How Long Do Senators Actually Serve?

Today is the 2015 State of the Union address by President Obama. His speech has already been widely written about, and as with most SOTU addresses presenting it is largely a formality. There are many traditions associated with the SOTU, including the POTUS having to be invited to give the talk.

Another SOTU tradition, which I find very American (and started in the 1960's), is the SOTU response given by a member of the opposite political party to the POTUS. This year Joni Ernst, a brand new Senator from Iowa whose campaign was dominated by hog castration, will be the 16th woman to deliver a SOTU response.

Senator Ernst may be a public figure for quite some time, so I wondered today:

how long do Senators typically serve? 

There are some very well known examples of career Senators, for example the lengendary badass, Daniel K. Inouye. But what of the typical Senator? Here are some numbers...

After nearly 230 years, the US Senate has more than 1855 distinct former members. The term length for Senators is 6 years (compared with the typical length of 2 years for representatives).

Here is the histogram of term durations for all past Senators. Note: some people served multiple, non-consecutive terms, or changed parties, which counts in this data as a separate term. You can clearly see the spikes of 1, 2, ... 6 terms. The average term is 7.6 years (median 6 years) for all past Senators.

However, the typical duration a Senator serves appears to be changing. Above I have plotted the duration versus the year elected for all past Senators. You can see in the running 2-year median the typical serving duration has increased, especially since WW2. While the overall average for length served is 7.6 years, since 1950 it has risen to 11.8 years. This means on average Senators are elected twice, and will serve during at least 2 presidencies.

This is longer than the average rein of a Pope (7.3 years), but shorter than a US Supreme Court Justice (16.4 years).

GitHub repo with data is here

We have always been at war

This absurd title is of course taken from Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In the 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama reiterated his promise to bring our troops home from "America's longest war". 

"Longest war huh? That's a hell of a thing" my inner monologue replied.

Curiosity once again got the best of me, and I wondered: how long does war normally last? Let's find out! 

Visualizing Devastation

This week marked the second anniversary of a terrible natural disaster, the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan. We watched the destruction unfold on television, hoping the friends we had in Japan were safe. It was absolutely heartbreaking and stunning to watch.

This earthquake was the 5th most powerful ever recorded (smaller than the 2004 Indian Ocean quake and the 1964 Alaska quake), and had massive after-shocks for months. Here is a very well done visualization that shows all the seismic activity around Japan in 2011

[direct link to video]

I watched this probably 4 times. It's brilliant and sobering. At first the subtle noises associated with each 'quake seem silly and unremarkable. When March 11 hits everything changes, and you're drawn in by sound, the sight, the movement...

The yellow line is the cumulative number of earthquakes per day. Before the big event the line is straight, a roughly constant background of small quakes that are always present  in the ring of fire. By the end of the video, this line still hasn't gone back down to the normal flat line, indicating the rate of earthquakes per day is still much higher than before.

All I can say is wow. A beautiful visualization of a terrible disaster.

How long do Popes usually serve?

In 2013 Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation from the Papacy, to the surprise of millions (if not Billions) of people. His reign as leader of the Catholic church felt very short for two reasons:

1) he is the first Pope for several hundred years to resign
2) his predecessor was the second longest serving Pope in history

For those of us young enough to not remember a time before Pope John Paul II, the 8-year reign of Benedict XVI feels particularly brief. I then wondered: how many years on average does a Pope reign?

Plots that Changed the World - III

Today I'm very happy to publish the next installment of my continuing series of posts on visualizations that changed the world. (Part I, Part II) The title is, of course, a double entendre as I'm both reviewing the plots (graphs/maps/diagrams) that are themselves historic or represent key points in history, as well as the "plots" of the story behind them.

Magellan - Traveling the World

As a child, you should come across some variant of this map once or twice. If your childhood was anything like mine, it was sandwiched between boring spelling lessons and unimaginative math quizzes.  But, dear reader, ponder for a moment the absolute magnanimity of what these people accomplished. They sailed around the %&@$ planet!!!

The voyage of Ferdinand Magellan, from Wikipedia

Plots that Changed the World - II

Today I'll continue my series of posts Plots that Changed the World. This time I'm focusing four of the most important results in astronomy's history. These are plots that changed astronomy, and in turn our understanding of the universe. 

Astronomy has a long history of changing the world. Ancient peoples relied on astronomy to plan crop seasons, foretell the outcome of wars, and in recent history stars provided the most reliable/accurate means to navigate and tell time.

If you ask your neighborhood astronomer what the most famous or influential figure in the field is, they'd give you a wide range of answers (come to think of it, that's actually a really interesting survey to conduct...). The four graphs I have chosen here are undoubtedly famous, and behind each are wonderful stories of human intrigue and hard-fought discovery. 

Other important physical figures, such as the beautiful clock tower in Prague, the Antikythera device, and (many) complex astronomical alignments of buildings, easily come to mind as noteworthy in the history of astronomy. As always, I've picked graphs that resonate with me, often because of the stories surrounding them. I invite you to share your thoughts on these plots and other famous astronomy results in the comments!

Let's proceed in chronological order...

Plots that Changed the World

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I spend a lot of my time looking at plots (aka graphs, charts, figures...)  If done carefully, graphs can be informative, artistic, personal, edifying, and even clever/witty. So often they are hasty, convoluted, gritty, and confusing. Frequently you encounter figures that seem to have been made out of spite for the data, or to merely satisfy tradition in the field. 

There are a wealth of opinions on what constitutes a good graph, and the philosophies behind creating them. Since there is commonly little formal training for scientists in the art of visual communication à la graphs, I think there is much still be said and written on the subject. I hope to bring some outside expertise and opinions to If We Assume on this very matter. 

One aspect about graphs that has entranced me is their ability to tell a story. A universal tenet of effective figures is that they must tell the story better than any other medium, better than a text description, a table, or an equation. Otherwise they are redundant. By visualizing the story (actually the data) we make it more human, more digestible. It touches chords, associates with memories, and should affect us like a good parlor trick.

The title of this post is a double entendre. I am presenting five plots/graphs that are famous, and have changed the world in a way. Each figure also represents a plot/story, capturing and quantifying the human saga throughout some piece of history. Most are not attractive enough to merit studying their aesthetics unfortunately.