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 popular within the last few years. The rise of this new specialty — which the Data Science Association …
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 unique entries for that particular client was in the dozens. Here is a sample of possible iterations, with …
At Least I’ve Got Brownies
It’s a snow day today and the kids are home from school. To celebrate, Grandma made a nice batch of brownies. The chart below shows the distribution of brownies by family member. Leeroy is our dog, named for the internet meme.
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 it has been gaining momentum as modern technologies make it easier for the average person to create things …
Infographics and Data Visualization (Week 5/6)
I took part in a brief discussion on the student forum after the Week 4 project and it made me realize that I’d been spending so much time trying to create a functional interactive graphic in Tableau that I was missing out on practicing some of the basic techniques of …
Infographics and Data Visualization (Week 4)
The assignment for Week 4 is the based on data used in a recent Guardian article on U.S. unemployment. Having used Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data for many years at my previous job, I am far more familiar with this topic than I was with the data we used for last …
A Thanksgiving Meal Preparation Timeline
The art of timing the preparation of Thanksgiving dishes takes years of experience and perhaps more than a few hard lessons in the kitchen (ever have anyone de-bone a turkey?). For those less experienced chefs, I’ve always felt that a good inforgraphic might help organize the work so that all the …
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 …