Data Curious: Hello again (2019.07.31)
data / curious
2019.07.30
Hello! It's been a while. But we all know how that goes, right?
<insert conversation you had after bumping into an old "friend">
Life gets hectic. Mine certainly has. I've had a two-month hiatus from writing this newsletter to get some solid ground under my feet.
Most of you don't know me personally, but here's the gist: moved from London to Boston, got a cat, started a new job, still exploring a new city. Lots of life stuff.
Now, I'm excited to get back into giving back to the data viz community the best way I know how—sharing resources that help to inspire, educate, and spark visual curiosity.
I started writing Data Curious nearly two years ago as a weekly roundup on Medium. Eventually this felt like the wrong format, so I moved to a more personal approach (enter: Data Curious, the newsletter). This newsletter will now continue, but may have a slightly different focus based on what I'm interested in/working on recently.
You'll see more tutorials for D3 and Javascript along with using data visualization in machine learning.
You'll also notice plenty of links from the Data Visualization Society's newest Medium publication Nightingale. Many top names in the field are contributing here, so it's a great place to bookmark for later.
Finally, you may notice a more stripped back style for the content and design of the newsletter. I want to focus my time more on function than form. So I hope you're into minimalism.
That's it for now. Let's get back into it.
Read_
What Are Data Visualization Style Guidelines?
If you don't know, see for yourself in this great write-up from Amy Cesal at the Data Visualization Society. BTW they started a new publication called Nightingale all about data viz, which is great.
How do I make data viz more exciting?
Try checking out this open-ended Q&A piece with all-star data viz designer and developer Nadieh Bremer.
Explore_
Are countries more similar than we think?
This scrollable piece uses a clustering algorithm to group countries into oraganizations based on data gathered from the CIA World Factbook.
Can one earthquake trigger another on the other side of the world?
Will Chase digs into it with a beautiful piece of map-based scrollytelling. The story was entered into the recent #VizRisk challenge, which attracted some great talent. Checkout the #VizRisk hashtag for more examples.
Analyse_
How many dogs have been in space?
Find out. Someone put together this dataset of pets in space on Airtable.
What can people learn from my Venmo transaction history?
This dataset of over 7 million Venmo transactions was downloaded via the Venmo public API. It's a lot. See what you can find (h/t Jeremy Singer-Vine).
Learn_
How do I add a color gradient to my chart in d3.js?
I've been using this excellent tutorial by Nadieh Bremer on creating SVG gradients.
How can I add a simple tooltip to my d3 charts?
One of my many d3 bookmarks is the D3 Graph Gallery created by Yan Holtz. This is an incredible resource if you're just getting started with d3. In addition to the extensive library of examples (with code), I found this tutorial on creating tooltips to be a great intro.
Spread the love.
Share this edition of Data Curious.
And say hello! I'm on:
Have a suggestion? Want to get in touch?
Fill out this quick form and I'll get back to you soon.
If you're not a subscriber yet to this newsletter, you can sign up .