431: quantum of sollazzo
#431: quantum of sollazzo – 20 July 2021
The data newsletter by @puntofisso.
Hello, regular readers and welcome new ones :) This is Quantum of Sollazzo, the newsletter about all things data. This week's issue is brought to you by the heat and sunshine of Malta, which also offered a better broadband connection than I have at home in London. It's been a good week.
Look below for this week's "Six Questions" featured profile, Sheldon Studio's co-founder Matteo Moretti, a designer with a big passion for data. Among this week's links, you'll also find the incredible data visualization project he's led together with the European Data Journalism Network on visualizing the diversity of road names in major Italian towns.
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I don't do football much... but this dataviz is pretty clever: a BT ad which uses a stylised England flag to visualize the level of abuse received by its black players after the final match of Euro2020.
Not to mention this other chart. Which is actually connected to another interesting data visualization story, masterly narrated by Tim Harford in his recent "How to make the world add up". Here's Tim with an article about it, and some more about it from Colombia University.
Also, note how the chart only captures male deaths, a likely effect of the ways women's health was addressed back in those years, and an example of what I mean when I say that data is not neutral (and how this statement includes data collection).
'till next week,
Giuseppe @puntofisso
Six questions to...
Matteo Moretti
Matteo Moretti is co-founder of Sheldon.studio. An award-winning designer, he explores new ways to connect information & experiences.
What is your daily data work like and what tools do you use?
We work at the intersection between information design, data visualization and social design, usually with small data and a strong concern on the experiential side of information. So we rely on a collaborative and humane centred design approach and work mainly with Around.co, Figma, Google Spreadsheet, Pencil & Paper.
Tell me about a data project that you're proud of...
From the design point of view, I'm proud of this piece on the Glocal Climate Change Design Process. We combined different data storytelling, design, and UX approaches to allow EU citizens to spot climate change in the places they care and then supporting a broader debate on climate change.
...and a data project that someone else did and you're jealous of.
I'm a big fan of illo.tv people, especially their spin-off algo.tv, which focuses on wonderful automated data in motion videos, such as their COVID tracker or Serie A Stats.
If I say "dataset", you think of...
"Let's hope someone already cleaned it."
Give someone new to data a tip or lesson you wish you'd learned earlier.
"Data don't lie" is probably the biggest lie about data.
Data is or data are...
I'm Italian mother tongue, so I tend to use "are". However, I struggle every time I read, hear, or use "is": it sounds completely strange to my mind….
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Topical
Mapping Diversity
Although this website is mostly in Italian and only covers Italian towns, it is beautiful and largely accessible. It shows how road names are not particularly diverse.
People in Advanced Economies Say Their Society Is More Divided Than Before Pandemic
"Publics disagree about whether restrictions on public activity have gone far enough to combat COVID-19".
Do you remember when we were all out clapping, created solidarity groups to help each other in our neighbourhoods, etc? Pew Research suggests it didn't stick.
A visual history of China’s Communist Party
A highly visual look at the history of China's Communist Party, by the Hong Kong based English language newspaper South China Morning Post.
(via DataNinja)
The economics of dollar stores
"A visual explainer of the numbers behind America’s ubiquitous bargain-basement chains."
From The Hustle.
When a heat wave began to scorch...
"... North America in late June, scientists said that burning fossil fuels had warped the climate enough to make temperature extremes worse. Now they know by how much (sources below).
Great Twitter thread by Ajit Niranjan at Deutsche Welle, and related coverage.
Vaccine inequality: how rich countries cut Covid deaths as poorer fall behind
"Developed countries are seeing the benefits of quickly vaccinating their populations, but concerns remain about the unequal share of global vaccine supplies".
By Pablo Gutiérrez and Ashley Kirk at The Guardian.
Hot and humid Olympic summer
"Tokyo brings a double whammy of heat and humidity to the 2020 Summer Olympic athletes, posing a high risk of heat illness."
Great report by Reuters Graphics on how summers have become increasingly hot in Tokyo and how this carries a big risk of wreaking havoc to the Olympic Games.
Sport is still rife with doping
"Between 10% and 40% of athletes in Tokyo might be cheating". See also this tweet by Alex Selby-Boothroyd for a summary. Sigh.
Who would EU countries be willing to help in a major crisis?
A few interesting points in this chart, including both patterns of reciprocity and lack thereof. It comes from an equally interesting cross-European poll by YouGov, which you can find here.
Tools & Tutorials
Corona Game
"You are now in a simulation of how Covid-19 spreads in the Czech Republic.
The simulation is based on a model described in the link below. It will let you step into the place of a government that must decide what mitigation measures to take. You will try out managing situations connected to the coronavirus epidemic and see the consequences of your decisions in detail. The simulation works for a European state with roughly 10 million citizens, which also determines some of its features (the public reacts negatively to restrictions and it’s not possible to be completely closed off from the rest of the world)."
This is a more serious tool than it sounds.
Pixelhunter
A free image resizer that uses AI to create the perfect crop for a variety of social media platforms: "Just upload your image of any size and it will be automatically resized to each and every of 102 sizes we support."
Instagram JSON endpoint
Jan Eggers reports that "If you add ?__a=1 to an Instagram URL, the post is returned in the form of a JSON with lots of relevant info", including the URL of full-size media.
Excalidraw
Excalidraw is a tool to draw faux-hand-drawn charts. You can make them look more or less hand-drawn.
Introduction to Social Network Analysis: Basics and Historical Specificities
An interesting tutorial by historian Martin Grandjean, aimed at explaining the basics of social network analysis to those doing historical research. It's a video series aimed at analysis beginners.
(via Massimo Conte)
Data thinking
Against SQL
"...SQL is the only widely-used implementation of the relational model, and it is:
Inexpressive
Incompressible
Non-porous".
Interesting article, with a wish(ful) list of possible "after SQL" features.
Dataviz & Interactive
UEFA 2020 chart gallery
A set of charts representing Euro matches by Budapest-based dataviz designer Krisztina Szűcs. What's more interesting is that these are all editable via Plot Parade, a tool of her creation that builds upon D3.
I can see music
Some amazing music visualizations by Gunther Kleiner.
How Barcelona is claiming its streets back from cars
Edurne Morillo, an incredibly talented support engineer and data journalist at DataWrapper, shows us Superilles (or Superblocks), "the new model to democratize the streets of Barcelona".
AI
Here are some questions you to ask yourself before you invest a lot of time [in using NLP].
A very helpful Twitter thread by Rasa's Rachel Tatman.
We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200+ vacant apartments
To be taken with a pinch of salt because it's blowing its own trumpet, but this blog post is a good example of using AI in the wild for a real-life business problem.
An 'A.I. model' of Anthony Bourdain's voice says lines he never uttered in new documentary
Ever heard of AI ethics? The guys behind this film probably have not.
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