Things internet users do in a typical day [table]

Combining these two facts, it's clear we've a long way to go :

1.) Percentage of the U.S. population using the internet: 54%.

2.) Percentage of internet users who read a blog in a typical day: 10%.

Click to enlarge

Kanye West Complex Magazine Cover

I have a soft spot in my heart for tireless perfectionists. In fields of art, especially, the obsessive drive for perfection is crucially important. In the best writing, there is not a single wasted word; in the best music, there is not a single wasted note. The Beatles had this compulsive drive, and I think Kanye does as well.

"It's not ego driven, it's product driven. I just want the best things to come out into the world. And it just so happens that [. . .] I'm my main project that I'm working on."

From Cool Hunting :

The photograph is the result of a facial scan that gathers data from a camera that rotates around the object. A computer then stitched the images together to create an eerily detailed 2D photograph.

7 minute video interview with Kanye and his videographer/photographer, Chris Milk.

Visualizing how information becomes knowledge

The interactive Flash application My Evidence explores and then visualizes the way we get to know what we know.

More from the very good datavisualization blog.

LeBron compared to Jordan, part II

I posted a chart earlier comparing LeBron James and Michael Jordan's career points, assists, and rebounds. In this post, I re-work the charts and add some commentary.

First, I went with dots instead of lines to reduce clutter, and changed colors to increase contrast (LeBron = blue, MJ = orange).


Click to enlarge

Next, I created the chart below showing linear trends over their first 502 games.


Click to enlarge

As the chart shows, Michael Jordan started his career averaging 31.2 points per game, and added 0.71 points to his average for every 100 games he played. Similarly, LeBron James started with 24.1 ppg, and added 1.4 points for every 100 games. In the unlikely event that the trend continues, LeBron and Jordan will have the same scoring average of 38.8 ppg after 1,075 games. But zooming out to look at Jordan's actual career numbers, we see that after 1,075 games, he averaged *only* 27.3 ppg.

Doing the same math for assists, Jordan started averaging fewer assists (4.9 vs. 6.2), but equaled LeBron's output of 7.3 apg after 503 games. Zooming out, Jordan's career assists actually declined at a rate of 1 assist for every 524 games, so that after 1,000 games, he averaged only 4.6 apg.

With rebounds, LeBron started higher (6.1 vs. 5.5) and increased at a faster rate (0.39 rebounds/100 games vs. 0.36).

Bottom-line: Through 502 games, LeBron's numbers are slightly better in assists and rebounds, and slightly worse in scoring, but overall remarkably similar. Given the age at which they entered the league, and MJ's occasional retirements, I fully expect that a healthy LeBron will easily surpass Jordan's career points, assists, and rebounds, and he has a chance to pass Jordan in averages per game, too.

---

ESPN has an article comparing LeBron and Jordan's efficiency. Worth a look.

And in case you missed LeBron's ridiculous shot on 60 Minutes, the 36 second video is embedded below.



The full 60 Minutes story is here: Like Mike? How Lebron Could Transcend Him.

Q & A with Nathan Yau of FlowingData

Nathan Yau, founder and author of the web's leading data visualization site, has graciously agreed to answer some information design related questions for Wehr in the World readers. Nathan is a PhD student in statistics at UCLA and interned with the famous New York Times Graphics Department. Some of his projects include a tool to track data about yourself using Twitter, and Progress: A Graphical Report on the State of the World. His adviser at UCLA, Mark Hansen, is a pretty interesting guy himself. For much more, visit FlowingData.

Q. Google Chief Economist Hal Varian insists that statistics and the ability to communicate information will become highly valued skills in the workplace . . . what's your take? What makes information design a good career path? What are the risks?

A. He's totally right, and the more I write for FD, the more I believe it. We keep seeing more and more data, but it's just sitting around because not everyone knows what to do with it. Statisticians are really good at sifting through all of it and designers are really good at communication, so I like to think of information designers as sort of a combination of the two.

Q. What's the future of information visualization, and how will it grow alongside statistical analysis?

A. Probably interaction. It's too hard to show a lot of dimensions with static graphics. You can show a lot, but at some point it gets too confusing. That's where statistics comes in. When you have that much data, you have to know how to sift through it. Statistics helps you reduce and narrow down to the story.

Q. Who are the best and most innovative info designers out there?

A. Jonathan Harris, Stamen Design, and The New York Times graphics department - all for aesthetics and a real understanding of whatever data they're dealing with.

Q. What were the most important things you learned from your internship with the NYT graphics department?

A. I guess like a lot of things, close attention to detail (from the data to the design) makes a big difference. I'd spend a whole day calling people to verify data points. I'd give a graphic to my editor, and he'd make very small suggestions, like a change in font size or move something slightly to the left. It was amazing how much clearer it made the graphic.

Q. Which schools offer the best information design or data visualization programs? Which departments are typically strongest in the subject . . . Statistics? Computer Science? Graphic Design?

A. Hmm, that's a tough one - mostly because I've never had a formal viz education. It'll also depend on what you're going for too. I personally got CS in undergrad, statistics in grad, and I had to learn about design on the fly when I was at The times. So a combination of stat, CS, and design is what I like to suggest.

Q. For beginners, what readings or materials would you suggest? What are the most powerful tools you would suggest learning?

A. So this sorta goes back to my argument for learning about the 3 subjects. I use R (statistician tool of choice) for analysis, Flash (interactive viz on the Web), Adobe Illustrator for graphics, and some combination of python, PHP, mysql for data handling & parsing. Google is your friend. Oh, and Processing is good too.

