Data Curious (2019.08.26): How Our Cities Change
data / curious
2019.08.26
Hey internet friends.
Get ready for a dense, meaty newsletter of data viz goodness. Last week I was finding so much stuff I had to cut down the newsletter by half after writing it.
But this is the best of the best.
Hope you agree. Share what you like.
Read_
Is your data story actually a story?
Here's a term that gets thrown around a lot these days. Check out this thoughtful piece on what qualifies as a data story, and what is just a buzz word.
How should we visualize events of terror and chaos?
Sadly, this is a question we are asking ourselves more and more these days. I found this blog post to be an insightful look at different approaches to visualizing the data behind mass shootings.
How can we use more accessible color palettes in data viz?
Google released a new palette called Turbo last week in an effort to improve the understanding of visualizing machine learning outputs (read about its debut here). It's clearly well thought out, but not without it's problems: Josh Stevens points out why in this Twitter thread (TLDR palettes should change linearly in lightness, and Turbo does now).
How do I create a thriving data visualization culture in my company?
The Nightingale assembled some expert opinions on how to tackle this topic. Read part two of the series here (no-paywall version).
Explore_
How can governments make open data more accessible and impactful?
The ONS data viz team are making big waves in data via for the public sector. Here's a brilliant example of making open data visual, accessible and interactive. (h/t Alberto Cairo's blog post).
How does noise pollution affect us on our daily commute?
Absolutely beautiful. This combination of sound and interactive visualization by Ludovic Riffault is simply mesmerizing.
How does rain affect a city?
Beautiful experimental map by Clever Franke that simulates precipitation levels. And best of all, it's of my home city! #naptown #hoosier
How do trackers follow me when I browse the internet?
ICYMI the NYT made waves last week with this piece visualizing how trackers monitor your every move online. Tasteful and precise graphics by Nadieh Bremer really help bring the story to life.
Analyze_
Where are the fires in the Amazon?
News has been spreading since last week of the fires raging through the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. NASA maintains an Active Fire Database that uses near real-time satellite imagery to show where fires are happening in the world. Download as shapefile, KML or plain CSV to start plotting. Here's how the FT visualized it.
How have terrorist groups across the world changed?
Joshua Tschantret is a Ph.D. candidate researching political violenve. He has assembled a dataset of historical terrorist groups around the world (h/t Jeremy Singer-Vine).
Where are all the indigenous territories in the US?
Jer Thorp shared a link to an API managed by native-land.ca which returns polygon boundaries for indigenous territories. Send it a lat/long pair, and see the result.
Learn_
How can I make a simple dashboard in my Jupyter Notebook?
Last week I published a new tutorial which should help: How to build a simple time series dashboard in Python with Panel, Altair and a Jupyter Notebook. If you're new to any of those packages, don't worry! It's only about 25 lines of code and includes lots of comments.
Where can I find free resources to learn more programming?
If you're trying to get into a coding language more, check out this big free Github repo of programming books.
Where can I get started learning or teaching visualization principles for the web?
The UW Interactive Data Lab published a data visualization curriculum using Observable notebooks (interactive!) which will cover all the essentials.
How can I create a bubble map in Javascript?
Every tried p5.js? This is one of the most straight-forward and pleasant tutorials I have ever found to build a world bubble map. Props to the Coding Train for being both delightful and informative.
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