Anil Kandangath, the winner of Google's DataVizChallenge
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 00:38 IST
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"Where Did My Tax Dollars Go?" is made up of a simple interface where winking George Washington asks you to choose your income and filing status (single, married) from a couple of drop-down menus. After plugging in the right information, you are taken into a screen that shows how much federal taxes you have paid. It also displays how much was eaten up by Social Security, Medicare taxes, and what your tax rate turned out to be. A pie chart also displays a slice for each federal category, so you can see how much was given to national defense, the environment, health care, and other areas. Clicking on a particular piece of the pie drills down even further, so clicking on defense tells you how much was spent on the Army, how much on the Navy, how much on the Air Force, and more. When asked Anil what made his project different from the others. He said "People remember stories well. They might not remember individual facts; but when you craft those facts together in a compelling way, those facts become part of something more than the sum of their parts, like a memorable tale." They may not recall individual facts; but when you can craft those facts together in a compelling arc, those facts become part of something more than the sum of their parts: a memorable tale.
Anil Kandangath is basically a Senior Software Engineer (Telecommunication) at SiRF Technology. He studied at the University of Calicut and Arizona State University. He was previously a research associate and a Computer Programmer at the Arizona State University. Anil is an engineer by day and a Photographer by night. He runs an online photography site called "The Naked Frame". Kandangath future propectives is project 'GitHub' which allow users to visualize tax allocations for different years, or to see state data rather than federal, or to see similar breakdowns for other countries. Kandangath hopes that his context-driven narrative project will empower information and its users.