Naked Data - Page 2 of 21 - All the data you can eat

Naked Data

All the data you can eat

Dominic Cummings, data-driven failure

To paraphrase Douglas Adams, anyone who is capable of getting themselves made special advisor should on no account be allowed to do the job. We're looking at you Dominic Cummings, bete noir of UK in Europe and person who doesn't understand the difference between an eye test and a driving test. Th...

a month ago

The serious Empire

You don't have to read Cicero to know that the Ancient Romans gave us so many popular words and phrases relating to the sentiment of the crowd which are still in use today. But how did they really feel about life? Abishek Verma has done some sentiment analysis on everyday writings of Roman people...

a month ago

Don't Miss, My Corona

Oh no, it’s the Daily Mail

Say what you like about South African media, at least we don't really have a straight analogue for The Daily Mail - no longer the world's most popular news-site, but still such a hateful place of lies, quasi-fascism and blatant sexism that good people don't grace it with links. Amazingly, it has ...

a month ago

Alberto Cairo’s favourite tools

“If you are able to both write and design the graphics on your piece, I believe you become a better journalist.” So sayeth the master, Alberto Cairo in this interview with GIJN this week. But he's not going to leave you high and dry either, with some low code/no code tips on using Datawrapper, Fl...

a month ago

The academic news in brief

Are there too many academic journals in the world, and too many articles being published? Far be it from us to complain that there's too much science - it genuinely doesn't feel like that when listening to certain politicians - but we have heard specialists complain over the years that they can't...

a month ago

Yes, there are rules to dataviz

Lisa Charlotte Rost's brilliant essay on the rules of data visualisation is an absolute must-read for anyone who reckons they're a data visualiser, or they want to be.

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

The everyman’s guide on denying science

I'm hopeful that as a Naked Data reader, you have some kind of belief in an evidence-based reality. But this isn't true for everyone, and QAnon, Covid-denialism, Trump, and the rise of the ultra-left and right is a stark reminder of how many people employ cognitive dissonance as a shield, or weap...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

The big elections map wrap-up, by an expert

Who better to comment on maps? Stamen's lead cartographer, Alan McConchie, takes a retrospective on his favourite maps to emerge from the US elections. We've covered a lot of these individually, but there are a few gorgeous examples that we missed, like Le Monde's brilliant mix of cartogram and t...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

MozFest, Amsterdam goes virtual

8 March 2021Amsterdam, Online Mozilla's annual festival, MozFest, discussing how to make the internet a better place for all, will be held in Amsterdam and -- predictably -- virtually too next year. This huge event typically attracts over 3,000 participants from 82 countries, and if you've got so...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

Scrollytelling disaster (in a good way)

Starting with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79 which put paid to the town of Pompeii and fastforwarding to the 20th Century, Mohamed A Waked has created a short history of natural disasters in scrollytelling form. It's comprehensive - there are over 15,000 events mentioned and the 1,440 whi...

2 months ago

How to report on AI

Is it possible for journalists to report accurately on matters of machine learning, when the question of how to audit decision making machines hasn't been completely resolved even by the people that build them? It's a toughie, and one that was tackled at this year's Centre for Investigative Journ...

2 months ago

Grants and fellowships for female data journos up for grabs

WanaData, the network of female data journalists from around the African continent, is "ending the year on a high" as it puts it, by launching a series of grants and fellowship programmes to help members old and new out with story-telling resources. The range of opportunities is truly impressive,...

2 months ago

The truth is out there

The machine-learning tool for our time, researchers form the University of California have developed an AI that can reportedly tell the difference between a Pizzagate and a Watergate when it comes to the quality of underlying facts. Worryingly, the authors do admit that "someone could use the too...

2 months ago

Check out my new (AI) logo

As an ex-journalist-turned-software developer, I am very aware that AI will one day take all my career options. But not today. Today, it's the turn of designers to get turfed out onto the street. Zyro is a Foursquare-ish website hosting company that has released some pretty nifty AIs to help you ...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

Best of breed

Your Best Friend (TM) is part wolf and is ready to eat you the minute the sticks stops throwing and the kibbles stop coming. But what else is doggie DNA made up of? Other dogs of course! But which ones? To help figure it out, the Guardian has mapped out the relationships between 161 breeds. Woof.

2 months ago

The ultimate election-nerd page

While the big news agencies impressed with great graphics, magnificent maps and cutting commentary, a little open-sourced page hosted on Github that valiantly scraped away at the New York Times became the go-to source for election results. (Since some of those results are still trickling in, the ...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

Pollster: It’s not us, it’s you

Another election, another disaster for pollsters who could have done better predicting from the swoop of the swallows than the responses from the American public. But the problem isn't the pollsters, claims chief Haruspex at Ntrailz, Matthew Dessem: it's us. We just didn't understand the prophets...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

Revisiting old friends

Over at Information is Beautiful, David McCandless has gone back to the principles (if not the actual technique) of his famous Snake Oil Supplements viz to take a look at research around Vitamin D (and in particular its as-yet unproven value in the War Against Covid). The result? Informative as e...

2 months ago

A multitude of maps

If you haven't noticed, throughout November there's a #30DayMapChallenge taking place on Twitter, which challenges budding cartographers to use different techniques to illustrate geospatial data every day. There are hundreds of people taking part, and the daily themes range from "red" to "Climate...

2 months ago

The political winds are a-changin’

Not content with the usual selection of elections maps, Washington Post was inspired by the amount of hot air being generated by the politicians, and used wind map code to produce this sexy-as-hell election map. I'm blown away.

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago