Data Visualization

How bad is the deficit really? We bring you all the data going back to the 1940s• Get the dataHow bad is Britain's deficit? The latest set of figures show that Britain's deficit was £2.5bn lower in April than the same month a year earlier.The Office for National Statistics said public sector net borrowing came in at £85.1 for the 2012-13 financial year. That's a £35.8bn improvement on the £120.9bn in the previous year..Heather Stewart writes today: George Osborne received a boost on Wednesday with news that the deficit was £2.5bn lower in April than the same month a year earlier, boosting hopes that his plan to repair the UK's public finances is back on track.We have the complete set of data on Government borrowing, all the way back to the 1940s. All political parties have faced their fair share of debt through the years - almost as if the economic climate has its own life independent of who is managing it. UK public debtWhat is the deficit? When the ONS talks about the deficit, they take a simple measure - the gap between what's coming into the government in taxes and receipts versus what's being spent. Most commentators look at net borrowing as the deficit figure, because it includes investment spending. It's different to the national debt - which is the total the country owes.So last month the budget was in deficit. Here are the key facts for November - if you exclude the temporary effects of the financial interventions in the banks:• Public sector current budget deficit was £5.6bn in April 2013; this is a £2.5bn lower deficit than in April 2012, when there was a deficit of £8.2bn. • Public sector net borrowing (PSNB ex) was £6.3bn in April 2013; this is £25.4bn higher net borrowing than in April 2012, when net borrowing was £-19.1bn. • For 2012/13, public sector net borrowing (PSNB ex) was £85.1bn; this is £35.8bn lower net borrowing than in 2011/12, when net borrowing was £120.9bn. • For 2012/13, central government net cash requirement was £109.7bn; this is £16.8bn lower net cash requirement than in 2011/12, when net borrowing was £126.5bn. • In 2012/13, public sector net borrowing and public sector current budget deficit are reduced by £6.4bn as a result of cash transfers from the Bank of England Asset Purchase Facility Fund to Government. • In 2012/13, public sector net borrowing and public sector net investment are reduced by £28.0bn as a result of the transfer of the Royal Mail Pension Plan in April 2012. • After removing the effects of the transfer of the Royal Mail Pension Plan and the transfers from the Bank of England Asset Purchase Facility the first 2012/13 estimate of public sector net borrowing is similar in level to last year's borrowing at £119.5bn, £1.4bn lower net borrowing than in 2011/12. • Public sector net debt was £1,185.3bn at the end of March 2013, equivalent to 75.2% of gross domestic product (GDP).The ONS data below shows monthly, quarterly and annual debt and deficit - what can you do with it?Download the data• DATA: download the full list as a spreadsheetMore dataMore data journalism and data visualisations from the GuardianWorld government data• Search the world's government data with our gatewayDevelopment and aid data• Search the world's global development data with our gatewayCan you do something with this data?• Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group• Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk• Get the A-Z of data• More at the Datastore directory• Follow us on Twitter• Like us on FacebookGeneral election 2010Economic policyEconomic growth (GDP)Tax and spendingPublic financeOffice for National StatisticsGovernment borrowingLiberal-Conservative coalitionAlistair DarlingSpending review 2010Office for Budget ResponsibilityJulia KolleweSimon Rogersguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The Rendition Project, a collaboration between UK academics and the NGO Reprieve, has produced one of the most detailed and illuminating research projects shedding light on the CIA's extraordinary rendition project to date. Here's how to use it.• See The Rendition Project interactive hereThe Rendition Project, run by UK academics, has collaborated with the NGO Reprieve to produce one of the most detailedand illuminating research projects shedding light on the CIA's extraordinary rendition project to date.In a single interactive graphic, it shows in great detail the data behind every confirmed and suspected rendition flight, and then – as it's also intended as a tool to fuel further research and digging – a huge number of other flights of the planes linked to rendition. In total, the data powering the graphic runs to more than 11,000 lines.Of course, that means that the graphic's complex, and so we've provided a guide on how to read and interpret it below. A key caveat is that not every flight contained within the interactive is tied to rendition: some are suspected rendition flights, others are simply flights from planes with tail numbers that were used on suspected rendition flights.It's also important to note that just because a particular company owned or operating a plane believed to have been involved in rendition, it does not necessarily follow that the company itself was involved or even aware of those activities. In some cases, it's unclear whether the airline companies would have been aware of the purpose of the flights.A wealth of supporting data and research – including original documents – has been published directly on The Rendition Project's website.Now, here's how to get the most from the interactive:Picking what to look atBy default, the graphic shows a huge tangle of different flight routes – it's displaying information on the 1,500 or so flights marked as significant within the data: the ones with some suspected involvement in rendition (those doing advanced research can toggle this off using the "key circuits only" drop-down menu).The graphic's easiest to use if this is narrowed down. The graphic is broken down into "circuits" of flights: a full trip made up of several different legs. The screenshot used to illustrate this post represents a round-the-world circuit made up of a number of different airport-to-airport trips.Circuits can include original journeys from America, R&R stops in the Caribbean, refuelling stops, and the central rendition journeys themselves.The menu on the left-hand side of the graphic gives a range of ways the information can be narrowed down: trips which only take in certain airports can be picked, or particular companies, or particular individuals known to have been targets of rendition. The date range can also be selected using the sliding toggles.Hitting the large "SEARCH" button at the bottom-left will then update the map with the new settings.What the different colours meanDifferent individual flights are colour-coded by their significance.The simplest flights are marked in grey. These are legs of the flights where the researchers had no reason to believe there was any detainee aboard the aircraft. These mark refuelling stops, planes getting into position, R&R stops, or similar.At the other end of the scale, strong red lines mark a flight designated a "rendition flight". These are flights where the researchers are as near as possible as investigators on these topics can be to certain that a detainee – often a named detainee – was aboard the plane. These are backed by a wealth of evidence.Paler red lines mark "highly suspicious" or "suspicious" flights – one where there is evidence – often strong – to believe a detainee was aboard a given flight, but where the researchers are not quite so confident. Some of the "suspicious" flights have been flagged because of very similar routes or timings to flights tied to rendition, rather than specific evidence on that particular flight.The

