Italy's environmental fragility & some books
A data card on environmental EU funds spent by population in Italy
Paris 2024 has started and more on EU projects
Cohesion projects of the EU in Italy I’ve recently done a new data card for the project AwareEU where I’m looking at data from the Cohesion funds of the EU....
The EU Cohesion Policy, plus Dublin's tragic story with typhoid
The EU data & the viz I’ve just published a new blog (and a new card, see below) about the funds that the EU invests in each regions for growth and...
Low emission bus fleets in Europe
Dear subscribers, hope you’re enjoying the late spring - it’s torrentially rainy here in Edinburgh (with moderate flooding events too) with few opportunities...
Another card on Italian food
So, I told you last time that I’d be using the same data for multiple cards - here goes, a new one following-up from my previous, that still focuses on main...
Italian food - ingredients in data
This post is about food. I've done a new data card - it took me a while between finding the data and displaying it, but the good thing is I have done a...
Artificial neurons and logical tables
A post on artificial neurons, which are somewhat the basis of neural networks, themselves the basis of artificial intelligence! The topic is of course long,...
Quick question on what you like on Doodling Data
Hey all, As per the snippet above this newsletter started with my "data doodles", which are and will keep being its core part. However, in time I started...
The most frequently used keys in Classical era music
📺 Watch my short talk with TalkPython about my data cards, where I showed and talked through a bunch of them! Onto the card now. I was interested in looking...
Doodling Data will chat to TalkPython
Hello all, this is just a very short communication to let y'all know that I'll be chatting to Michael Kennedy of Talk Python (great podcast if you don't know...
A journey through Caravaggio's colours, in data
Michelangelo Merisi, known universally as Caravaggio, is undeniably one of the most accomplished artists ever existed. Born in Milan in the second half of...
The New Year's concert in Vienna
The concert of the Vienna Philharmonic from the Musikverein in Vienna is a tradition of the first day of the year for many people, often enjoyed while...
Doodling Data, reloaded - hello!
Hey there, you're getting this because at some point you signed up to Doodling Data on its previous Substack home, which isn't active anymore. I've just...
Michelin restaurants & stars by country
This post has been made possible by the data provided by Pierluigi Vinciguerra of The Web Scraping Club who provided me with the data (well organised!) from...
Dissecting the gradient descent method
This post is quite old, I wrote it for the first time in 2016 (!) and it passed through some revisions until it finally landed here in the Excursus section....
Entropy, data and Machine Learning
No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it. — P K Dick, Galactic...
Bad Data Science job specs
Fountain pens, image generated with whatever AI tool Substack uses. This post was first published in 2021 on my blog but I’ve slightly edited it here....
Wealth and inequality
In one of my recent posts (see below) I mentioned en passant that the distribution of wealth in a population is power law: there’s usually very many people...
The data round-up #4 - August 2023
Well, it’s already the end of August. September is looming over us, which will hopefully provide a much need respite to those of you living in places...
Power laws, beautiful and damned
🔊 This post inaugurates another section in this publication, dedicated to posts of a more technical nature: nerdy divertissements, deep dives, coding...
Books I've read - in the ages
If you are an avid reader or even just the intermittent bookworm, you probably have a “want to read“ list of books longer than your “read” list. That is my...
The data round-up #3 - June/July 2023
The EU AI Act - a major step On the 14th of June, 2023, the EU Parliament has approved its “negotiating position” over the EU AI Act, the legislative...
A collection of awesome material
📚 You can learn a lot for free on the Internet. This page puts together resources on data, data science and related fields which I find absolutely brilliant....
How much do we talk about climate change?
For this story, I am re-publishing an old post I had on my blog, which originally came out in 2020, with some adaptations. I didn’t manage to update the data...
Best of the 80s (in music), again
This one is a follow-up to my previous card, here: To recap on the data, I had used the Spotify API to gather the best tracks (based on popularity, a measure...
Data Science & Avocados
Image by REPIC STUDIO on Pixabay. 🎙 This post inaugurates a new section in this publication where I’ll occasionally share thoughts and reflections on data...
Oh the '80s, we still love the music
“Hell yeah” is Johnny Lawrence’s reaction at Ali’s Facebook message in which she wrote “I’m glad we went to high school in the ‘80s, no question we had the...
The data round-up #2 - May 2023
👋 Hello and welcome to the second issue of my opinionated round-up of things in data, a collection of news from the field, material and resources, plus some...
Ahoy from Doodling Data
👋 Hey everyone, hope you’re having a blast of a weekend! I’m just writing a quick post to: Introduce myself a bit better to those of you who are new hereRe-...
Bar charts: so popular, so abused
👋 Hey folks, welcome to Doodling Data! I’m Martina, I doodle little data visualisations by hand and I talk about them. This is the first issue in a new...
The amazingly diverse world of viruses
Viruses are biological marvels: so tiny, so sly. They are typically an order of magnitude smaller than bacteria and they’re the most common organisms on the...
The data round-up #1 - April 2023
👋 Hello and a special welcome to those of you who subscribed recently! You can recover past issues on the site, they’re always available. Feel free to...
Italy and the shape of pasta
📢 Hey everyone, first of all some little news: I will start proactively using Notes, the new Substack feature, where I will post news and content about the...
Do we know our cooking fats and oils?
The nutritional content (per 100g) of 16 cooking oils/fats, the graph displays saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, along with their smoke...
The EU of working women
Every year on the 8th of March see and read “inspirational” messages on gender equality from various institutions, companies and organisations that remind us...
Romance languages: so near, so far
Folks, it’s another heatmap today. By the way, you may have noticed I skipped a week - sorry! I’ve had a bunch of things on didn’t manage to finish this in...
Cocktails, spirits & data
Maybe you’ve been doing dry January and are now looking forward to a tipple, or maybe you’re just like me: I drink very little but are somewhat fascinated by...
2022, annus horribilis
Hey everyone! First of all, I’d like to say hello to all the new subscribers as a bunch of you arrived here recently 👋 - I’m really happy to see this little...
Christmas keeps upping the movies game
I got curious as to whether we’re producing more and more Christmas movies every year, as judging from the number of things that usually drop on Netflix come...
Not just Martinis
Everyone knows that James Bond drank a lot, but how much exactly, and what did he gulp down, other than the notorious “shaken, not stirred” Martinis? Well,...
New England Recipes, circa 1900
Today, we’re looking at data about food recipes from New England dating from the early 1900s. “New England“ is the collective name for the group of United...
A journey through Renoir's colours, in data
This is a fairly long post, originally published on my site and slightly edited for here. But you can certainly skip the technical and art details in the...
Dickens' "Pictures from Italy", a Victorian travelogue
I have recently embarked on a journey across books devoted to adventure and travel - it's being quite the reading journey (pun intended), and "Pictures from...
Hello from little data stories - coming soon
Hi, it’s Martina. You may know me, whether IRL on from somewhere digital, possibly Twitter (while/if you’re still there). If you don’t know me, I’m a...