I hadn’t planned on founding Data Revelations in 2011. It was thrust upon me by a layoff. Out of work, I put a web site together and started blogging about visualizing survey data using Tableau. My hope was that these posts would help me land a consulting gig. As I waited for the phone to [...]
How do you explain what data visualization is and how helpful it can be? Join the discussion here. Background I recently had to address some serious health issues that required a lengthy hospital stay followed by a long in-patient rehab. I won't go into the details, but over the course of my stays people would [...]
Where and how to have discussions around data visualization From December 5 through 9, I took a break from Twitter to spark conversation on The Data Visualization Society’s Slack workspace. I want to thank the dozens of colleagues who joined me for this experiment as we needed, and got, a critical mass of participants. [...]
As people who read my newsletter or attend Chart Chat know, I was one of the volunteers who contributed to The Carbon Almanac. I also subscribe to the Carbon Almanac daily newsletter (it’s excellent). Here’s what came in the other day. I used to travel a lot to give public and private workshops. Then the [...]
Understanding Index Charts and Log Scales https://youtu.be/Kzee9HyX6bU Index Charts are a great way to compare events that don't happen at the same time; for example, how are sales this quarter vs. last quarter, vs. a year ago this quarter? There are lots of business cases for this type of chart. What about log scales? [...]
The Data Detective Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics by Tim Harford Readers of my blog and newsletter know that I am a big fan of the books Factfulness and Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). I want to add Tim Harford’s The Data Detective to this “how to make sense [...]
The best encapsulation I’ve heard of the past year comes from a colleague, Jon Cohen of SurveyMonkey, who saw this twitter post: There’s so much to be grateful for, but so little to be happy about. I am very grateful that there remains a demand for my services, but I [...]
Be careful what you amplify And some thoughts on color palettes / color ramps Background This tweet got a lot of attention recently (see https://twitter.com/andishehnouraee/status/1284237474831761408?s=20) Figure 1 -- Tweet suggesting that Georgia is trying to hide something. While I did not retweet it, I did blindly chime in that this looked like gross incompetence, [...]
Overview I've written previously about how difficult it can be not to get sucked into the 24/7 Coronavirus vortex. I'm trying to be mindful of who and what I follow and wanted to share this. The person I watch I encourage you to watch New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's daily press briefings, even if [...]
Why you should continue to listen to music, read good books, and post funny videos As I sit sequestered in my home with my wife and dog, I find myself sucked into a funk as every conversation, news article, twitter post, etc., is about the Coronavirus. Right now, music, TV, books, and work all [...]
