[Members Only] How I Made That: Nationwide Dot Density Map

I used a combination of existing tutorials and a bunch of shapefiles to map one dot per person. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Convert an image to LEGO brick shopping list in R

Every day you wish you could convert a picture of your family or a group of friends into a LEGO palette. Well wish no more. Ryan Timpe wrote a package that lets you input an image in R and get back… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

History of the health meter in video games

The health meter in video games wasn’t always so commonplace. It took time, iterations, and various incarnations before it converged to what we know now. Ahoy describes the history: | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Working Remotely and Where the Time Goes

How the schedules between remote and non-remote workers differ during workdays. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Unsolved killings mapped

Thousands of homicides. Some cases result in an arrest. Many end up unsolved. The Washington Post mapped areas in major cities to show the contrast between the two types of homicide cases. The data… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Shifted Social Media Usage, Among Teens

Facebook took the biggest hit in the past three years. Snapchat and Instagram got more likes. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Working Remotely and Where the Time Goes

How the schedules between remote and non-remote workers differ during workdays. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

xkcd: LeBron James and Stephen Curry pseudo-greatness

xkcd. Sometimes sports statistics are far-fetched. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

All the volcano eruptions

Slowly becoming the person who charts the past century of natural disaster events, Lazaro Gamio for Axios uses a pictogram to depict all known volcano eruptions since 1883. The vertical position re… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Original map of Winnie-the-Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood

The ink-drawn map of Hundred Acre Wood by Winnie-the-Pooh illustrator E. H. Shepard dates back to 1929. I’m headed straight for Eeyore’s gloomy place, which is rather boggy and sad. The… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Imagining gigantic places with satellite imagery

Artist Marcus Lyon imagines worlds where there are so many people that the only thing left to do is to make gigantic places to fit everyone. The patterns repeat themselves over and over, and itR… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Vintage chart shows the evolution in design of everyday objects

By Raymond Loewy, this chart from 1934 shows the shifts in design of the car, telephone, and clock, among other things. I assume someone is already working on updating this one to the present. [via… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Counting the times Kevin Durant’s shoe came off during games

This is what happens when there is a lull during the basketball playoff season. Chris Herring, for FiveThirtyEight, goes into full detail of the relatively high number of times Kevin Durant’s… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

A guide for applying to data science jobs

Emily Robinson gives advice on applying for a data science job (that you can likely generalize for most tech jobs). For example: If you have a GitHub, pin the repos you want people to see and add R… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Increasing similarity of Billboard songs

Popular songs on the Billboard charts always tended to sound similar, but these days they’re sounding even more similar. Andrew Thompson and Matt Daniels for The Pudding make the case: From 2… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Fast and slow visualization

Visualization is often described in the context of speed and efficiency. Get the most insight for the least amount of ink or pixels. Elijah Meeks argues that visualization goes far beyond this poin… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

When surveillance turns into stalking

Many surveillance apps cater to parents who want to keep tabs on their children who have mobile phones. Many of these apps are used for less parental purposes. Jennifer Valentino-DeVries for The Ne… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Basketball Stat Cherry Picking

Wow your friends during the game with random win percentages, based on various player stats. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Amazon Rekognition for government surveillance

Amazon’s Rekognition is a video analysis system that promises to identify individuals in real-time. Amazon wants to sell the systems to governments for surveillance. From the ACLU: Amazon is … | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Basketball Stat Cherry Picking

Wow your friends during the game with random win percentages, based on various player stats. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Data scientists as the new Mad Men

Ken Auletta for The New Yorker looks at “math men” replacing the Mad Men: Engineers and data scientists vacuum data. They see data as virtuous, yielding clues to the mysteries of human … | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Nigel Holmes new illustrated book on Crazy Competitions

Nigel Holmes, the graphic designer known for his playful illustrated graphics, has a new book: Crazy Competitions. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Whether it’s flinging frozen rats or parad… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

If We All Left to “Go Back Where We Came From”

Imagine that those with immigrants in their family tree left the country. Almost everyone, basically. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

What’s in a food truck

Food trucks are the real deal these days. The best ones serve a specialized menu really well, in a small, focused space. The Washington Post delves into the insides of several of these trucks and h… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

