The Billion Dollar Gram

The Billion Dollar Gram

Billions spent on this. Billions spent on that. What does it all look like? Hopefully The Billion Dollar Gram will help.

This image arose out of a frustration with the reporting of billion dollar amounts in the media. That is, they’re reported as self-evident facts, when, in fact, they’re mind-boggling and near incomprehensible without context. But they can start to be understood visually and relatively, IMHO.

(This is one of the first images I created for my book. So a lot of the figures are from 2006/07. I’ve also visually cheated slightly here and there to make everything fit)

I hoping this will be a “living image” that I’ll keep updating all the time. So if you find any interesting, juicy or eye-popping billions, please comment below (with a source). Let’s see how high we can make this image!


source: New York Times, The Guardian, Fortune and others. See this Google doc for all details.
Posted in Comparison Chart, Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, Economics, InfoVisualisation, Infographic, Media, Political, Treemap, Visual Journalism.
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121 Comments

  1. Christian Mertes
    Posted November 19, 2009 at 2:13 pm | Permalink | Edit

    I like this visualization a lot. I think here’s a good addition: 60 billion to stop the spread of AIDS http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1118/1?rss=1

  2. Catharine
    Posted November 23, 2009 at 5:55 pm | Permalink | Edit

    Put the Annual cost of the “War on Drugs” on there and the annual cost to house all minor drug-offenders in US Prisons…

  3. anonymous
    Posted November 25, 2009 at 3:10 am | Permalink | Edit

    The US space program leading to the Apollo moon landing is claimed to have cost about $20 billion in the dollars of the 1960s.

    About $2 billion was spent on the Manhattan Project during WW2.

    The global armaments industry encourages all the nations to spend a great many billion$, but I’m not sure what the latest figures are

  4. Terra
    Posted November 27, 2009 at 3:59 pm | Permalink | Edit

    3 Trillion on the Iraq war? Need a bit more information on this, is this the total spent by the US, or includes future cost of rebuilding infrastrcture in Iraq (to what level, to pre-war or to uptopia level?)

    Overall the graphs are good, but some data points need to be clearer. Many are unrealistic extratulations, for example the 465 billion to feed and educate all the children is nice, but even if we we would need alot more money to implement it, not to mention you need to get the people to teach and build schools, also you need to supplement the families who would no longer have their children around to do vital work for their families (terrible that they have to do the work, but fact remains that they do, and family fails if the children stop working and start schooling, so that has to be accounted for too.)

  5. Phil Blumenfeld
    Posted November 28, 2009 at 2:14 pm | Permalink | Edit

    As a person who dropped out of Communication Arts for a career in Engineering I thoroughly appreciate and approve of this kind of graphical/technical presentation. I have a question about the scaling of the boxes in the Billion Dollar O Gram, though. It’s reasonable to assume that the area of the boxes is proportional to the dollar value they represent. Upon closer inspection this can’t be true: compare “Facebook” with “Bill Gates” for example. The values differ by a factor of three; the areas by perhaps two. If the boxes aren’t scaled by linear proportion to dollar value, then how are the areas of the boxes determined?

  6. Tim
    Posted November 30, 2009 at 3:14 pm | Permalink | Edit

    I like the idea, but it’s rubbish because you cheated. And I don’t care how much you cheated. Either I can trust it or I can’t, and I can’t. I’m sorry if your shapes don’t tessellate, but it would be better to use non-rectangles or leave white space than to just throw out the scale and in doing so miss the whole point of your idea.

    Also, making one diagram grow organically sounds like a nice idea, but in practice I’m not sure about that either. The huge potential benefit of this is taking values that no-one can get their head around and making them digestible. But now it’s bigger I want to compare Africa’s debt to the US defence budget and I can’t because I have to scroll around. It would be OK on a big sheet of paper, but not on a small screen. I think new thought-provoking diagrams would be better.

  7. Tim
    Posted November 30, 2009 at 3:29 pm | Permalink | Edit

    On reflection, “rubbish” is a bit strong. Sorry. As I say, I like the idea (and the pretty colours).

    A suggestion for a new diagram? I know it’s a bit morbid (and controversial), but for some reason I’ve found it interesting to compare fatalities. For instance we all agree on how horrific 9/11 was, but far more people die on UK roads every year and no-one seems nearly as bothered. A few less die on UK trains though (about 10 (02-04)) although apparently when asked, 67% of drivers thought cars were safest (http://www.railwatch.org.uk/backtrack/rw94/rw094p06.pdf).

  8. Posted December 2, 2009 at 5:52 pm | Permalink | Edit

    I’m confused. The Walmart Profits and the Russian defence budget are about $11. But one is clearly smaller than the other. What gives?

  9. Posted December 2, 2009 at 6:44 pm | Permalink | Edit

    I wouldn’t call it rubbish depending on the exact changes. Because of the grid format, there are going to be situations where adding that extra 7 pixels to get the size exactly right means that you have to leave a 50 pixel white line because you started with a 57×57 pixel square – now a 58×57 with 50 blank on one row.

