Multivariate Display

So the information I wanted to represent was immigration trends in the U.S. from 1960-2000. Via http://www.migrationinformation.org/datahub/ I was able to obtain yearly immigration numbers from 1960-2000 and I was also allowed access to pie charts that broke down the proportional make up of those immigrants by nation of origin.

At first I had planned on making a line graph, my x-axis would be the year, the y-axis would be the total number of immigrants, and the points on the graph would be marked by pie charts that would illustrate the make up of those immigrants. I attempted this, and soon realized that my pie charts would be too small and thus insignificant.

After taking a look at the Napoleanic multivariate graph I was inspired towards a new solution. I decided to create stacked bar graphs that would illustrate the proportional make up of the immigrants, and the time frame, and then highlighted over the bar graph I made a line graph that showed trends in total number of immigrants. This was my grand aha moment and I was very pleased with the result.

I acknowledge that the large amount of countries displayed may be overwhelming to all dissect, however, I also believe that significance and attention should be drawn to the patterns portrayed by those countries who's numbers are numerically significant, such as Mexico, Canada, and the UK. Attention should also be drawn to the increasing amount of immigrants found under "all other countries". Furthermore, the emergence of new countries should also tell a tale as more recently a majority of the amount of immigrants come from Southeast Asia and Latin America.