The Rendition Project has spent three years creating an interactive guide to CIA rendition flights of terrorist suspects, containing more than 11,000 rows of dataJames Ball

About 35,000 meteorites have been recorded since 2500 BC, and a little over 1,000 of them were seen while they fell, based on data from the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society. Carlo Zapponi, a data visualization designer, visualized the latter in Bolides. We saw a mapped version of this data a while back, but Bolides takes a time-based approach. A bar chart shows the number and volume of meteorites that have been seen over time, and on the initial load, you get to watch the meteorites fall, one bright orange fireball at a time.

It's not just UK homeowners that are considering downsizing, one of the country's biggest landowners is doing it too: the government. We look at how the state estate has changed since 2011Get the dataMore data journalism and data visualisations from the GuardianThe government has been criticised in the past for its inefficient use of the buildings it owns. From the plans for small businesses to take over the disused premises to suggestions that they be turned over for community use, there has been pressure from a number of quarters that the government could save space and money.It appears that they've responded to that pressure. Data released by the Cabinet Office today shows that the government's estate has shrunk 10% from 10.3m square metres in 2011 to 9.2m square metres in January of this year. The data unfortunately does not include information on who these properties were sold to (or, if they weren't owned, who they are no longer being rented or leased from) what they are now being used for or the amount of money spent/saved per building. It does however show that, taken together, 190 government buildings split between 31 different departments or organisations shrunk by 1,081,535 square metres between 2011 and 2013.That does not mean that every government building shrunk. In fact, 39 of those included in the data actually increased in size and 31 didn't change at all. The biggest changes were:HM Revenue and Customs shaved off a whopping 205,000 square metres from its estate - cutting it down to a mere 1.1 million square metresThe next biggest shrinkage was for the Ministry of Justice's National Offender Management Service (NOMS) which lost 117,000 square metresHer Majesty's Court Service by contrast witnessed the largest growth (42,000 square metres) closely followed by the British Transport Police Authority who acquired new premises 41,000 square metres in sizeThe State of the Estate report also looked at other features of the government estate. It found that 764 buildings were constructed after 1990 out of the 2,719 government building that had their age profiled. 182 of those buildings date back to pre-1900.The report also looks at how sustainable the various government buildings are and finds that most are performing well in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, water and waste. And just like responsible homebuyers, the report looks at the energy performance of new government acquisitions. Topping the list are the new Ministry of Justice buildings in Caernarfon and Llandrindod Wells.The largest vacant public buildings were to be found in the North West and the South West where 41,00 and 40,000 square metres respectively were not in use.Though there isn't a breakdown per building, the report does show which government departments and organisations have the largest annual running costs. At £604m per year, it's perhaps unsurprising that the department dealing with prisons tops the bill - the Ministry of Justice. Speaking about the changes, Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office said:We are pushing forward our ambitious programme to sell property we no longer use and get out of expensive rentals.Since the last general election we have saved the taxpayer over a £1 billion and made space available in desirable central locations for redevelopment. This is not only about changing the way we work but generating an economic boost. The changes over the past two years are part of the Government Property Unit strategy, the next stage of which concentrates on putting the existing space to better use. What do you think about these changes? Do they reflect a sensible rationalisation of otherwise inefficient resources? Or is downsizing an inevitable consequence of public sector job cuts? Share your views via Twitter @MonaChalabi or @GuardianData or by posting a comment below.Download the data• DATA: download the full spreadsheetCan you do something with this data?• Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flick

