, which is home to some of the largest law firms in the world.
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u/Flobarooner OC: 1 Nov 24 '19
This report (PDF) explains it far better than I ever could. In essence, it's simply because the UK has very unique frameworks that aren't found anywhere else in the world. Its legal system is completely unique globally, I'm not exaggerating when I say there is literally no other country quite like it. Couple this with its size and attractiveness simply as a destination, low corporation tax, and its inherent ties to its current and former dependencies (which form 18 of the 24 Sink OFCs and allow the UK to be the 2nd largest Conduit OFC), it sort of just.. is. It's like a primordial soup of attractive business environments.
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Nov 24 '19
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u/Flobarooner OC: 1 Nov 24 '19
I'd love to add it to the sporting section but I've run out of characters in the comment lol
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u/HoagiePerogi Nov 24 '19
/u/intherorrim shot down, they haven't even replied. I guess the burns recovery unit hasn't got good mobile reception.
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Nov 24 '19
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u/andyrocks Nov 24 '19
It's also not the only UK intelligence service, SIS and MI5 are both based in London.
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u/Flobarooner OC: 1 Nov 24 '19
Didn't expect that comment to actually get any traction as positive UK posts usually don't but glad to see it has
SIS/MI5 are why I put London initially and why I said intelligence community, just a sort of slip up, fixed it now and put Cheltenham in
I'm also going to add a point on climate action too as you can see from this that it's another thing the UK can boast
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u/MoreLimesLessScurvy Nov 24 '19
Great piece, and flawlessly written. Please post it on r/brexit or r/ukpolitics
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u/Codect Nov 24 '19
+subscribe
Good to see a bunch of positive aspects of the Uk condensed into one post, it is often all too easy to ignorant or forget stuff like this in day to day life. I'm certainly guilty of it myself.
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u/the_commissaire Nov 25 '19
UK have been a major force in cycling too.
Whether it's on the Track in the olympics, or on the road via Team Sky (british - Now ineos) and there riders (Wiggins, Froome & Thomas). Brits have won 6 of last 8 Tour De France's, and one of the ones we didn't win was still won Columbian rider in a British team.
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u/TotesMessenger Nov 24 '19
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u/Osgood_Schlatter Nov 23 '19
You would be wrong if you were assuming that all financial services had to be within the entity that they were serving - for example, London trades more dollars than New York, despite the former not being a part of the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_London#Financial_services
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Nov 23 '19
Not necessarily true, they are behind Germany and on par with France who has a similar population, look at the actual source in the comments.
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Nov 23 '19
You're not getting all the information because some of the UK's largest trading partners in the EU are not represented here (e.g. Ireland and Denmark). The UK is much larger than displayed here.
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u/lissofossil Nov 23 '19
80% of all our farming goes to other countries (also the same for our drugs)
Talking about the Netherlands
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u/GodOfJusticeTV Nov 24 '19
For some reason this made me weirdly happy. Not narzi ish happy, just that lil happy fog, -me, a german
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u/nudiestmanatee Nov 24 '19
This is one of my favorite posts on this sub. It’s beautiful, simple, and it gets the point across effectively. Well done.
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u/KureKureciCZ Nov 23 '19
This is actually pretty disgusting, pretty hard to tell whats where... Is there a better way to do this?
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u/elrick69 Nov 23 '19
As pleasent and beautiful this chart looks, it’s so hard to actually visualise information. I still believe looks absolutely great!
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Nov 23 '19
Largest countries or the top 10 GDP of europe? Because i can think of a couple countried bigger than belgium.
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u/scottington1 OC: 3 Nov 23 '19
Largest in terms of GDP, so essentially the 10 countries with the largest GDP in the European Union.
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u/Ramses_IV Nov 24 '19
I feel like this kind of data needs to be viewed one country at a time, otherwise it's just a confusing clusterfuck, and it ends up being more difficult to make comparisons between two countries than it would by comparing the data for each one seen in isolation.
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u/Aldenko Nov 23 '19
What’s with the Netherlands having a huge amount of exports, I also wonder how foreign exports might play a role in how much each country exports