Naked Data

All the data you can eat

Book learnin’

Mapping the world of academic papers with Connected Papers

If your job is writing (or reading) academic papers, my condolences. But here's a sparkly new tool that'll certainly help you in your work: Connected Papers. Built by Israelis Alex Tarnavsky, Eitan Eddie Smolyansky, and Itay Knaan Harpaz, this tool they made for themselves proved so popular that ...

Jason Norwood-Young

3 days ago

Selling the New Deal

Over at Nightingale, Jason Forrest tells the story of how striking images and dataviz were key to selling the Roosevelt's New Deal to a US population that's always been sceptical of big government. The point is that there's a strong analogy with today, as drastic measures are going to be needed t...

4 days ago

Book learnin', Nerds

Your last bookmark for R

Good news, neRds. Long-time Naked Data supporter and fellow Netherzaffer Oscar Bauffa has wrangled the most epic list of R learning material into his Big Book of R. It's beautifully arranged into topics too, from starting out to ML nerdiness, which is just as well since there are over 100 resourc...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 weeks ago

From zero to data scientist

So, you wanna be a data scientist? Terence S, with all of two years of data science learning under his belt, takes us through what he'd learn, in what order, if he were to start again. His list of maths, programming and algorithms is a pretty solid start for anyone wanting to jump in. Get learnin...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

Liven up your next Zoom meeting

Winning the much-coveted award for a tutorial on PowerPoint - PowerPoint f'chrissakes - is Storytelling with Data. It's got a "tactical tip for virtual engagement", and how to keep audiences watching during the interminable hours of virtual meetings.

a month ago

Bhekisisa teaches epidemiology

Hey journos, still struggling the complexities of covering Covid-19 as things move from panic to endurance? Not easy is it, and even if you feel like you've got the hang of reporting on disease by now, you probably haven't. Fortunately, health journos par excellence at Bhekisisa have released thi...

a month ago

Dodging dung with data

I'm vainly holding out hope that physical copies of Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West's new book, Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World will make it to these southern shores, but will likely give up and order an electronic copy if it takes much longer. It kicks off with the t...

2 months ago

Book learnin', Datum, Nerds

Awesome data!

If you're looking for great datasets to play with, look no further: a massive (and constantly growing) list on Github called Awesome Public Datasets currently features hundreds of datasets. (I considered counting them, but nah...) If you have an awesome dataset you'd like included, send a pull re...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

Making our visualisations accessible

Alt-text is that HTML element I keep skipping when uploading images, for instance to this site. But I'm leaving my readers that rely on screen readers in the lurch, effectively making large parts of my site invisible to them. And while I'm at least aware of alt-text for images, I hadn't ever cons...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

Chart colours for brand bunnies

No, this is not just another tool or blog post about choosing colours for charts. Amy Cesal deals with the complexities of finding a colour palette that works for a company's corporate identity kit, keeps in-house designers happy, and still doesn't look shit. With any luck, your colour choices wi...

Jason Norwood-Young

3 months 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

3 months 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

4 months ago

More machine learning for journalists

There's an emerging body of online resources designed specifically to help journalists master AI and algorithms, and its growing at a fair old pace. The latest entry comes from Google News Initiative and the Pols thinktank at the London School of Economics, and apparently is so sophisticated it c...

4 months ago

Spinning the colour wheel

Struggling to pick the right colours for your latest viz? The language of colours can be confusing for folks without a design background, but the colour wheel is more than a rainbow-like delight for changing RGB values. It's a tool for selecting the right tones to convey your meaning, and help re...

5 months ago

Book learnin', Don't Miss

Don’t be fooled: The journalist’s guide to foiling fake news

Craig Silverman has wrangled some of the industry's top fact-checkers and myth-busters to produce the latest version of the Verification Handbook For Disinformation and Media Manipulation, a veritable trove of methodologies, practices and examples to help the journalist separate fact from crap.

Jason Norwood-Young

5 months ago

Get your data journalism course for free here

There's plenty of resources online for upstart cubs with their eyes on becoming a data-journo, but you're not going to find an introduction that's much better than this. It's the Knight Center's six week course featuring Alberto Cairo, Simon Rogers, Debra Anderson, Duncan Clark, Jan Diehm, Minhaz...

5 months ago

Machine learning for the newsroom made easy

There's plenty of online resources for journalists who want to learn how to wrangle data for their stories, but courses can feel a little irrelevant when the examples involve iris petals or decades-old fuel consumption data. Investigate.ai is different. Not only is it delightfully "non-threatenin...

6 months ago

Book learnin', Nerds

Learn D3 today (well, probably not all of it today)

If you've suddenly got time on your hands, you're looking to learn something new, and if you're honest with yourself you're not actually going to start yoga, then check out Mike "The Legend" Bostock's intro to the graphing library that rules the interwebs, D3.js, at https://observablehq.com/@d3/l...

Jason Norwood-Young

6 months ago

Book learnin', My Corona

John Hopkins teaches epidemiology for all

As we are repeatedly at pans to point out, we're not epidemiologists here at Naked Data, but we could be. With time to fill in self- or enforced-isolation over the next three weeks, it makes sense to sign up for this free course offered by coronadata-meisters at John Hopkins University. It's call...

6 months ago

Florida Man gets data scienceing

If you want to live somewhere warm AND study data science, Miami University has something just for you: the legit-sounding Miami Institute for Data Science and Computing. It's got the usual ML and AI stuff, but encouragingly, there's also a data ethics programme, lots of talk about reaching out t...

Jason Norwood-Young

7 months ago