    The purpose of a graphic like this is not to be able to count the pixels in each region to get precise numbers, the purpose is to give a sense of the relative sizes of widely-used numbers.

  10. The Crucible
    Posted December 9, 2009 at 1:20 pm | Permalink | Edit

    These visuals are awesome. A great way to show how f-ed up our priorities are as a society. Keep up the good work on all of the visuals.

  11. swen
    Posted December 11, 2009 at 2:01 am | Permalink | Edit

    would be interesting to add:
    $$ spent on international aid by US
    % of that aid spent purely on Israel
    its actually quite a heartbreaking comparison

  12. Andrew
    Posted December 16, 2009 at 9:53 pm | Permalink | Edit

    Completely useless if you don’t lock image real estate to dollar amount, which you didn’t. What gives?

  13. Posted December 21, 2009 at 1:19 pm | Permalink | Edit

    We, the German political magazine DIE GAZETTE, took the liberty to translate the texts in your highky impressive into German.
    We are at present asked by the biggest south German daily, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, to lat them reprint the picture with our translation.
    Credits (InformationIsBeautiful) will of course be given.
    We sincerely hope you agree with this procedure.
    Respectfully yours,
    Fritz

  14. Posted December 28, 2009 at 11:30 am | Permalink | Edit

    Nice diagram to show the budget. I will use it to show the budget of regions.
    Maybe anybody know some software to produce such nice pictures?

  15. Posted December 31, 2009 at 11:55 pm | Permalink | Edit

    This is a great way to visualize our priorities.

  16. Posted January 17, 2010 at 8:30 pm | Permalink | Edit

    i’d add some indices of the expenditure on huge scientific experiments (such as the Large Hadron Collider) !

  17. Peter Mount
    Posted February 1, 2010 at 9:03 am | Permalink | Edit

    Excellent book, but on p.26 of Information is Beautiful your diagram shows a mobile charger generates 0.26 tons of CO2 a year and a medium car 2.6tons. Surely a mobile charger is less than a tenth of a car? Decimal point inaccuracy? Thing is that people think turning their charger off will help save the world – this error supports that. The fact is it won’t – makes you feel good but has no noticeable effect on CO2 production. Not driving the car does!

  18. Robin
    Posted February 26, 2010 at 6:47 am | Permalink | Edit

    I think the total debt African HAS to pay to the Western world should be green (spending) not orange (the color of giving).

  19. Posted April 15, 2010 at 3:13 pm | Permalink | Edit
  20. Falstaff
    Posted April 19, 2010 at 10:52 pm | Permalink | Edit

    No block for 911 economic costs? As much $2 trillion reported by some estimates:
    http://www.iags.org/costof911.html

    Sept 11 is probably better described as a human tragedy, but then that is probably true for many of the blocks on the Billion Dollar Gram as is.

  21. Posted August 20, 2010 at 12:26 pm | Permalink | Edit

    This is on a similar theme a list of 100 ways the €25b which was used to save a failing Irish bank could have been spent. Puts the number into perspective….

    93 Asphalt every trunk and regional road (110,000km) of substandard countries in sub-Saharan Africa
    89 Construct six large hadron colliders, one for each Green Party TD
    75 Fly the adult population of Ireland to Las Vegas, and give everyone €10,000 to gamble with
    69 Buy a pint of Guinness for everyone in the world to celebrate Arthur’s Day (and it would count as exports)
    64 Host two Olympics Games, based on the London 2012 cost of €11.2 billion
    51 Buy Steve Jobs (€25 billion is the actuarial value on his life) and get him to work for Ireland Inc
    28 Supply the water needs of Galway city, for a year . . . with Perrier water
    8 Reduce the pupil-teacher ratio in primary schools to 1:10 for the next 20 years

    http://www.sbpost.ie/newsfeatures/100-ways-to-spend-the-anglo-25000000000-51081.html

28 Trackbacks

  1. By meneame.net on August 12, 2009 at 5:38 pm

    Gráfico para entender los miles de millones gastados en diferentes cosas…

    Gráfico muy ilustrativo para hacernos una idea del dinero (billones de $) gastado o ganado en diferentes cosas. Oímos hablar de cantidades muy grandes de dinero (miles de millones) y no somos capaces de entenderlo y ponerlo en su posición. Con éste grá…

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  4. By Visualising all those billions « Amnesia Blog on August 16, 2009 at 5:49 am

    [...] Visualising all those billions The talented visualisers at Information is Beautiful have created The Billion Dollar Gram. [...]

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    [...] August 16, 2009 by iclazie The talented visualisers at Information is Beautiful have created The Billion Dollar Gram. [...]

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  7. By The Billion Dollar Gram on August 22, 2009 at 6:19 pm

    [...] McCandless has a post on his blog where he provides a visualisation of various multi-billion dollar expenditures, donations, fortunes [...]

