Chinese New Year vs. American Thanksgiving

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Makeover Monday 2019 Week 6

About Makeover Monday

MakeoverMonday is a social data project which “offers inspiration and a dose of perspective for those who communicate data, and allow people to explore different perspectives and approaches to create more effective visualizations.”

To be more specific, “Each week we post a link to a chart, and its data, and then you rework the chart. Maybe you retell the story more effectively, or find a new story in the data. We’re curious to see the different approaches you all take. Whether it’s a simple bar chart or an elaborate infographic, we encourage everyone of all skills to partake. Together we can have broader conversations about and with data.”

Inspired by Dong Yu (an amazing data analyst also graduated from USC), I started this project from January 2019 and hope to better understand how to interpret data and translate insights into impactful visualizations.

All my Tableau visualizations can be found here through my Teableau Public profile.

Makeover Monday Week 6

This week the dataset is pretty simple and straighforward, yet very interesting. The project focused on visualizing the differences between how Chinese and American celebrate their own major holidays: Chinese New Year and Thanksgiving, respectively.

The original visualization and dataset is here in case you are interested, and the data source is from Statista.

I reshaped the dataset from long format to wide format, and took into account the population of the two countries by using the per capita amount in each category. I have attached my simple R code below.

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library(readxl)
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)

setwd("~/Documents/USC/Career/Makeover Monday/Week06")
data = read_excel("Chinese New Year vs Thanksgiving.xlsx")

# Extract the total population for both China and USA 
china_pop = data %>% 
  filter(Category == "Population Census 2010",
         Country == "China") %>% 
  select(Amount) %>% 
  .$Amount

usa_pop = data %>% 
  filter(Category == "Population Census 2010",
         Country == "USA") %>% 
  select(Amount) %>% 
  .$Amount

# Calculate per capita amount for each category
data = data %>% 
  filter(Category != "Population Census 2010") %>% 
  mutate(amt_per_capita = if_else(
    Country == "China", Amount / china_pop, Amount / usa_pop
  ))

# Reshape the dataset from long to wide format, remove redundant columns, and rename new columns
wide_data = data %>% 
  spread(Category, amt_per_capita, "") %>% 
  select(-Amount, -Unit) %>% 
  rename(`Expenditure per Person` = `Holiday retail and restaurant expenditure`,
         `Trips per Person` = `Number of trips during holiday`,
         `TV Viewership Percentage` = `Holiday TV viewership`)

write.csv(wide_data, "reshaped dataset.csv")

I used bar chart below to visualize the differences in each category.

Insights

  1. It is not surprising to see that a higher percentage of population are watching TV during holidays in China than in the U.S., since it is almost a tradition for Chinese families to watch Spring Festival Gala （春节联欢晚会）while they are waiting for the countdown to new year. Whereas in the U.S., with the affluence of online streaming provider like Netflix, less people are watching TV nowadays.
  2. Cultural differences also can be seen from the number of trips per person during holidays in two countries. Thanksgiving is mostly for family reunion in the U.S., while during Chinese New Year, besides family reunion, we also tend to visit relatives and friends who may live in another city nearby.
  3. I am surprised by the huge difference on expenditure in the two countries, since Chinese people spent quite a lot on buying gifts and preparing for food on New Year’s Eve. I do believe that different price levels and living standards should be take into account to better analyze the difference between the two countries in terms of expenditure.