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Data Visualization and Cholera: An Unexpected Connection

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Radial chart london cholera

Data Visualization and Cholera: An Unexpected Connection

Necessity is the mother of invention, and in the mid-1800s, understanding the spread of cholera was a matter of life and death.

Ruthless Efficiency

Cholera was a ruthlessly efficient killer, with both rapid onset and severe symptoms. By the time the disease made its way to London and New York in the early 1830s, hundreds of thousands of people had died across Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Not only our personal and national interests, […] it may be said without exaggeration, [that cholera] concerns the whole human race.

– Thomas Whiteside Hime

Needless to say, the human race was concerned. Thanks to high-speed printing press technology, daily newspaper circulations were rising dramatically, and this allowed journalists to experiment with new reporting techniques, including charting data.

cholera line chart

At the time, the chart above was such a novel approach that it required four paragraphs to explain how to read it. People of that era were simply not used to seeing data in a visual form. At a glance though, the chart is extremely effective at communicating a grim message: cholera had ravaged New York City over the summer of 1849.

Despite the concerted push to eradicate the disease, the medical community was still largely in the dark about how to prevent future outbreaks. Because doctors could treat numerous patients without falling ill, it was assumed that a miasmic environment (i.e. slums, densely-packed housing) was causing the spread.

Data Viz in the Time of Cholera

Today, we have tools that allow us to map just about anything, but in the mid-1800s, mapping data was still an innovative concept.

As early as the 1830s, geographers began using spatial analysis to study cholera epidemiology. The heat map below shows which sections of Paris were hardest hit by a recent outbreak of cholera.

1832 cholera map paris

In 1854, Dr. John Snow was convinced that cholera was spreading via tainted water and decided to display neighborhood mortality data directly on a map. This method clearly revealed a cluster of cases around a specific pump.

john snow cholera map
View the full version of the map here

The result is one of the most influential maps in modern history.

In addition to the real-world utility the map provided in helping physicians understand how cholera was spreading, it also exemplified a seismic shift in thinking that opened up new avenues for data to be analyzed and displayed.

Despite the tragic circumstances of the time period, we can be thankful that the urgency of the situation allowed the world’s pioneering researchers, journalists, and physicians to experiment with new data visualization techniques to better understand the world.

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Technology

Charting Grand Theft Auto: GTA’s Budget and Revenues

Dive into the GTA budget through the years, with GTA VI set to be the most expensive video game of all time.

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A cropped chart comparing the GTA budget and revenue across three game titles.

Charting Grand Theft Auto: GTA’s Budget and Revenues

Over 10 years since the launch of Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V), the second most-sold video game in history, Rockstar Games has announced its sequel GTA VI will be “coming 2025.”

As the anticipation only grows for this next big entry in the franchise, we take a look at the GTA budget through the years. How much have the last two games cost to make, how much have they earned, and how do they compare with the latest entry?

Data for this visualization comes from Statista, TweakTown, and Twitch Metrics.

How Much Has GTA VI Cost to Make?

The GTA franchise has grown enormously in scale from humble beginnings as a top-down, 2D video game in 1997. Fifteen installments later, the upcoming release, GTA VI, is estimated to be the most expensive video game to be made yet.

Here’s a look at how much GTA VI and the last two major releases cost, and how much revenue they’ve earned as of August 2023.

YearTitleProduction Costs ($)Revenue ($)Copies Sold
2025 (est.)GTA VI$2B (rumored)N/AN/A
2013GTA V $265M$7.7B185M
2008GTA IV$100M$2B25M

In 2008, GTA IV cost around $100 million—already a budget that rivalled big Hollywood releases. However with 25 million copies sold, the game earned nearly $2 billion—a five-fold return on its production cost.

Five years later, GTA V (2013) cost more than $200 million to make—twice GTA IV’s budget. A decade after its release, GTA V has generated close to $8 billion, with hundreds of millions in annual revenue from subscriptions and in-game purchases—a model that its successor is sure to follow.

In fact, subscription fees and in-game purchases represented 78% of Take-Two Interactive’s (parent of GTA developer Rockstar Games) revenues in 2023.

Analysts estimate the to-be-released GTA VI’s costs at $2 billion, including marketing and other expenses. A massive open-world (set in the Miami-inspired “Vice City”), cutting edge graphics, and a reportedly brand-new game engine are all reasons for the game’s outsized budget.

For comparison, the current most expensive games to have been made include Red Dead Redemption 2 (also by Rockstar) and Star Citizen, both reportedly with a $500 million budget.

Meanwhile, Take-Two Interactive shares are up more than 50% for the year.

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