477: quantum of sollazzo
#477: quantum of sollazzo – 19 July 2022
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 to be 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.
If you’re based in Italy, have a look at the Data Journalism Prize launched by the Glocal Festival; you will have to submit a published article by 30th September. The winner of the prize, announced in Varese during the Festival on November 12th, will receive 500 EUR.
The most clicked link last week was the Carbon footprint calculator for food, by the Financial Times.
‘till next week,
Giuseppe @puntofisso
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Topical
The planet’s most threatened flight path, and the $3 billion plan to protect it
This multimediatic article by Carlotta Dotto and colleagues at the CNN looks at the impact of climate change on bird migration patterns.
How Unlikely Is It That the Audits of Comey and McCabe Were a Coincidence? A Statistical Exploration.
“The chances are minuscule. But minuscule is not zero.“
What are the chances of a major newspaper writing an engaging story about statistics? :-)
When the Weather Gets Hot Enough To Kill
“From South Asia to the US, from Africa to Europe, intense heat is pushing the human body beyond the bounds of physiological tolerance.“
It’s grim, Jim.
Bloomberg Green’s Electric Car Ratings
Oh, a table of data to find “the right EV for you”.
We found the best JavaScript newsletter.
Bytes is probably the funniest web dev newsletter you’ll ever read (trust me). If you like our newsletter, I’ve got a feeling you’ll love Bytes too. There’s a reason 100k developers read it every week.
Tools & Tutorials
4 Pandas Anti-Patterns to Avoid and How to Fix Them
Another brilliant tutorial by data scientist Aidan Cooper: “pandas is a powerful data analysis library with a rich API that offers multiple ways to perform any given data manipulation task. Some of these approaches are better than others, and pandas users often learn suboptimal coding practices that become their default workflows.“
(I have to confess, readers, that I’m guilty of applying every single one of those anti-patterns in the past -_-)
Geo location as a script.
Oh, this is a handy little Javascript library to get IP-based geolocation.
Free, Game-Changing Data Extraction Tools that Require No Coding Skills
“When reporters finally obtain the data they need for their investigations, they are often faced with a second problem: how to select and extract that data, so it can be used and moved around in spreadsheets. For many small newsrooms, manual entry, advanced coding, or costly commercial OCR (optical character recognition) services are not realistic data scraping options.“
GIJN has a few suggestions.
How to Crack Open NetCDF Files in R and Extract Data as Time Series
If you, like me, have struggled to use the NetCDF file format – a format used to share complex, multidimensional climate satellite data – this tutorial may help.
Top 5 Bookmarks Every Data Analyst Should Have
From ASCII tables to SQL generators, this little list will be helpful.
Data thinking
Critical Dataset Studies Reading List
“How should we study datasets in machine learning? “
Data in Wonderland
“Empirical studies suggest the communication is generally more effective when its author controls all aspects of the communication, from content to typography and form. But in some cases, we may enhance the communication by allowing our audience to choose among potential contexts of the information. Here, we aim to explore many ideas within this framework, using as content a data analytics project.“
Are there good words to divide the world?
A thought-provoking piece by DataWrapper co-founder Mirko Lorenz on how to improve from the Global North/South divide.
Dataviz, Data Analysis, & Interactive
Ventusky
A rather improved way to map weather predictions.
For wind, for example, it uses “current lines that are used to illustrate the movement of particles in liquids”.
Erfrischungskarte
A map of shade in Berlin, by hour of the day. To seek refuge from the heat.
(via OnData)
Mega trends and technologies 2017-2050
A brilliant way to look at tech trends. I mean, why a subway map, but… :)
(via Massimo Conte)
Fact Check: 99% of the World’s Population Gets Sunlight at the Same Moment on July 8
I had no idea there was this debate, but it’s interesting to see the fact-checking process.
I analyzed 1835 hospital price lists so you didn’t have to
“But if you’re a data scientist, you can do it too! This article was written in part for python-centric data scientists and programmers, and comes with a follow-along notebook where we clean, analyze, and chart the real-world data that this article is based on.“
Needless to say, this is about the US.
AI
Lidar Deep Learning for Ancient Maya Archaeology
“Automating the Identification of Hidden Archaeological Sites Using 3D Point Clouds”. Now this is a great use of AI.
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