Naked Data

All the data you can eat

Jason Norwood-Young

Journalist, developer, community builder, newsletter creator and international man of mystery.

Sweet, sweet Sweetviz

Let's face it, making beautiful graphs is much too much like hard work, and shouldn't computers be magically doing this for us anyway? Introducing a concept called "exploratory data analysis", which takes a set of data and magically throws out insights and graphs -- a great first step when playin...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

You could be using Javascript for data science. (But should you?)

Javascript has quietly been taking over the world, so why not data science? Italian researcher Cristiano Fontana takes us through a sample Node.JS app just to prove that it can be done, and it's particularly interesting to me since I've been fiddling with this stuff quite heavily -- particularly ...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

RS Archer, the beleaguered British Brexiteers and their idiot son

A Twitter stream about a British family who bought a house in France, planned to retire there, and then voted for Brexit, went absolutely viral. Whether it's true or not is up for debate, but allegedly the account of RS Archer was shut down due to attacks from angry Brexiteers. Since the original...

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Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

The world’s breathing lung

Here's a quick hit of happiness for you: Alex Orenstein (or @oren_sa as he's known on the Twitters) knocked up this gorgeous timelapse of a year of vegetation growth in Africa. https://twitter.com/oren_sa/status/1274500538944675847

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

Those who can do, teach

Rebeca Pop, founder of data viz lab Vislogue, interviews some of the data visualisation industry's superstar educators, to find out what they teach, and how. This is a great primer for anyone looking for an education in data viz, or anyone looking to teach it themselves. And just FYI, Alberto Cai...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

The decline of the American empire, graphed

Somewhere in the last century, the United States took a massive misstep, unable to equitably share its prosperity between its people. Or, as the New York Times puts it in this fascinating piece on why the US lags behind other rich countries on key metrics, "In nearly every other high-income count...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

How I learned to stop worrying and love the machine (with NYC Media Lab)

If you need a crash course on the state of technology and the media (and who doesn't), check out the MACHINES + MEDIA event, a series of five discussions with some very smart people about the state of our industry, where we're going, and what pitfalls and opportunities we have along the way. The ...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

Free press versus the law

Dictators, fraudsters, and politicians take note: A great way to fight the free press and stop those annoying journalists from cutting into your profits is to simply sue them. The shocking news that the court case against Rappler's Maria Ressa in the Philippines was found guilty of libel has sent...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

Indian-Chinese clash, from above

We live in a weird new world where we can watch the build-up to national military confrontations via satellite. The limited details of the clash between Chinese and Indian forces at Galwan Valley on 15 June, which left 20 Indians and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers dead, was fought with bat...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

Can I speak to your manager?

Let's take some pressure off the Karens in the world, and spread the memes to similar names, like Kathy, Deborah, and Cheryl. The Pudding finds names that have had that spike that put Karens in a very particular space and time, giving them that memeability. (No accounting for Karen hair, though.)...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

Shifting disease detection to the left

The New York Times features an excellent long-read on data being used to fight epidemics, How Data Became One of the Most Powerful Tools to Fight an Epidemic. The article dives into the history of health data in the UK featuring William Farr, a welcome break from John Snow, who influenced him, an...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

Finally, My Corona

Pike County on how to improve your Corona numbers

Turn your county's bad news into good news with this simple little trick: invert the Y-axis, and your Corona-cases magically drop instead of increase. https://twitter.com/sydneyboles/status/1270411871674384384 Pike County as since turned its graph the right way around, but not before some excelle...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

The Internet Archive could disappear

Arguably the most important data archive on the internet, and unarguably the biggest, the Internet Archive is facing closure after a bit of an own-goal. A National Emergency Library, launched 24 March, allowed users to check out 1.4 million books with no wait-lists. The idea was to allow students...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

The font of all knowledge

There's reams of information on picking the right colours for your data visualisation, but hardly any attention is ever given to the equally-important font choice. Data vizzer Tiffany France comes to the rescue with this excellent break-down on choosing font styles, weights and colours for differ...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

The most loved and dreaded computing languages

StackOverflow has released its 2020 survey results, encompassing the opinion of 65,000 software developers. One interesting result is the most loved, most dreaded, and most desired of the varied world of programming languages. And you'll never believe which is at the number 10 spot of most dreade...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

Don't Miss, My Corona

NHS gives its data away to some dodgy orgs

The Coronavirus has given the NHS the excuse to give its data to private firms to play with. One firm that is helping them -- out of the goodness of its black heart -- is Palantir, the CIA-funded group that helped Trump steal an election, used data to sniff out illegal immigrants for ICE, and did...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

Ten million dollars for data science!

Data.org is slapping down a very large load of cash -- $10,000,000 to be precise -- in order to help drag the world into a better state with data science. Its "Inclusive Growth and Recovery Challenge" is open to anyone over 18, (almost*) anywhere in the world, who reckons their data science solut...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

OpenUp re-invents, gets its data back

Two things of note from OpenUp: First off, it has asked us to tell you that it has rebranded. (We're not sad to see the back of that egg tbh.) The second is that, in case you wondered where the hell the data portal went, it's back -- this time as a ckan instance so that corporate sponsors who off...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

Build a website for your favourite charity

This year's Do_Action hackathon moves online, so you can build Wordpress websites for South African charities in nothing but your undies. Teams of six work intensely for a week to deliver a brand-spanking-new Wordpress website for one of ten non-profits.

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

Do Not Draw a Penis

There's really not much to say about this drawing AI without giving away the joy of exploring it yourself, except that, as per the title, you were warned... Don't draw a penis now...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago