The data is taken from Humberto Barreto’s project. The URL is given below.
This graph visualizes the demographic feature of a country. (It is called ‘population pyramid’) The population is divided into age groups, and gender, each bar representing the population in that group of age for each male and female.
Bar-chart is used, and the size of each bar represents the population, longer bar meaning larger population. Bars are horizontal, as the y-axis is representing the age group, and x-axis representing the population. The left side (blue bars) represents the population by age for males, and the right side (orange bars) represents the same for females (He uses colors for differentiating gender).
This visualization helps us to picture the demographic features of the US at one sight. By looking at the graph, we can almost immediately see the trend of population getting old in the US and Malaysia. We can see the population size of people over 95 increasing constantly, while the younger generation is not reproducting as much as before in the US. In malaysia, it is pyramid-shaped, which suggest higher mortality rate and higher reproduction rate. We see fairly symmetrical graphs in both countries in terms of gender, except population of females are much larger than males for older age group in the US.
I think the bar-chart visualizes the data well. It conveys necessary information at one picture very well. Since the images are gif that has animations, they show the changes of population structure through time-phase very well too. By looking at the graphs, you can almost immediately draw some key demographic features of a country without looking at the data-table itself.
If I just wanted to show that the population is getting old in the US, compared to Malaysia, I would rather have plotted xy-graph, showing percentage of old population on y-axis and year on x-axis and draw a function. This could make it easier to make comparison of the two countries. However, the initial one shows more detail of demographic features.