Snow Days and the Flow of Information
Mood music for this post: Snow Day by Trip Shakespeare Friday was another snow day here in Wisconsin and I found it interesting to see how this piece of information wound its way through the various layers of the community. (For the uninitiated, a snow day is a weather-related closing …
Data Literacy 101: What is Data?
Whenever the topic of data comes up at meetings or informal conversations it doesn’t take long for people’s eyes to glaze over. The subject is usually considered so complex and esoteric that only a few technically-minded geeks find value in the details. This easy dismissal of data is a real …
A 12-Year-Old’s Take on Data and Analysis
I asked my daughter what she thought data was last night. Her text to me at 11:45 pm: Okay, so you asked me what data was at the motorcycle thing today and at first, I didn’t really think about that much I just said an answer if what I thought …
Ideas Illustrated LLC Celebrates 10 Years
I was filling out the annual report forms for Ideas Illustrated LLC a few weeks ago and noticed that my original filing date was May 11, 2004… making today my 10th anniversary! It’s hard to believe that a full decade has passed since my wife and I sat around brainstorming …
A Force Node Diagram of the U.S. Interstate System
There’s nothing too complicated about this post. I’ve been interested in creating an illustration of the U.S. Interstate system for awhile but my initial concept of a “subway-style” diagram of the network had already been done. After some recent experimentation with the D3 Javascript library, I decided that it might …
Who’s Your Filter? (Nate Silver Edition)
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ~ Søren Kierkegaard Back in 2010, I wrote a short post about some of the problems associated with getting all of your news and information from …
Most Popular Word Roots in U.S. Place Names
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 through. In the beginning, the place names had a familiar mid-western flavor; one that mixed Native American origins …
CNN published the mugshots of all of the biker gang members who were arrested after the recent shootout in a Waco, TX restaurant. There were a total of 171 pictures, all in the same standard pose and most in the same standard orange jumpsuit: Seeing all of these pictures got …
There’s nothing too complicated about this post. I’ve been interested in creating an illustration of the U.S. Interstate system for awhile but my initial concept of a “subway-style” diagram of the network had already been done. After some recent experimentation with the D3 Javascript library, I decided that it might …
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 through. In the beginning, the place names had a familiar mid-western flavor; one that mixed Native American origins …
I have been reading a book on the development of the English language recently and I’ve become fascinated with the idea of word etymology — the study of words and their origins. It’s no secret that English is a great borrower of foreign words but I’m not enough of an …