Last Wednesday at 9:50 a.m., ten minutes before schedule, Marita Otero, professor of Information Graphics at my alma mater, called me on SkyPe. I add the students and start a group call.

“Can you hear me?” “Xaquín?” “Marita, I can’t hear him in this computer” “Aren’t you suppose to hear yourself through the headphones? I can’t” “Bfff clink, I can, bfff bfff, hear, bfff clink, lots of bffff interferences” “Do not talk all at once, please” “Hey, I can hear him” Clunk! Call failed. This was going to be hard to do this way, so I called a single computer connected to speakers. In order to ask they would just get a microphone.

I explained a little bit about thinking process: select, parse and chew on the data until is tender, choose the right viz, and — if it is an online piece — the right interaction. At the end, I proposed an exercise, which according to Marita will be mandatory to do. Last week, Eurostat published it’s quarterly review of the G.D.P. growth in the European Union. They had to find a different approach to the same idea: Spain didn’t grow as much as the other big European economies.

One of the students asked if by using a map, instead of a bar chart, we would be already doing a more attractive graphic. My wife would say: “A map. Again? What a bummer!” For her if it isn’t 3D it’s not sexy anymore. Another one asked if it the solution wouldn’t be more like finding a sexier data set, instead of finding a prettier presentation. Bingo! (Someone was paying attention).

My solution to the exercise was this: the percentage difference in the index of industrial production, one of the O.E.C.D. short-term indicators.

Spain’s Mild Bounce
A look at the index of industrial production shows how elastic the economies of Italy, France and Germany seem to be, after touching bottom this spring. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom continues to fall and Spain doesn’t seem to be able to get out of the crisis — despite the Government’s economic stimulus.

Advantages over the GDP? It’s monthly so you can actually see the effect of the Spanish economic stimulus solely in the month of April, when it started. And you’re showing something new, that not many newspapers have published and that offers an original approach to the same idea: Spanish economy is lagging compared to the rest of the E.U.

In a few weeks, the solutions from the students. We’ll comment them then.

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