My family visited Washington D.C. last year for Spring Break and, during our 12-hour drive, I remember noticing a subtle change in the names of the cities and towns we were passing…
Category: Information
How to Build the Perfect Data Science Team
Although the fields of statistics, data analysis, and computer programming have been around for decades, the use of the term “data science” to describe the intersection of these disciplines has only become…
Spelling and National Security
A former co-worker of mine always used to joke about our company’s customer database by posing the deceptively simple question: “How many ways can you spell ‘IBM’?” In fact, the number of…
2012: The Year of the Amateur
One of the topics that seemed to keep cropping up in the news this year was the growing power of the amateur in public life. This trend is not necessarily new but…
Trends in NFL Football Scores (Part 1)
One of the goals I set for myself this summer was to learn a bit about D3, a visualization toolkit that can be used to manipulate and display data on the web. Considering that the trees…
How to Improve Street Sign Design
The opening of last week’s season premiere of Louie offered up a hilarious scene of Louie and a fellow New Yorker trying to decipher an odd assortment of street signs to see…
The Days Keep Getting Longer … Literally
Keeping track of time is never easy without an accurate clock and so people have come up with a number of different folk methods to keep themselves on pace. One of the most common…