411: quantum of sollazzo
#411: quantum of sollazzo – 2 March 2021
The data newsletter by @puntofisso.
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Heya! Service message: from this week’s issue, I’m moving away from Mailchimp and trialling a new system to send the newsletter, Buttondown. I’m doing that for a variety of reasons, including ballooning costs whereby Buttondown has a gentler pricing ($5 every 1,000 subscribers), but also because almost everyone I know with a free newsletter (e.g. Duncan‘s brilliant log) these days swears by Buttondown.
Buttondown is also a one-man company with raving reviews, and I’m very attracted by the concept. My workflow is much faster on it than it was on Mailchimp, so I’m quite positive about it. That said, I’m still getting acquainted with the online editor, so if you see anything amiss or weird, please let me know.
Let me also welcome Serah Njambi Rono as the newest Github Sponsors supporter of “quantum of sollazzo” on the top tier. Serah works at The Carpentries, the organisation behind the Software Carpentries and Data Carpentries workshops and is also one of the co-organisers of the 6th csvconf, the international conference about data on the web, which you should all check out. Thank you Serah!
A little data reflection for you this week comes from this tweet which reminded me of John Tukey’s seminal (and brilliantly titled) paper “Sunset Salvo” (paywalled version on JStor). The tweet captures one of its most quoted excerpts: The data may not contain the answer. The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.
I keep repeating this as a mantra to anyone who – professionally or leisurly – claims that “the data says” or that “the data shows”. Data don’t have answers. Datasets are a way to, in fact, explore questions. Data is not neutral: using data has got whatever agenda the data user has. The only way to use data properly is to acknowledge that agenda, and be open and transparent about it. This theme was one of the lines I explored in a recent lecture to the University of Bologna about Data in Public Communications.
COVID
COVID cases sonified
Jamie Whyte created this brilliant video capturing in animation and sound the increase of COVID cases in the UK. It’s rather… creepy.
COVID in Europe
Francesco Paolo Paolicelli, an Italian data analyst, has created this at-a-glance comparison of COVID cases in Europe, ordered by deaths per million. The data comes from Worldometer, so I’m sure someone here could replicate it with a less controversial data source (hint).
Tools & Tutorials
The promise of Wikidata
How journalists can use the crowdsourced open knowledge base as a data source
An intro to Wikidata, Wikipedia’s machine readable sibling.
OSINT At Home - Tutorials on Digital Research
A YouTube playlist of tutorials that include image reverse search, identifying a location from a picture, and satellite imagery timelapses.
Dataviz & Analysis
Building ages in the Netherlands
I had seen this before in its 2D incarnation, but this “beautiful 3D map of all 10 million buildings in the Netherlands, coloured by their age” goes one step further.
All data is available.
(via Davide Tassinari)
Wikipulse
A nice visualization of Wikipedia popularity trends.
Mapping the Winter Storm’s Impact
The New York Times takes a look at the recent power issues in Texas, using data from PowerOutage.Us (which I covered in the previous issue.)
The pandemic is bringing back “traditional” gender roles
This article from the European Data Journalism Network looks at how the COVID pandemic has caused work equality to go backwards.
Geo
Launching the Facebook Map
Cartographic legends Stamen tell the story of how they built Facebook’s global, multi-scale base map. They make some interesting points.
You may notice that our map doesn’t include any icons for points of interest, as you might expect from a normal web map. That’s because the map is intended to be a foundation for marker layers that will be placed dynamically based on how the map is being used, whether for recommendations, local search, or any number of future uses. Our base map design with pale colors and no icons allows overlaid social layers that use more saturated colors to come to the foreground.
Everything else
Why I’ve tracked every single piece of clothing I’ve worn for three years
I love data-obsessed people.
Have you ever wondered whether expensive clothes are worth their price? Or had that subtle feeling of guilt when buying something pricey, and then justifying it because you will wear it so many times, even if you have no clue if it’s actually true? If you thought yes, then this is for you.
I would try and replicate this, except I can no longer fit anything I purchased pre-lockdown…
There’s also an automatically updating dashboard of this project.
(via Guy Lipman)
Every Noise at Once
A very rich map of music genres, with hot links to listen to them.
Don’t miss the list of links at the end of the page.
Baroque me
Baroque.me explores a new way to visualize the first Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suites. Using the mathematical relationship between string length and pitch, it came from a simple idea: what if all the notes were drawn as strings? Instead of a stream of classical notation on a page, this interactive project highlights the music’s underlying structure and subtle shifts.
You can disru… erm, interact with it!
Become a GitHub Sponsor. It costs about the price of a coffee per month, and you’ll get an Open Data Rottweiler sticker (and other stuff).
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quantum of sollazzo is supported by my GitHub Sponsors, and by ProofRed, who offer an excellent proofreading service. If you need high-quality copy editing or proofreading, head to http://proofred.co.uk. Oh, they also make really good explainer videos.