Reader Jack S. sent over this chart (link): The first problem readers encounter with this image is "What is MMI?"  I like to think of any presentation as a set of tearout pages. Even if the image is part of a book, or part of a deck of slides, once it is published, the writer should expect readers from tearing a sheet out and passing it along. In fact, you'd love to have people pass along your work. This means that when creating a plot such as this, the designer must explain what MMI is in the footnote. Yes, on every chart even if every chart in the report deals with MMI. MMI, I'm told, is some kind of metric of health care cost. *** What a mess. They are trying to use the metaphor of "measuring one's temperature", which I suppose is cute because MMI measures health care costs. Next, the designer chose to plot the index against the national average as opposed to the dollar amount of MMI. This presents a challenge since the thermometer does not have a natural baseline number. This is especially true on the Fahrenheit scale used in the U.S. Then, a map is introduced to place the major cities. The bulb of each thermometer now doubles as a dot on the map. This step is mind-boggling because the city labels aren't even on the map. So if you know where these cities are, you don't need the map for guidance but if you don't know the locations, you're as hopeless as before. How the data now gets onto the complex picture requires some deconstruction. First, start with a bar chart of the relative index (the third column of the table shown above). Then, chop off the parts below 85 (colored gray). Next, identify the cities that are below the national average (i.e. index You can see this by focusing only on the chart above the map. In other words, this part: To get from here to the version published, add a guiding line from each bar to the dot on the map for the corresponding city. Notice that a constant-length portion of each bar has been chopped off, and now each bar is augmented by some additional length that varies with the distance of the bar chart from the geographical location of the city as shown on the map below. For instance, Miami, which is furthest south, has the biggest distortion. *** The choice of 85 as a cutoff is arbitrary and inexplicable. If we really want to create a "cutoff" of sorts, we can use 100, which represents the national average. By plotting the gap between the city index and the national index, effectively, the percent difference, we also can use the sign of the difference to indicate above/below the national average, thus saving a color. *** One of the most telling signs of a failed chart is the appearance of the entire data set next to the chart. That's the essence of the self-sufficiency test.

Inflation in the UK has fallen for the first time since autumn 2012, hitting 2.4% in April. Get the full data over time, see how it compares with pay - and understand the new measures• Interactive inflation data explorer from Timetric• Get the data• More data journalism and data visualisations from the GuardianHow pay has fallen behind inflationUK inflation has fallen for the first time since autumn 2012, hitting 2.4% in April, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed today. The ONS state that "this is the first time the 12-month rate has fallen since the increase in tuition fees contributed to the growth in the CPI rising to 2.7% in October 2012. The intervening six months have seen inflation remain relatively stable". Katie Allen writes today: Falling petrol prices pushed down UK inflation more than expected last month, bringing some relief to both households and Bank of England policymakers.The consumer price measure of inflation fell for the first time since last autumn and stood at 2.4% in April, down from 2.8% in March. The drop was driven by lower fuel costs and airfares as the oil price fell, more than offsetting a rise in food prices after damage to crops over the long winter, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.There is more than one method of measuring inflation. Up until today, we were mostly concerned with the consumer price index (CPI) measure - which is the government's favoured one. In September 2011, when the CPI stood at 5.2%, it had never been higher in recorded history. The CPI is important because it is used for uprating pensions, wages and benefits.The second measure is the retail price index (RPI) which has now been dumped as a national statistic (although the ONS will keep publishing it for a while).Instead we now have CPIH, which includes owner occupiers' housing costs and RPIJ - the new version of the Retail Prices Index (RPI). If you're interested, the old RPI measure stands at 2.9% this month, down from 3.3% last month.This is how the indexes compare:We have also added in pay data - and you can see how inflation has been racing ahead of average earnings. Even with the falls in previous months, people's wages are not increasing as fast as the cost of living.There are some important differences between the two ways the ONS measures inflation. The government prefers the consumer price index, which also includes services, housing, electricity, food, and transportation, but the retail price index covers more items. The RPI includes housing costs and is used for many pay negotiations and used to be used for pension payments. We've included both here - just click on the links on the spreadsheet. You can get the full list of items in the inflation basket here.If you want to see how different elements of inflation have changed, check out this interactive data explorer from Timetric.We have gathered all the data for inflation since June 1948. Let us know what you can do with this data.To find out more about how RPI and CPI differ, explore this set of interactive charts. The graphics show a breakdown of the different measures and components of inflation, and you can compare rates between countries.Download the dataDATA: UK inflation since the 1940s - CPI and RPIINTERACTIVE: how we visualised the dataMore dataMore data journalism and data visualisations from the GuardianWorld government data• Search the world's government data with our gatewayDevelopment and aid data• Search the world's global development data with our gatewayCan you do something with this data?• Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group• Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk• Get the A-Z of data• More at the Datastore directory• Follow us on Twitter• Like us on FacebookInflationEconomicsQuantitative easingFinancial crisisDeflationEconomic policyBank of EnglandGovernment dataOffice for National StatisticsGeorge OsborneMervyn KingAmi SedghiSimon Rogersguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media

