555: quantum of sollazzo
#555: quantum of sollazzo – 5 March 2024
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.
The most clicked link last week was Ana Lucía González Paz's beautiful essay "A map inside".
'till next week,
Giuseppe @puntofisso
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✨ Topical
State of the Union
USA Facts: "In Numbers – A nonpartisan, data-driven snapshot of the state of our union"
The European Extreme Events Climate Index
"The European Extreme Events Climate Index (E3CI) provides a general overview of weather-induced hazards by combining seven components: Extreme Max and Min Temperature, Drought, Extreme Precipitation, Hail, Fire, Extreme Wind."
Cities Moving
"To quantify the motorisation of urban mobility, we model the number of kilometres travelled by different modes of transport in a city by aggregating active mobility, public transport and cars."
Brilliant visualisations from this research project by the Complexity Science Hub of the University of Vienna.
(via La Cultura del Dato di Stefano Gatti)
What are the questions MPs ask that don't get answered?
Anna Powell-Smith (Missing Numbers): "...this post introduces new research: a data analysis of 200,000 Parliamentary written questions, and what they tell us about the UK's missing numbers."
Understanding family spending through data analysis
"From an EU-wide perspective to the national and local trends in household expenditures". Also, from the same source, keep an eye on the EU Open Data Maturity report.
Etse-Ada. All in one suite of customisable web tools and support for managing your business operations - including websites, professional emails and an ERP consisting of CRM, accounting, project management, service/product management, and many more features. Learn more & Start a free trial.
🛠️📖 Tools & Tutorials
GifCities
"The GeoCities Animated GIF Search Engine".
Ok, it's not quite data, nor viz, but... you know :-)
Streamgraph generator
Another pretty good tool by LA Data Viz.
SQL Workbench
Yet another tool to run SQL in the browser.
GeoCorner
A website dedicated to "Sharing Geospatial Knowledge & Code".
(via Anantharaman Iyer)
How fast can we process a CSV file
Pure Python, pandas with C engine, and way more – what's the fastest way to process a CSV file?
GeoForge: Geospatial Analysis with Large Language Models (GeoLLMs)
Ageospatial presents its work on using LLMs to interrogate and generate geospatial data.
Chartwell
This is brilliant – a font that you can use to create charts: "Chartwell is an easy way to make charts in design apps and on the web. Just type your data, such as 10+30+60, turn on Discretionary / Rare Ligagures, then like magic your chart is there."
console.delight
"Everyone knows you can use console.log() to log text and variables to the console. Did you know you could also render (limited) CSS, SVGs, and even HTML in it?!?"
TopoExport
"TopoExport is a simple, fast, and accurate web application for downloading maps with 2D contour lines and 3D topography using reliable open-source datasets."
(via Geomob)
ingestr
"ingestr is a CLI tool to copy data between any databases with a single command seamlessly."
🤯 Data thinking
Your first 90 days as a Head of Data
Taylor Brownlow: "Knowing where and how to begin. Advice from GoHenry, tails.com, Runa, REMERGE, TLC Markeing, and Zenjob."
"New tools, processes, stakeholders in every part of the business, entrenched beliefs and opinions, and unspoken expectations. The things that make it difficult to begin as a Head of Data are the same things that make it difficult to thrive as a Head of Data. This role is uniquely balanced between technical and non-technical domains, and requires knowing the right time to listen to your stakeholders, and when to say ‘no’. In short, it’s a tough job at any point, so it’s no wonder the first 90 days can be particularly challenging."
Beautiful Probability
"Should we expect rationality to be, on some level, simple? Should we search and hope for underlying beauty in the arts of belief and choice?"
📈Dataviz, Data Analysis, & Interactive
Airfoil
Bartosz Ciechanowski, whose amazing interactive, in-depth, visual essays we have covered before, has created this incredible guide to understanding what makes airplanes fly.
Don't blame me when you realise you've spent two hours on this...
McDonald’s Locations vs. Golf Courses
Nathan Yau (Flowing Data): "I read that there are more golf courses than there are McDonald’s locations in the United States, which seemed surprising. There are about 16,000 golf courses and 13,000 McDonald’s locations. How could this be? Obviously, there are a lot of McDonald’s locations, but where are all these golf courses? Some maps made it clear."
🤖 AI
Of top-notch algorithms and zoned-out humans
Tim Harford: "On June 1 2009, Air France Flight 447 vanished on a routine transatlantic flight. The circumstances were mysterious until the black box flight recorder was recovered nearly two years later, and the awful truth became apparent: three highly trained pilots had crashed a fully functional aircraft into the ocean, killing all 288 people on board, because they had become confused by what their Airbus 330’s automated systems had been telling them."
As I said on LinkedIn, this article "touches upon one of the most important aspects of automation (whether we call it AI or something else): what happens when the human who uses that automation in order to perform an action cannot rely on it?".
AI Could Actually Help Rebuild The Middle Class
"AI doesn’t have to be a job destroyer. It offers us the opportunity to extend expertise to a larger set of workers."
quantum of sollazzo is also supported by Andy Redwood’s proofreading – if you need high-quality copy editing or proofreading, check out Proof Red. Oh, and he also makes motion graphics animations about climate change.
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