434: quantum of sollazzo
#434: quantum of sollazzo – 10 August 2021
The data newsletter by @puntofisso.
Hello, regular readers and welcome new ones :) This is Quantum of Sollazzo, the newsletter about all things data. I am Giuseppe Sollazzo, or @puntofisso. I’ve been sending this newsletter since 2012 as a summary of all the articles with or about data that captured my attention over the previous week. The newsletter is and will always (well, for as long as I can keep going!) be free, but you’re welcome to become a friend via the links below.
Every week I include a six-question interview with an inspiring data person. This week, I speak with Lisa Charlotte Rost of Datawrapper. Some of you might know her as the voice behind their excellent blog posts and tutorials.
You will see a few alternative Olympics medal tables in the articles. Are all medals created equal? Is a gold medal in football the same as one in dressage? There are several views on this topic, but this conversation happened too:
‘till next week,
Giuseppe @puntofisso
Six questions to...
Lisa Charlotte Rost
Lisa is responsible for communications (especially the blog) at Datawrapper.
What is your daily data work like and what tools do you use?
I <3 the combination of numbers and design. After visualizing data in and for newsrooms, I made it my job to help other people create better charts. I write blog posts and Datawrapper how-to guides, help my coworkers write their Weekly Charts, test new Datawrapper features, and then announce them. When creating data vis myself, I mostly use R or Google Sheets for cleaning up and analyzing the data, and then, yes, you guessed it, Datawrapper to visualize it.
Tell me about a data project that you're proud of...
My coworker Rose Mintzer-Sweeney and I launched the Data Vis Dispatch a while ago, a weekly collection of "The best of big and small data visualizations." Like this newsletter, it's a way to stay up to date about the scene and good projects — without spending hours on Twitter each day (we take care of that!).
...and a data project that someone else did and you're jealous of.
So many! The last one was Josh Katz's Tokyo Olympics: Who Leads the Medal Count? It answers a question I had and perfectly combines geekiness, beautiful colors and shapes, and exploration.
If I say "dataset", you think of...
"Ooooh shiny, numbers!"
Give someone new to data a tip or lesson you wish you'd learned earlier.
Side projects don't need to be perfect to be released into the wild. Something that's 80% there will still inspire and inform people more than something that's never published.
Data is or data are...
Data is. (To be honest: As a non-native speaker, I probably just adopted whatever my English teacher taught me.)
|
Become a Friend of Quantum of Sollazzo → If you enjoy this newsletter, you can support it by becoming a GitHub Sponsor. Or you can Buy Me a Coffee. I'll send you an Open Data Rottweiler sticker. You receive this email because you subscribed to Quantum of Sollazzo, a weekly newsletter covering all things data, written by Giuseppe Sollazzo (@puntofisso). If you have a product or service to promote and want to support this newsletter, you can sponsor an issue. |
Topical
Ranking European regions by Olympics medals
Giorgio Comai e Lorenzo Ferrari of the European Data Journalism Network have created this medal table based on the regional, rather than national, status of their winner, using NUTS2 regions in EuroStat.
Tokyo Olympics: The alternative medal tables
“A country’s economy is strongly linked to the number of medals it can win, so can we measure a win at the Olympics another way?“
On a similar note to the previous link, Sky News looks at GDP and population.
Olympians are probably older — and younger — than you think
“There were some outliers in the old days, but even in Tokyo, athletes range from boomers through Gen Z”. Interesting piece of data wrangling by the Washington Post, showing that, effectively, the youngest-oldest range has not reduced much in 50 years.
Coronavirus Variant Tracker
Axios has launched a COVID-19 Variants Tracker, which they update every six hours!
(via Soph Warnes’s Fair Warning)
The completely legal ways US politicians bend redistricting rules – a visual guide
“The constitution requires states to draw new electoral districts every 10 years, but there are few other hard and fast rules.“
How such a messy system can survive in a 21st century democracy is beyond my understanding, but this is a great explainer by the Guardian visual team.
What It Looks Like to Reconnect Black Communities Torn Apart by Highways
“Take any major American city and you’re likely to find a historically Black neighborhood demolished, gashed in two, or cut off from the rest of the city by a highway.“
Well, that’s something I entirely didn’t know and that I’m grateful to the Bloomberg Graphics team for revealing so eloquently with visuals and data analysis.
Tools & Tutorials
SQL Snippets
“A curated collection of helpful SQL queries and functions, moderated by Count.“
Once again some great work by Count, a really good data service for public consumption, based in London. You can search any type of query, for multiple SQL dialects and infrastructures.
The 5-minute learn: Create pretty and geographically accurate transport maps in R
“Learn to plot the London Tube network accurately”.
Some useful R code, step-by-step.
(via Guy Lipman)
Pulse – GHGSAT
“A free-to-use, high-resolution map of methane around the world”.
It’s pretty interesting: “What you can see on the map are concentrations of methane in the atmosphere from both natural and man-made sources combined. You can see how methane moves through our atmosphere and also, by using the time slider, you can see the differences in concentration levels over a six-month time period.“
Can you raise an Olympic snowboarder in the tropics?
“Are we missing out on the next great snowboarder because it never snows where they live?”, asks Rose Mintzer-Sweeney at Datawrapper.
Why does the sunlight come from the north in shaded relief maps?
“The sunlight in this map comes from the upper left, but in the northern hemisphere the sun mostly occupies the southern half of the sky, so why isn’t it coming from below?”.
An excellent geo-nerdy Twitter thread.
(via Guy Lipman)
Dataviz & Interactive
1 in 3 men with COVID19 reported erectile dysfunction
This must win an award for the most daring dataviz this year. Of course, it’s from an Italian study which also coined the slogan (seriously!) “Mask up to keep it up!”.
(via Steve Parks)
London Photogrammetry Captures by David Fletcher
David Fletcher, a video game artist with a passion for 3D capture of heritage sites, put all ~900 of his photogrammetry captures, mostly in London, onto Google Map, with each marker linking to a SketchFab model. You find it here.
Who Will Pay To Protect Tech Giants From Rising Seas?
“Coastal cities need billions of dollars to build defenses against sea level rise. Tensions are growing over where that funding will come from: taxpayers or private companies with waterfront property?“
AI
Where Are The Robotic Bricklayers?
“When researching construction, you invariably discover that any new or innovative idea has actually been tried over and over again, often stretching back decades. One of these new-but-actually-old ideas is the idea of a mechanical bricklayer, a machine to automate the construction of masonry walls.“
This article is about automation of repetitive tasks more than it is specifically about AI, but the two concepts are intimately related.
AI Takes the Stage at the Summer Olympics
“For example, Omega, which is the official timekeeper for 35 Olympic sports, is using cameras equipped with computer vision capabilities to track the movement of beach volleyball players, as well as the ball.“
quantum of sollazzo is 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.