What do emptier waters look like? This web aquarium shows declining fish populations over the past 100 years - and it uses more than 200 datasets to do it. We recommend that you closely analyse the data showing that the population of big fish has been decimated while small fish are now overly abundant. Or else you can leave it on your screen as a digital pet and a grim modern Tamagotchi.Mona Chalabi

In collaboration between USGS, NASA and TIME, Google released a quarter century of satellite imagery to see how the world has changed over time. The images were collected as part of an ongoing joint mission between the USGS and NASA called Landsat. Their satellites have been observing earth from space since the 1970s—with all of the images sent back to Earth and archived on USGS tape drives that look something like this example (courtesy of the USGS). We started working with the USGS in 2009 to make this historic archive of earth imagery available online. Using Google Earth Engine technology, we sifted through 2,068,467 images—a total of 909 terabytes of data—to find the highest-quality pixels (e.g., those without clouds), for every year since 1984 and for every spot on Earth. We then compiled these into enormous planetary images, 1.78 terapixels each, one for each year. Be sure to check out the Timelapse feature on Time.

Heterosexual civil partnerships are on the cards for the UK, thanks to a tabled amendment to government plans on gay marriage. Is there any evidence as to how many people want them?Read the reality check from Shiv Malik hereGet the dataMore data journalism from the GuardianWhen your stance on a subject risks you being branded as homophobic, disrespectful of religion, out of touch or anti-establishment it might be better to argue your case on the basis of cost. And with a subject as sensitive as gay marriage on the table, that's exactly the strategy many MPs appear to be adopting. Or at least indirectly. In fact, the current debate between MPs is about the potential price tag if heterosexual couples were also to be granted civil partnership rights but many suggest that, if passed, the amendment could derail the gay marriage bill.The estimated costs for amending the bill have varied between £90m to £4bn - leading critics such as the Conservative MP Tim Loughton to brand the numbers as "back of fag packet scaremongering". While Shiv Malik is taking a look at how the numbers stack up on the reality check blog, we're considering the number of people the legislation is likely to affect.Peter Tatchell, sponsor of Equal Love, a group campaigning in favour of both same-sex civil marriage and opposite-sex civil partnerships, said "you can't put a price on equality. When it comes to equal rights, cost should not be a factor". He added, "if civil partnerships were made available to heterosexual couples in the UK there would probably be a similar significant take up".We're not so sure. For one thing, there's a difference between short-term and long-term demand - as demonstrated by the number of civil partnerships in the UK which fell quite steadily from 16,106 in 2006 to just 6,795 in 2011.The Datablog covered all the numbers the last time that the Office for National Statistics released data on civil partnerships in July 2012. Here are some of the main statistics that came out of our analysis then (you can find these, and more, in the data link below)The number of people entering a civil partnerships (106,834) was five times the number initially predictedThe average age for entering a civil partnership was just over 40 for men and 38 for women1,768 civil partnerships were dissolved between 2007 and 2011Given that heterosexual couples have the option of marriage (which currently offers a preferable pension to widowed partners than a civil partnership) it seems unlikely that heterosexual civil partnerships will see the same intial uptake. When the Government Equalities Office looked instead to what had happened in other countries such as Argentina, Canada or Iceland where same-sex marriage has been introduced they found that there was "insufficient evidence" on demand. With one exception: the Netherlands.The Netherlands is also a critical case study for the proposed amendment since it has followed a path similar to the one projected for the UK - same sex couples were allowed to enter into registered partnerships from 1998 and in 2001 same sex couples could enter into civil marriages. Since 2001, registered partnerships and civil marriages have been open to same sex and opposite sex couples and they are able to convert between the two.As data from the Netherlands shows, the number of partnership registrations between men and women did increase. But the numbers weren't huge - from 2,847 in 2001 to 7,774 in 2002 (compared to 83,970 marriages between men and women in the same year). In 2009, Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle began a legal challenge after applying for a civil partnership and being refused. The pair had the backing of Equal Love which, according to its website, also receives the support of MPs and MEPs from the Labour, Conservative, Green and Liberal Democrat parties.You can add your voice to this debate either via Twitter to @MonaChalabi or @GuardianData or by starting a discussion below. Download the data• DATA: download the full