604: quantum of sollazzo
#604: quantum of sollazzo – 8 April 2025
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.
I mentioned this before, but let me remind you: csv,conf,v9, one of the best conferences in the data space, is happening in Bologna, Italy, 8-11 September 2025.
csv,conf is a welcoming data-centric conference open to everyone. We focus on stories about individuals working with data and how their projects impact the world.
Past participants have included social justice data project, climate scientists, local government officials, data hobbyists, open source contributors, academics, and more.
Submission Guidelines:
- Talk Format: 25-minute timeslots.
- Plan for approx. 20min presentation with 5-min Q&A
Topics of Interest:
- Innovative uses of data in community projects
- Tools and methodologies for crowdsourced data collection
- Case studies on data-driven policy decisions
- Strategies for enhancing data literacy in underserved communities
- Open data initiatives in science, journalism, and government
New deadline: April 27th
Submit your talk at https://www.csvconf.com.
The most clicked link last week was this entertaining but intriguing look at representing time in a relative way.
It's AMA o'clock! This is the Quantum of Sollazzo Ask Me Anything section.
AMA – Ask Me Anything by submitting a question via this anonymous Google form. If there are many questions, I'll select a few every 4-5 weeks and answer them on here :-) Don't be shy!
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Last but not least, yours truly was featured on the Royal Statistical Society's magazine "Significance" with an entertaining Q&A that mentions Quantum...
'till next week,
Giuseppe @puntofisso.bsky.social
✨ Topical
Troubled Waters – The multiple devastating impact of floods across Europe
From the European Data Journalism Network: "Floods are the most common natural disaster. Their frequency has more than doubled since 2004 due to an accelerating hydrological cycle driven by human-induced climate change. Over the past 30 years, floods in Europe have affected 5,5 million people, caused nearly 3,000 deaths, and led to economic losses exceeding €170 billion."
Is College Still Worth It Economically?
"Yes—but who it benefits most is constantly changing."
From Moonsighting to Ramadan Data Journaling
"By the time we reached the mosque, he was already thinking about how to chart his day. After the prayer, the Imam announced the arrival of Ramadan—30 days of fasting and reflection."
Ramadan Kareem
Gulrez Khan: "Ramadan can be spelled in different ways depending on transliteration, pronunciation, and regional preferences".
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🛠️📖 Tools & Tutorials
xan
"The CSV magician – a command line tool that can be used to process CSV files directly from the shell."
Beyond the bare processing, it also does pretty clever stuff like the chart below.
Transform Wikipedia into Interactive Timelines
An AI tool to "instantly convert any Wikipedia article into a beautiful, interactive timeline. Perfect for students, researchers, and history enthusiasts."
220+ Illustrations for Your Design Systems and Docs
"Discover a vast collection of free, high-quality illustrations designed specifically for documentation, frameworks, and design systems. Enhance your projects with our easily accessible and professionally crafted illustrations."
🤯 Data thinking
Efficiency in the public sector: analysis and operations
The Bank of England's Arthur Turrell (blog post 2/2): "I’ve been thinking a lot about efficiency in the public sector recently. This post looks at ideas for increasing the efficiency of analysis and operations through automation, good coding practices, artificial intelligence, and, well, (meta-?) analysis."
He talks about a number of data-related and analytical ideas, including Replicable Analytical Pipelines.
Crime-ing with Data Science
Randy Au: "About two years ago I wrote up a post looking into a criminal complaint from JPMorgan Chase, (at the time the post was for paid subscribers but I just set the post to free subscribers also), accusing Charlie Javis, founder of the company Frank, of committing fraud by generating synthetic lists of users to make the company seem to have much more users than it actually had. JPMorgan Chase then acquired the startup for $175 million. ... I'm coming back to this over the weekend because the case had concluded with a jury finding the defendants guilty of multiple counts of conspiracy, fraud, etc."
📈Dataviz, Data Analysis, & Interactive
Ramadan vs Ramadhan vs Ramzan at the House of Commons
One by me through Parli-n-grams – frequency of mentions of the three common spellings of Ramadan in House of Commons debates.
Looks Mapping – See Which Restaurants Have The Most Attractive Diner
...according to AI. Not a very ethical use...? But extra points for the methodology published as a LaTeX document.
"I scraped millions of Google Maps restaurant reviews, and gave each reviewer's profile picture to an AI model that rates how hot they are out of 10. This map shows how attractive each restaurant's clientele is. Red means hot, blue means not.
The model is certainly biased. It's certainly flawed. But we judge places by the people who go there. We always have. And are we not also flawed? This website just puts reductive numbers on the superficial calculations we make every day. A mirror held up to our collective vanity."
The Science & Community Impacts Mapping Project (SCIMaP)
"The White House has ordered large cuts to federal funding for scientific research. These changes include a proposal to reduce support for all health-related research nationwide, and cancellations of many grants for specific research projects. We aim to share how these proposed changes impact science, the economy, and healthcare."
How to get to space
Ivan Lokhov (Datawrapper) looks at space launch sites.
The Greatest Two-Hit Wonders
"But if one hit is a miracle, then two hits is a near impossibility. Two-hit artists sit in a weird space, though."
Statistically, When Will My Baby Be Born?
"A tiny tool to calculate when your baby might arrive."
🤖 AI
Tracing the thoughts of a large language model
Anthropic: "Today, we're sharing two new papers that represent progress on the development of the "microscope", and the application of it to see new "AI biology". In the first paper, we extend our prior work locating interpretable concepts ("features") inside a model to link those concepts together into computational "circuits", revealing parts of the pathway that transforms the words that go into Claude into the words that come out. In the second, we look inside Claude 3.5 Haiku, performing deep studies of simple tasks representative of ten crucial model behaviors, including the three described above."
Mmm... maybe.
How AI Agents Are Quietly Transforming Frontend Development
"We're not far from agents that can run A/B tests, evaluate performance impact, and recommend UX optimizations based on live user data."
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