Browsing All Posts filed under »Statistics«

Review: Now You See It by Stephen Few

August 2, 2013 by

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My conclusions: Awesome book. Buy it here: Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis. With the advent of computerized visuals in the late 1960’s, statistician John Tukey pointed out that exploring data would be one of the greatest strengths of interactive computers. In Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative […]

Simplifying data-and why it can be dangerous

May 4, 2013 by

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Is simplicity in data always desirable? Part 1 I recently stumbled on a really cool blog post looking at the alignment of buildings on the Open Street Map (OSM) database.  The author loaded the OSM database for the British Isles, and then calculated the azimuth* of each building.   His results are interesting. What does […]

Using statistics to lie, and why democracy needs statistical literacy

August 3, 2012 by

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I have often argued that we should encourage more statistical literacy in school and society in general.  This is not just because I am a statistics nerd.  Statistics is a language just like English; you can use it to describe the world, to clarify and the generalize.  You can also use it to lie or […]

A new infographic – please comment

November 2, 2011 by

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This is going to be a short post. I recently made an infographic for a client.  It actually started out as a poster for an academic conference, which was why I went with a simple, white/blue/black design, but they wanted a web-compatible format as well.  I have almost no experience with this kind of work, […]

INGO’s and the beauty of implied correlation

March 27, 2011 by

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A while back I read an article (Turner 2010; available here) that explained the rapid growth in the number of international Non-Governmental Organizations (INGO‘s) as a function of  of demographics and the structure of economic systems in developed countries. Essentially, the authors argue that an over-supply of cultural and economic elites led to the creation […]

Global android activations and the power law

March 7, 2011 by

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I recently saw a video mapping the rates of global android activations.  While very nice looking, it also piqued my interest because I noticed something that has been kind of bothering me recently.  That thing is, of course*, the power law. Alright, so first the video. It comes right from the android developer’s youtube channel, […]

AAAS Visualization Challenge

March 2, 2011 by

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Data visualization isn’t limited to the social sciences. As a case in point, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes the journal Science) recently held a competition for data visualization. There were some really cool ideas – a team from MIT tracked where pieces of trash ended up, a Russian team created a […]

The brain as a pattern recognition machine

February 9, 2011 by

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I came across a group of researchers doing precisely the kind of work that I have been advocating for on this blog.  This is really exciting stuff that I am still working through, but I wanted to share it with you because they do a good job of introducing a conceptual framework for approaching visual […]

Stats with Cats

February 4, 2011 by

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I have a cat named Ellis. (Disclosure: that is not really a picture of my cat. My camera isn’t working. Taken from Big Black Cat.org) Ellis is usually not very helpful with my statistics questions, but I just wanted to inform our readers of a really fantastic cat/website that can help.  For an excellent introduction […]

The superbowl, earthquakes, and spatial statistics

February 4, 2011 by

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In anticipation of Superbowl weekend, I figured I should post a football-themed data visualization. Now, I was thinking about doing something on one of the playing teams, but my best friends are split down the middle between born-and-raised Wisconsinites (including Dan Plechaty, one of our contributors) and Pittsburgh natives. So I decided to display this […]

Seeing Complexity

We are devoted to bringing you visual data from academic sources, around the web, and our own imaginations. It is our goal to make reading statistical data more accessible, reasonable, and fun, especially in the social sciences.

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