Craig Datko IE 424 Section 001 April 27, 2012 Tufte Extra Credit

Naval Presence Across the Globe

The Tufte style graphical display of information I chose to create is all about the United States Navy. It can be used to explain the techniques the United States Navy uses to maintain the Superpower position and World Police Status. One of the United States Navys main goals is forward presence, which is the placement of supplies and troops so that they have the ability to act swiftly in a multitude of situations. With this Tufte graph one can better understand why this concept is put into place and how it works efficiently. The primary reason that I chose to focus my Tufte project on this topic is because naval presence will be something I will be dealing with for many years in the future. I am a member of the Penn State Navy ROTC program which means that I will be commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy once I graduate. The presence of the ships across the world has always interested me mainly because I am interested in my potential, future deployments. During the research project it helped me to learn much more than just the information displayed on this Tufte graph. I discovered how naval presence changes with world events and hotspots across the world. Another reason I chose this topic is because I felt that this was a unique opportunity to express information that strays from the usual engineering type projects that are submitted in this class. When it comes to the details of the Tufte graph there are three main variables that should be considered. The first variable that will be discussed is location. The locations of the forthcoming variables are important to the data and without this variable the rest of the graph would be rendered useless. I chose to use the entire world instead of a certain region because I felt as though the Navys presence is more impressive when put on a large scale and seen spanning across the entire map. The next variable that is seen in this Tufte graph is the triangles that are placed across the map in multiple regions. These triangles are important to show the amount of ships present in a certain area, as of April 2012. These triangles consist of four colors which all correspond with an amount of ships, 3 through 54, that are stationed within that expanse. These numbers are fairly consistent over different months and after interpretation of the number of ships in each section one can realize that areas of higher importance or conflict contain more presence as a precaution. The final variable is a supplement to the second variable. It explains the amount of time it would take ships to travel from home ports, San Diego, California and Norfolk, Virginia, to a couple of the hotspots across the world. These travel times range from 14 days to 24 days. These data points can clearly show why the United States Navy practices forward presence. Without this practice the reaction time to an event or crisis would be far too slow. The United States Navy wants to counter these occasions as quick as humanly possible. This Tufte graph shows why naval presence is necessary and how it is accomplished all in one visual representation. The graphical display of the data I created is relevant to Tufte because it takes information that would normally be presented in a one or two variable display and expresses it in a more creative manner. This multivariable Tufte graph couldnt be found anywhere else but it still portrays it in a way that could be understood by anyone, civilian or military. The main accomplishment of this graph is that the viewer can get a visual, instead of numerical, view of the naval presence across the world to better understand the information that I want to express.