  8. [...] by all the talk being bandied about, over government programs running into the billions. So he created a chart of the entire mess. As he writes over at Information is Beautiful: This image arose out of a frustration with the [...]

  9. By comunicación visual « comunicarbien on August 24, 2009 at 5:11 pm

    [...] blogs, comunicación, infográficos, media Gracias a JJGN (Sriptor), he visto este infográfico que informa, por ejemplo, del volumen de gastos e ingresos de la guerra de Irak, del hambre [...]

  10. [...] The Billion Dollar Gram | Information Is Beautiful [...]

  11. [...] The Billion Dollar Gram | Information Is Beautiful [...]

  12. [...] The Billion Dollar Gram | Information Is Beautiful http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/the-billion-dollar-gram – view page – cached Billions spent on this. Billions spent on that. What does it all look like? Hopefully The Billion Dollar Gram will help. This image arose out of a — From the page [...]

  13. [...] Das Problem bei großen Zahlen ist, dass sie unser Vorstellungsvermögen auf eine harte Probe stellen oder gar vollständig überfordern. Gefühlt schwirren seit dem Sichtbarwerden (Ich schreibe bewusst nicht “Beginn” oder “Ausbruch”, da dies wesentlich früher datiert.) der Finanzkrise mehr und höhere Zahlen durch den Raum als je zuvor. Um wenigstens ein Gefühl für diese Summen zu bekommen, ist es hilfreich diese in Relation zueinander zu betrachten. David McCandless hat sich diese Mühe gemacht und in seinem Blog “Information Is Beautiful” eine aufregend schöne Grafik erstellt. [...]

  14. By The Billion Dollar Gram « worldwide star on September 1, 2009 at 4:58 pm

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    [...] What Billions of $$$ Looks Like [...]

  16. By Chart of the year… « The Lonely Trader on October 11, 2009 at 12:25 am

    [...] by The Lonely Trader on October 10, 2009 I know, the year isn’t over yet. But check this out. Wonderful visual representation of the relative costs of what we spend money [...]

  17. [...] kan finde den på Information is Beutiful, hvor den også er lettere at læse. Her er en artikel om baggrunden for [...]

  18. By Visualizing A Trillion « Bloomport U on October 14, 2009 at 11:03 pm

    [...] was magnificent.  Think for a moment, can you visualize a trillion dollars?  This document from http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/the-billion-dollar-gram/ is presents a way to help you visualize how much a trillion is and underscores the importance of [...]

  19. By THE BILLION DOLLAR GRAM | NO LIES RADIO on October 17, 2009 at 4:23 am

    [...] This image arose out of a frustration with the reporting of billion dollar amounts in the media. That is, they’re reported as self-evident facts, when, in fact, they’re mind-boggling and near incomprehensible without context. But they can start to be understood visually and relatively, IMHO. READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE [...]

  20. By The Billion Dollar Gram on November 3, 2009 at 9:48 am

    [...] 08.09 The Billion Dollar Gram Billions spent on this. Billions spent on that. It’s all relative, right? » email me » back to davidmccandless.com homepage [...]

  21. By Große Geldbeträge im Vergleich « Kreativrauschen on November 5, 2009 at 7:51 am

    [...] Information is Beautiful hat diverse Monster-Ausgaben ins Verhältnis gesetzt und in einer schönen Infografik verdeutlicht: The Billion Dollar Gram [...]

  22. By schnellze.it on November 5, 2009 at 8:55 am

    wo der große globale cash hingeht…

    eine sehr hübsche veranschaulichung von deinem liebling informationisbeautiful mit “the billion dollar gram” (billion englisch = milliarde deutsch). bild hier ist nur ein ausschnitt, ganze grafik hier:
    http://www.informationisbeautiful.net...

    nat…

  23. [...] illegalen Drogenhandel etwa gleich groß ist wie die weltweiten Ausgaben für Werbung. Das “Billion Dollar Gram” vorgsetellt auf der Webseite Information is [...]

  24. [...] von Geldmengen. Um es wirklich zu verstehen, ist es notwendig die Großansicht anzusehen, die ihr hier findet. Im Übrigen ist die Seite informationisbeautiful.net auch sonst recht [...]

  25. By Zum Wochenende (VI) « Schulbiologie on November 7, 2009 at 12:23 pm

    [...] Anguckbefehl: Billions spent on this. Billions spent on that. What does it all look like? [...]

  26. [...] jest ze strony http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/the-billion-dollar-gram/ zrobiony przez Davida McCandless. Na stronce http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/ mozna znalezc [...]

  27. By A billion here, a billion there « JocelynLing.Com on November 18, 2009 at 10:41 pm

    [...] orig­i­nal post ( and larger/clearer ver­sion of the pic­ture) can be found here. Share this on del.icio.usDigg this!Share this on RedditStum­ble upon some­thing good? Share it [...]

  28. By The Billion Dollar gram « Slightlyfamous on January 20, 2010 at 1:31 am

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