425: quantum of sollazzo
#425: quantum of sollazzo – 8 June 2021
The data newsletter by @puntofisso.
Things you can do in the same week if you're in London: getting scorched by 27C sun, and getting soaking wet at the allotment. You know, we like variety around here. Don't we all?
Jennifer Hall, a Senior Data Scientist in my team, has written something not quite related to work nor data, but that covers an important problem I had never fully considered and that might be experienced by some of my readers" how dyslexia affects software developers and what possible workarounds coders have available.
If you're looking for data jobs in UK-based charities, the Data Collective has started creating a live spreadsheets with all available details.
'till next week,
Giuseppe @puntofisso
Six questions to...
Topi Tjukanov, GIS Consultant at GISPO Ltd.
What is your daily data work like and what tools do you use?
I work with geospatial data and open source software. My main tools are QGIS and PostGIS and besides using them myself I also train others how to use them.. As we do consulting for many different fields and domains, my data can be pretty much anything. During the last month I've worked with Finnish traffic sign locations, global Internet infrastructure cables, raster data on night-time lights, global population data and much much more. My typical data workflow is something like this: search data, clean data, clean more, merge it with something else, analyze it, visualize it.
Tell me about a data project that you're proud of...
All my projects are data projects. Sort of. But I can't share all of the work I do during office hours, but all of the work I have on my personal website have some sort of story behind them. But I'm really proud of having started the #30DayMapChallenge, which has literally inspired thousands of amateur and professional map-makers to challenge themselves to making more maps.
...and a data project that someone else did and you're jealous of.
There are so many. I especially admire people who come up with new ideas, like Alasdair Rae, Maarten Lambrechts or Cartocalypse. During COVID I've also admired John Burn-Murdoch's work related to visualizing the pandemic. Lisa Charlotte Rost is often sharing valuable content.
If I say "dataset", you think of...
A shapefile with missing metadata.
Give someone new to data a tip or lesson you wish you'd learned earlier.
All data is broken. More or less.
Data is or data are...
Is. Of course. Why is this even a question?
Topical
Divided Highway
"As a freeway comes down, Syracuse, New York, faces its legacy of segregation"
Planning and segregation in the news again.
The unseen covid-19 risk for unvaccinated people
"The country’s declining covid-19 case rates present an unrealistically optimistic perspective for half of the nation — the half that is still not vaccinated."
Approximately 80% of Asian Americans say they do not feel respected and are discriminated against in the U.S.
"Explore the 2021 Survey Data".
This is from LAAUNCH, the Leading Asian Americans to Unite for Change, a non-profit organization.
How to Fix America
"Take a road trip from New York to California to see infrastructure projects with the potential to make cities more livable and equitable."
Tools & Tutorials
Why we love the colour blue
Alex Selby-Boothroyd, The Economist's Data Journalism Dear Leader, writes in its "Off the charts" newsletter an interesting set of thoughts on colour blindness.
"Another way to address colour clashes is to “fine tune” certain colours so that they are still recognisably “green” or “red” to most people, but noticeably different enough to our colour-blind readers. "
Community Lens: A tool to learn about the needs of UK communities
"Meet Community Lens, an open-source tool that can help match open data sets to the areas you work in, to help you learn more about the needs of local communities."
Currently only containing data from the Indices of Multiple Deprivation, but with a chunky roadmap, it's part of a set of GIS tools recommended by the Data Collective.
Read more here.
Diverse sources
"Search or join this database of experts to include more underrepresented voices and perspectives in your science, health and environment work on deadline."
Interesting initiative for more diversity in journalism.
AgentPy
"AgentPy is an open-source library for the development and analysis of agent-based models in Python. The framework integrates the tasks of model design, interactive simulations, numerical experiments, and data analysis within a single environment, and is optimized for interactive computing with IPython and Jupyter."
How we build scrollytelling articles
The ONS have just released this very interesting scrollytellingarticle. Ahmad Barclay, one of its authors, explains how they built it.
Dataviz & Interactive
FLAGS BY COLOURS
"Each sector of these piecharts is proportional to the area of the colour on the respective flag."
This was created using Photopie, which is a web app that creates the pie chart of colour usage from an input image.
Eunoia
Search "Words That Don't Translate". The world was a much simpler place when the only one was Schadenfreude.
Explore 50 years of people, moments and milestones, that have helped shape our history
From NASDAQ, which must have recently taken up some dataviz-inducing drugs.
Data thinking
Investing in Data Saves Lives
"The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for more and better data, and the value of models in informing humanitarian response strategies. The world must now invest in data infrastructure and human capacity in order to get ahead of crises, predict future needs, and trigger responses earlier." By Mark Lowcock, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, and Raj Shah, President of The Rockefeller Foundation.
AI
Can you build a machine learning model to monitor another model?
Not an AI version of the Entscheidungsproblem?
(TL;DR: No, you can't.)
The NLP divide
"English is not the only natural language".
Brilliant piece in the London School of Economic's JournalismAI newsletter.
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). Or you can Buy Me A Coffee.
quantum of sollazzo is also supported by ProofRed's 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.
