Posts Tagged ‘data’
“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable”*…
Data visualizations that make no sense...
More at “WTF Visualizations.”
* Mark Twain
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As we celebrate clarity, we might spare a thought for the mathematician, biologist, historian of science, literary critic, poet, and inventor Jacob Bronowski; he died on this date in 1974. Bronowski is probably best remembered as the writer (and host) of the epochal 1973 BBC television documentary series (and accompanying book), The Ascent of Man (the title of which was a play on the title of Darwin’s second book on evolution, The Descent of Man)… the thirteen-part series, a survey of the history of science– from rock tools to relativity– and its place in civilizations, is still an extraordinary treat. It’s available at libraries, on DVD, or (occasionally) on streaming services.
“Big Data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it”*…
You’ve probably heard of kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, or even terabytes.
These data units are common everyday amounts that the average person may run into. Units this size may be big enough to quantify the amount of data sent in an email attachment, or the data stored on a hard drive, for example.
In the coming years, however, these common units will begin to seem more quaint – that’s because the entire digital universe is expected to reach 44 zettabytes by 2020.
If this number is correct, it will mean there are 40 times more bytes than there are stars in the observable universe…
The stuff of dreams, the stuff of nightmares: “How Much Data is Generated Each Day?”
* Dan Ariely
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As we revel in really, really big numbers, we might spare a thought for Edgar Frank “Ted” Codd; he died on this date in 2003. A distinguished computer scientist who did important work on cellular automata, he is best remembered as the father of computer databases– as the person who laid the foundation for for relational databases, for storing and retrieving information in computer records.
“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”*…
From Glenn Macdonald (in his capacity as Spotify’s genre taxonomist– or as he put’s it “mechanic of the spiritual compases of erratic discovery robots that run on love”)
This is a mapping of genres to words, and words to genres, using words that are used distinctively in the titles of songs. A genre’s words are ranked by how disproportionately they appear in that genre’s songs’ titles compared to all songs. A word’s genres are ranked by the position of that word in each genre’s word list. 1525 genres and 4712 words qualify.
Visit “Genres in Their Own Words” And while you’re there, explore the genre map and the other nifty resources at Glenn’s site, Every Noise At Once.
* Bob Dylan
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As we slip on the headphones, we might spare a thought for Sir George Henry Martin; he died on this date in 2016. A record producer, arranger, composer, conductor, audio engineer, and musician, Martin began his career as a producer of comedy and novelty records in the early 1950s, working with Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, and Bernard Cribbins, among others. In 1962, while working at EMI/Parlophone, Martin was so impressed by Brian Epstein’s enthusiasm, that he agreed to record the Beatles before seeing or hearing them (and despite the fact that they’d been turned down by Decca).
Martin went on to produce 23 number ones on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, 19 of which were by The Beatles. Indeed, Paul McCartney referred to Martin as “the fifth Beatle.” He also produced chart topping hits for McCartney (“Say Say Say” with Michael Jackson and “Ebony and Ivory” with Stevie Wonder), Elton John (“Candle in the Wind”) and America (“Sister Golden Hair”).

George Harrison, Paul McCartney, George Martin, and John Lennon in the studio in 1966
“Induction for deduction, with a view to construction”*…

Mushroom cloud from the world’s first successful hydrogen bomb test, Nov. 1, 1952
At RAND in 1954, Armen A. Alchian conducted the world’s first event study to infer the fissile fuel material used in the manufacturing of the newly-developed hydrogen bomb. Successfully identifying lithium as the fissile fuel using only publicly available financial data, the paper was seen as a threat to national security and was immediately confiscated and destroyed…
How a bench researcher used publicly-available market data to unlock the secret of the H Bomb: “The Stock Market Speaks: How Dr. Alchian Learned to Build the Bomb” (pdf).
* Auguste Compte (attributed by John Arthur Thomson in a quote at heading of the chapter “Scientific Method,” in his Introduction to Science
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As we comb the columns, we might recall that it was on this date in 1883 that the S.S. Daphne sank moments after her launching at the shipyard of Alexander Stephen and Sons in Glasgow. The 500-ton steamer went down with 200 men on board– all of them working to finish her before the shipyard closed for the Glasgow Fair. Only 70 were saved.