Posts Tagged ‘data visualization’
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters in the end”*…
C. J. Moran (peter-guillam123 on Github) maps the classics…
The short version: PlotLines plays classic books as journeys, on maps of their own era… PlotLines takes out-of-copyright classics and draws their characters’ journeys on a period map. Pick a book, press play, and the whole cast moves at once – or follow one person and let the map travel with them. Hover any stop and you get the place as the text itself names it, with the line that puts them there.
It began with Dracula, because Stoker wrote what is probably the best travel itinerary in Victorian fiction – a clerk crossing Europe by train, a ghost ship rounding Gibraltar with her captain lashed to the wheel, a three-pronged chase up a Romanian river at the end.
There are forty-three books now, and they are no longer all novels, or all set in Europe. A walk at Hardy’s pace across Wessex; a single London day of near-misses; a raft the length of the Mississippi; a stolen dog’s road from a Californian orchard to the Klondike ice; a two-town comedy running between Tokyo and Shikoku; a 120-chapter Chinese epic that needs five threads moving at once before it makes any sense at all; and a family driven out of a Southern town that is never once named. The shelf has turned out wider than I expected when I started, and more will follow…
Each book opens with a choice: watch the story or explore its places. A shelf of journeys: “PlotLines.”
See also: “Reading Maps“– more “journeys from fiction drawn on the real world”
* Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
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As we trace steps (and think about the ways in which travel has changed), we might recall that it was on this date in 1891 that The Hotel Hauffe in Leipzig, Germany became the first establishment to honor an American Express Travelers Cheque. Travelers cheques were first issued in 1772 by the London Credit Exchange Company for use in 90 European cities; and in 1874, Thomas Cook was issuing “circular notes” that operated in the manner of travelers cheques. But until the late 19th century, well-off travelers relied mostly on letters of credit… and less wealthy travelers risked carrying cash. American Express’ was the first system of significant scale and global scope, and offered cheques in relatively small denominations, making them available to many more travelers.
“It’s about nothing”*…
Seinfeld, which originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998 (for a total of 180 episodes over nine seasons) ruled the airwaves during the 90s. Its reign continued, first in syndication, then streaming, and hold sway to this day. The series won all of the major awards for which it was eligible (a few, several times over) and is universally regarded as one of the greatest and most influential American shows of all time. Quotes from several of its episodes have become catchphrases in popular culture.
Most of us know Seinfeld, but not all of us… and even those if us who do, have more to learn. Andy Kirk is here to help…
I was intrigued by the possibilities of mixing work with pleasure: visually exploring a sitcom through its data.
Intrigued became compelled. I wanted to explore how Seinfeld and David, with the support of their evolving pool of talented writers, managed to achieve such sustained sitcom brilliance. Much like a sports coach seeks to assemble the right players in the right combinations, to win a game, how did the Seinfeld ‘coaching team’ use their resources to assemble the right characters in the right scenes, in order to score the laughs and create TV gold?
And so began a self-motivated, long-running, entirely unnecessary, data-driven exploration of every episode of Seinfeld.
The first product of this work was my 2020 publishing of The Seinfeld Chronicles, a limited-edition printed book presenting all my extensive analysis. With 176 copies released, matching the number of written episodes, this reached a small but exclusive, passionate, and generous audience.
A few years later, I decided it was time to revisit this work and develop a new format that could reach a wider audience…
A trove of insight into a epoch-defining sit-com and a glorious example of data visualization: “The Seinfeld Chronicles: Digital Edition,” from @visualisingdata.com.
* George explaining the premise of the show he and Jerry are trying to pitch to NBC
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As we codify comedy, we might recall (on this, National Junk Food Day) that it was on this date in 1988 that The New York Yankees traded Jay Buhner (along with minor leaguers Rich Balabon and Troy Evers) to the Seattle Mariners in exchange for 33-year-old first basemen and designated hitter Ken Phelps– widely considered one of the most lopsided deals in MLB history. While Phelps had a brief, productive stint in New York before being traded again, Buhner became a fan favorite and a legend in Seattle. Over his 14 seasons with the Mariners, he hit 310 home runs and was a key piece of the team that reached the ALCS in 1995, 1997, and 2000. He was inducted into the Seattle Mariners Hall of Fame in 2004.
In Seinfeld‘s seventh season episode “The Caddy,” Yankee’s owner George Steinbrenner (voiced by Larry David) visits George’s parents to (mistakenly) inform them that their son is dead. While George’s mother tears up, George’s father Frank (Jerry Stiller) responds…
“Science explains how things work, it doesn’t always answer why they exist”*…
Still, it’s cool to know how things work. In a continuing series of “tear-downs,” Bryan Macomber obliges in the most elegant of ways…
Are you curious why a clicky Pen… clicks? How a Zippo Lighter flips open? Or what lives inside a Pez Dispenser?
I’ve illustrated tear-downs and break-downs of everyday products that you may have taken for granted. Let’s take a look inside and understand how they work. Click around, have fun and maybe learn something new!…
An illustrated celebration of the engineering around us: “Mechanical Pencil.”
* (Paraphrase of) Isaac Newton
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As we muse on the mechanical, we might recall that it was on this date (according to most sources, though a few cite the 12th or the 19th of June) in 1902 that Philadelphia restauranteurs Frank Hardart and Joe Horn opened the first Automat in the U.S. A cavernous, waiterless establishment that was a combination of fast (but fresh) food, vending, and a cafeteria. Customers put nickels into slots beside small glass-doored compartments in the Automats and turned a knob. In the compartment next to the slot, food revolved into place for the customer to receive through the glass door.
Horn & Hardart Automats expanded into a chain reaching Manhattan in 1912. With their uniform recipes and centralized commissary system of supplying their restaurants, the Automats were America’s first major fast-food chain.
For more on how they worked, see “Meet Me at the Automat” and the charming documentary “The Automat.”
“A simile is just a metaphor with the scaffolding still up”*…
Russell Samora has been fooling around with figures of speech; with his colleagues at The Pudding, he’s fielded a fascinating analysis of of that comparative workhorse, the simile…
Similes are all around us. But, if you haven’t considered this figure of speech since grade school, here’s a refresher: similes compare a shared quality of two things, often using “like” or “as.”
I pulled every simile in the form “as ___ as ___” from tens of thousands of fiction books for the top 500 most common adjectives… I thought it would be a trivial exercise, but the more I poked around, the more questions I had…
Samora explains how similes are structured and how they are used (and with what relative frequency) in literature. He examines some of the most common– and several special cases (“The Ironic Ones”). And he explains his methodology and sources… all in the context of a lovely interactive data visualization.
It’s as cool as hell: “Comparisons as Predictable as the Sunrise,” from @pudding.cool.
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As we agree with Steve Martin that “a day without sunshine is like, you know, night,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1789 that Richard Kirwan published his essay in support of the phlogiston theory (the belief, that dates to alchemical times, in the existence of a fire-like element (dubbed “phlogiston”) contained within combustible bodies and released during burning. Kirwan was among the last of its advocates.
A well-regarded scientist in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Kirwan met and corresponded with Black, Lavoisier, Priestley, and Cavendish. Indeed, while scientific history remembers him as a defender of an incorrect theory, his work probably spurred Priestley and Lavoisier, who respectively discovered and named the actual elemental agent of combustion, oxygen.
But Kirwan is also remembered for a personal eccentricity (one of many) that led to some referring to him (all too poignantly) as “crazy as a bed bug”: he hated bugs (especially flies). Kirwan paid his servants a bounty for each one they killed.
“Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion”*…
… and that data can be even more useful if we can visualize it. Andrew Zolli introduces a new opportunity…
Whether we’re contending with food shocks, responding to disasters, preventing the next pandemic, helping communities adapt to a changing climate, or just delivering basic governmental services, one constant runs through it all: people. Where we live, how we move, when we gather or flee – these human patterns shape the arc of every modern challenge. Without a deep and dynamic understanding of those patterns, meaningful action becomes not just harder, it becomes guesswork.
That’s why I’m so excited about our ongoing collaboration with colleagues at the Microsoft AI for Good Lab and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation to develop the world’s most up-to-date, highly accurate, high resolution #population density maps. Harnessing the power of Planet’s high-frequency, high-resolution satellite imagery, the AI for Good team’s artificial intelligence expertise, and IHME’s deep demographic modeling capabilities, these population maps allow us to estimate how many people we’re likely to find in every 40 sq meter patch of Earth, in every country of the world. And because the underlying data is updated quarterly, they also allow us to see change over time.
This week, we announced the completion of the first phase of this work at the United Nations AI For Good Global Summit, held in Geneva. We’ve been piloting the use of these population maps as part of the UN’s Early Warnings For All Initiative, which seeks to ensure that everyone on Earth is protected from hazardous weather, water, and climate events. In an early use-case, by overlaying population data with maps of mobile connectivity, we’ve been able to identify unconnected populations that might not be reachable in a crisis.
And that’s just one of what are likely hundreds – even thousands – of ways this kind of population data can be put to work. Knowing where people are settling, and how those patterns are changing, is foundational to everything from public health campaigns to the design of infrastructure and services. If we want to reduce wildfire risk, for example, we need to understand where human communities are pressing into forested frontiers. If we want to evacuate people ahead of an oncoming storm, we need to know how many lives are in harm’s way. And if we want to ensure people aren’t displaced by unlivable heat, we have to overlay human presence with climate exposure.
You can learn more and sign up to explore a coarser (but compelling!) (40km/pixel) visualization of the population data. At the AI for Good Summit, we also announced an Early Access Program for a carefully selected number of trusted organizations who will explore applications of the data and give feedback. If that sounds like it might be of interest, please contact services@healthdata.org…
A new tool for visualizing the world in which we live: “Everyone, Everywhere: Mapping Humanity’s Changing Footprint in Unprecedented Detail,” from @andrewzolli.bsky.social and his collegues at Planet.
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As we get down with data, we might spare a thought for a spiritual ancestor of Planet’s, Denis Diderot; he died on this date in 1784. A philosopher, art critic, and writer, he is best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d’Alembert.
The Encyclopédie is most famous for representing the thought of the Enlightenment. According to Denis Diderot in the article “Encyclopédie”, the Encyclopédie‘s aim was “to change the way people think” and for people to be able to inform themselves and to know things. He and the other contributors advocated for the secularization of learning away from the Jesuits. Diderot wanted to incorporate all of the world’s knowledge into the Encyclopédie and hoped that the text could disseminate all this information to the public and future generations. Thus, it is an example of democratization of knowledge.
It was also the first encyclopedia to include contributions from many named contributors, and it was the first general encyclopedia to describe the mechanical arts. In the first publication, seventeen folio volumes were accompanied by detailed engravings. Later volumes were published without the engravings, in order to better reach a wide audience within Europe…
– source
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