Batter Up!!!

The following post is what we call a digital visualization.  As soon as I read about this assignment, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.  A few years ago (more than I'd like to admit), one of my co-workers and I were talking about this huge contract that Alex Rodriguez signed with the Yankees.  I was in my first year of teaching, and we decided to figure out how many years it would take me to make his one year salary.  At $28,000 per year, it was pretty depressing when I found out how many years it would take.

The following is a visualization based on average national teacher salaries.  I played around with many of the  graphing tools that were offered up to me in the assignment.  However, when all was said and done, all I did was use simple graphing tools on Google.  There you have it!

The injustice of it all!  

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Alex Rodriguez, who is the highest paid player in major league baseball, is set to make $29,000,000 this year alone.   That is more than the president of the United States.  Crazy, huh?  To put this in perspective, I thought it would be interesting to compare this salary to that of teachers.  Here’s what I came up with.

Salary in a Year

Where’s the teacher salaries?  See that tiny sliver?  

So how many years would it take these teachers to make A-Rod’s one year salary?

One more stat. . .

I find these numbers alarming, especially since professional athletes are taught by fine teachers.  What are your thoughts???