A visualization game to understand education and school segregation

Educate Your Child by Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee uses census data and the school selection process to simulate the steps you you might take in choosing your kid’s first school in Chicago. The Chi… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Go Back Where You Came From

For a second, let’s imagine that everyone with a immigrants in their family tree left the country. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Subway delays visually explained

Adam Pearce for The New York Times describes the sad state of affairs that is the delayed subway trains in New York. One delay causes a ripple effect down the line, leaving little chance to get bac… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Data is, sometimes

Financial Times recently updated their style guide: data — the rule for always using data as plural has been relaxed. If you read data as singular then write it as such. For example, we alrea… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Making useless things

Simone Giertz, bringer of joy and self-described expert in shitty robots, makes machines that succeed in failing. In her TED talk, Giertz talks about her path from “useless” things to e… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

What data visualization is for

Eric Rodenbeck from Stamen Design discusses visualization the medium over visualization the tool or the insight-providing image: Dataviz! Data visualization! I don’t think it’s for anything! I don’… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Visualizing Differences

Focus on finding or displaying contrasting points, and some visual methods are more helpful than others. A guide. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Challenges ahead for the Census count

The 2020 Census is coming up quick, but there’s still a lot up in the air. There’s no director, the bureau has to adjust to budget cuts, and a new digital system that promises to save m… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Comparison of terms and conditions lengths

Most of us don’t read the terms and conditions before we click on “I agree” for the web services we use. They’re too long, and we need likes right away. For a student projec… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

[Members Only] 3-D Printing: How to Prepare the Data in R

Moving your data from the digital screen to something more physical isn’t as tricky as it seems. Here’s how I did it. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Tweeting a map of every Census tract in the United States

By Neil Freeman, the @everytract bot on Twitter, as the name suggests, is tweeting a map of every Census tract in numerical order. It’s one map each half hour. Census data, or data in general… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Using statistical models to win almost a $1B in horse-race gambling

I think this is what statistics is truly for. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

People relationships in data analysis

Roger Peng discusses the importance of managing the relationships between people — analyst, patron, subject matter expert, and audience — for a successful analysis: Human relationships … | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Mapping a diverse but segregated America

Aaron Williams and Armand Emamdjomeh for The Washington Post delve into diversity and segregation in the United States. The boiling pot continues to get more ingredients, but they’re not mixi… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

A game to better understand the wisdom (and madness) of crowds

You’ve probably heard of the wisdom of crowds. The general idea, popularized by James Surowiecki’s book, is that a large group of non-experts can solve problems collectively better than… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Data, R, and a 3-D Printer

We almost always look at data through a screen. It’s quick and good for exploration. So is there value in making data physical? I played around with a 3-D printer to find out. | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Visualization for an audience

Jonathan Corum, the Science graphics editor at The New York Times, talks about his experiences communicating scientific research to the public. Much of visualization design is about figuring out th… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

All the buildings in Manhattan in 3-D map

Taylor Baldwin mapped all of the buildings in Manhattan using a 3-D layout. Rotate, zoom, and pan, and be sure to mess around with the parameters in the control panel for different looks. Also make… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Is the hot hand in basketball real?

With Numberphile, Lisa Goldberg discusses her research with Alon Daks and Nishant Desai at the University of California, Berkeley on the hot hand in basketball. When a player is hitting shots, is h… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Get all caught up with The Avengers using this timeline

It’s been a decade since the first Iron Man movie, and some 30 superhero characters later, we arrive at a two-parter Avengers finale. But maybe you lost track of everything that happened lead… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Building a robot boyfriend

When it comes to robots and love, the concept typically deteriorates to subservient tools to satisfy male fantasies. Creative technologist Fei Lu aims for a more complex relationship with Gabriel20… | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Waiting Game, through the steps of asylum seekers

Sisi Wei for ProPublica and Nick Fortugno of Playmatics made a game to…Tags: asylum, game, ProPublica | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Knitters and the neural network-trained machine

Janelle Shane, who likes to play with output from neural networks, teamed up…Tags: knitting, neural network | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago

Here’s what you get when you cross dinosaurs and flowers with deep learning

Neural networks have shown usefulness with a number of things, but here is…Tags: dinosaurs, flowers, neural network | Continue reading


@flowingdata.com | 6 years ago