Naked Data

All the data you can eat

Adam Oxford

Adam Oxford is a freelance journalist, media consultant and civic tech enthusiast. He also works closely with startups developing solutions to access to justice problems.

Don't Miss, My Corona

As it spread it led

While millions around the world fear for their livelihoods in the wake of the coronavirus clampdowns, Niemen has confirmed what every one with a passing familiarity with the media knows... bad news can be good for business. Just as we saw with the Trump Bump, certain online news audiences in the ...

3 weeks ago

Corona through the looking glass

The kind of augmented reality goggles that are so critical to SF classics like Charlie Stross' Halting State may never catch on. Just this week, premier purveyor of such products, Magic Leap, announced it was trying to flog itself off to the lowest bidder. If only they'd seen this video first - i...

3 weeks ago

Can you fix it? Yes EU can!

Remember the days when you could swap a phone battery without prying open a glass case with a hair drier and guitar pick? Young readers may be astonished to learn that once upon a time, people actually fixed their washing machines when they started squeaking rather than throwing them away. Today'...

3 weeks ago

Trainers wanted! Apply within

Can you teach the fine art of data-driven storytelling to journalists and folks from government? The Human Sciences Resource Council (HSRC) in South Africa is looking for up to three part-timers to deliver workshops over the course of a year. Applications open for a short period now.

4 weeks ago

Corona at the data conference

The old adage that you should never become the story is a vain hope for attendees at last week's NICAR conference in New Orleans. NICAR is arguably the big annual event for datajournalists in the calendar. Many delegates will have been looking to sharpen their data interrogation skills to improve...

4 weeks ago

Life is good

Coronavirus and economic collapse got you down? If it seems like the end times are upon us, don't worry - life really is getting better. Or at least it is for members of the OECD, which The Economist regularly refers to as "a club of rich nations". It's just released its How's Life 2020 report, w...

4 weeks ago

100 years of failure (and then there was Trump)

The Trump/Kushner "peace plan" for the Middle East strikes us as one of those things that no-one really takes seriously until it is suddenly the new normal, because we were all too busy getting distracted by the 'flu as it was pushed into law. So you should probably study it more than you have do...

a month ago

Win 10 grand from the treasury

We may have mentioned Vulekamali just once or twice when we talk about government budgets, like after Tito Mboweni's speech last week. It is excellent, and should be used more. To this end, the curators of this excellent window in to spending by the National Treasury are encouraging folk like you...

a month ago

News about coronavirus news going viral

This seems to be the week that corona-panic really hit home, as Covid-19 passes new milestones on the road to pandemic almost hourly. Just today, South Africa confirmed its first domestic case and - almost despite ourselves - the caretaker at Naked Data Towers stocked up on handwash. To be fair, ...

a month ago

Do linguists code better than maths grads?

An aptitude for languages, not numbers, might indicate whether or not you're going to be a good programmer. At least, that's what boffins at the University of Washington in the US reckon, based on a study of adults learning Python. In a series of online tests, the people who picked up Python fast...

a month ago

Is Myst still shit?

Maybe not the most pressing question of the year so far, but one answered in incredible detail by the inimitable John Walker of Rock, Paper, Shotgun, whose righteous anger is once more awakened during a playthrough of the 1990s "videogame" "Myst". A good read even if you actually like Myst, and t...

a month ago

Goodbye SETI@home, but the search goes on

Given that no-one uses screensavers any more, the news that the SETI@home project is shutting down at the end of this month doesn't really come as a surprise. But it is, to deploy the overused cliche, the end of an era. For more than 20 years the project has been sending out packets of astronomic...

a month ago

We need to save StatsSA

The plan to reduce the cost of government in South Africa has been somewhat controversial, to say the least. But whether you side with treasury prudence or the workers in danger of losing their jobs, let's all agree that Stats SA must not become a victim of austerity. Because it's already struggl...

a month ago

A smelly supercharger

Described by New Scientist (paywall) as the "world's stinkiest fruit" - yet also considered a delicacy in some regions - the durian could be powering your electronic devices soon, apparently. Turns out the rather fruity fruit can act as a supercapacitor, storing energy as static electricity. Beat...

a month ago

Bringing the cheque and the postal order

If you ever want to truly understand what it means to be punctual, go ride on the Dutch railway network. My (admittedly) limited experience of it suggests that trains are moving around with timing down to the second. Jan Willem Tulp has visualised all those orderly engines by charting the timetab...

a month ago

Happy BiRthday!

Stand by for a whole weekend of errant miscapitalisation, as the R community worldwide celebrates two decades of its favourite stats langauge. R is, apparently, a "leaper" - version 1.0.0 was released on 29 Feb 2000, so is also technically only five. It's come a long way from the clunky tool of a...

a month ago

Spotify killed the radio host

Song-streaming goliath Spotify got into the podcatcher business relatively late in the game, but is proving itself a force to be reckoned with. That may be an issue for media houses playing with audio formats: Nieman has been digging through the listenership stats and discovered that while news s...

a month ago

The infernal machine

The tragedy of modern journalism is that so much effort often goes to waste. All writers know that all-too-often the story they have slaved over, crafted, cared for and meticulously researched will end up being one of the least read on the site. The pain of seeing exactly how many people preferre...

a month ago