Project 4: A Thousand Suns

For this fourth project, we’ll be examining a simple time-series dataset: the history of nuclear testing by the eight (declared) nuclear nations. In the first phase of this project we will consider only the total number of test explosions across three dimensions:

the state conducting the test
the year in which it occurred
whether it was above- or below-ground

Despite the simplicity of the data, there are a number of ways to slice and group the data. Some things to consider:

Is each year plotted separately, or are the totals grouped into decades or some other multi-year chunk
Is time represented by position on the x or y axis? Or by angle? Or using color?
What are the ‘objects’ being represented in your diagram? Are they the countries, the years, or the individual tests?
How will your diagram address the ‘lull’ that resulted from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in ’96 and the more recent resurgence in testing?

Getting started

Over the next week, work with this dataset in spreadsheet form, creating charts using the built-in graph types and sketch out three different approaches to representing it in a way that tells a story.

Confine yourself to static, non-interactive representations for now, but consider any medium that could represent these values; posters, projections, and physical representations are all just as valid as pixels on a screen.

In at least one of your three variations, bring in one additional variable using data you find on the web and be sure to cite your source. This additional variable could be anything from a timeline of world events to the military budgets of the countries, the top movies at the box office, or population trends. Just make sure you can defend how it is in some way adding useful context to the data.

Feel free to use whatever tools you’re comfortable with. Programmatic drawing can be very handy but so can Excel…

Data sources

Begin your investigation with this simplified dataset collected from the Natural Resources Defense Council’s pages on the original and subcontinental nuclear powers.

This spreadsheet contains a cleaned up copy of the data. Use it to explore, summarize, or modify the information (and, in later weeks, export it as a CSV for your own usage).

Also consider taking a look at the Wikipedia page listing the various tests and providing links to country-specific pages with background information about the individual tests.

For the details of individual tests, take a look at the materials collected at “Johnston’s Archive” (and also included in the last tabs of the Google Sheet). But keep in mind that the volume of data is substantially larger, so be sure to have a clear idea of what you’re trying to collect before diving in…

Supplemental materials

If you’d like to use a tool other than Google Sheets for your analysis, try selecting File → Download from the menu and saving the current sheet as a CSV (a.k.a. comma separated value) file—it’s the most universally readable way of representing tablular data and just about any other data-processing tool will be able to read it.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory recently released the declassified 2400 FPS films of many of their atmospheric nuclear tests. Those of you whose projects are dealing with specific tests rather than the summary statistics may find stills from the videos useful in your work. Take a look at their playlist on YouTube.