I love the Guardian’s datablog. It consistently presents large quantities of data in interesting interactive ways. Yesterday it took data from the annual survey of hours and earnings, and presented it in three different ways:
- Choose a salary, and see how earnings for different jobs compare
- Choose a job, and see what the earnings are
- Choose a job group
To my mind, one of the most interesting aspects, and one which the presentation highlights, is the gender gap and how it varies between jobs. It seems to be greatest for the highest paid jobs, on the whole.
Actuaries are lumped in with management consultants, economists and statisticians, not necessarily a totally homogeneous grouping, and have a gender difference of 18%. The difference for corporate managers and senior officials is 39%.
Today, it’s got a geographic analysis based on the same data. Guess what? London and the south east come out top.
One of the best things about the datablog is that, as well as coming up with good ways of presenting the data, it also provides access to the raw data so you can do your own thing, or check that the conclusions are in fact warranted. Great stuff.