Q. You dabble a bit in self-surveillance and self-experimentation; what do you see as the main advantages of self-study? Why do you think so few people do it?

A. A little more than dabble. It's my dissertation topic :). There are all the typical benefits like self-help and satisfying curiosity, but the main thing I'm after is integrating data into everyday life. We'll just be able to make better decisions.

Q. What's something aspiring info designers should know that I haven't already asked?

A. Books are great, but the only way to get better is practice. Find datasets and try to visualize them. After a while, you'll start to figure out what works and what doesn't. Oh, and learn to program. it'll open up a lot of doors as far as what you can do.

Facebook growth chart

The NYT has created a beautiful infographic putting the geographic and age expansion of Facebook in perspective. Additionally, the graphic shows an example of a friend network, where the user interacts with only a small percentage of their total Facebook friends. [Hat tip: DataViz]


Click to enlarge

Legendary coaches dance in their underwear for Guitar Hero [video]

The coaches, in case you couldn't tell, are Duke's Coach K, Louisville's Rick Pitino, UNC's Roy Williams, and the retired Bobby Knight.

It's good to see that these guys don't take themselves too seriously, but I'm sure glad they coach for a career instead of dance.

More behind the scenes stuff from ESPN :



[Thanks, Dad.]

Illegal downloads on the decline [charts]

PSFK has the story.

One possible explanation for the decline :

With the advent of ubiquitous, always-on fast internet and robust streaming music services, the need for having local copies of songs will become a thing of the past.

The discoveries not yet made

NCSU ecology professor Rob Dunn offers perspective and insight into the limits of science and the discoveries yet to be made in this interview with North Carolina Public Radio's The State of Things.

Outdoor bean bag

It's not in classic bag shape, but I like it.

[Hat tip: Design Milk]

Water consumption visual

Click to enlarge.

One pound of beef = 1,500 gallons of water?!?

From Good Magazine. [HT: PSFK]

F.H. Buckley on Libertarian Paternalism [video]

5 minute video from Reason.

I am looking forward to reading Buckley's book, which he says is an attempt to respond to paternalists' toughest criticisms of free choice.

Visualize the solar system

Planets is a simulation of the solar system, allowing users to change speed and perspective among other things. Highly recommended.

[HT: Cool Infographics]

Thinking in real people instead of percentages

Advice for journalists from Revolutions :

The statement "Bacon increases your risk of colorectal cancer by 20%" is converted to "about one extra case in every 100 people". It's really difficult to make sense of these risk numbers without knowing the prevalence of the disease (..., event, whatever) in the first place.

Do children make us happier?

A new paper by Luis Angeles says yes :

We investigate the effects of having children at home on individual happiness. Contrary to much of the literature, we find effects that are positive, large and increasing in the number of children. These effects, however, are contingent on the individual's characteristics. Children make married people happier, but people who are separated, living as a couple or have never married and are not living as a couple are less happy with children. We also analyze the role of factors such as gender, age, income and education.

Places to trim the budget [charts]

. . . just saying.

A better way of showing correlation

. . . but still not the best, Andrew Gelman argues :

1. The big fat circles in the diagonal axis are conveying no information and are, to my eye, a distraction.

2. They forgot to to order the variables, as a result creating a confusing pattern. Try reordering to put the highly-correlated variables together.

Revolutions has the discussion. Here, positive correlations are illustrated with a filled black circle; negative ones with a white circle outlined in black.

Students take pictures from space with $80 digital camera

A New Scientist article explains how a group of Spanish students used a balloon to launch an ordinary digital camera into space and capture these photos.

Visualize the history of the Earth

I love this geological time spiral. It's a reminder of the recency of life on Earth as we know it. {Click to enlarge.} [Hat tip: DataViz]

Change in the world's wealthiest, 2008 to 2009 [chart]

Interestingly, Michael Bloomberg is the only individual to see his wealth increase from 2008 to 2009.


[HT: DataViz]

Radiology art

From a NYT article titled "The Inner Beauty of a McNugget: A Cultural Scan" :

When an object is scanned, the machine produces 200 to 500 image slices. Mr. Stuelke loads this data into a computer program that allows him to assign different colors to areas of different density. Mr. Stuelke’s results include a Barbie with flaming orange hair and articulated white leg bones; a skeletal iPhone with a dizzying array of connections that resemble a fantastical, tricked-out city; and a translucent wind-up bunny whose internal mechanisms are disturbingly reminiscent of a bomb.

More images at radiologyart.com.

Gary Becker interviewed by WSJ

From the Wall Street Journal :

Still, there remain many good reasons to continue the struggle against the current trend, Mr. Becker says. "When the market economy is compared to alternatives, nothing is better at raising productivity, reducing poverty, improving health and integrating the people of the world."

U.S. unemployment map

The New York Times continues to impress with their beautiful and informative interactive maps. This one shows the unemployment rate for every county in the U.S. The Economix blog also has a follow-up post with a slide show showing what this map looks like over time.

Q & A with The Sports Economist, Skip Sauer

Skip Sauer chairs the Clemson Economics Department and founded and co-authors The Sports Economist blog. He is an expert on the economics of sports and was gracious enough to answer some sports economics related questions for Wehr in the World readers. For more, see Skip's homepage or listen to his EconTalk podcast from April 2006.

Q : The North American sports leagues tend to be more socialistic than foreign leagues with more revenue sharing and barriers to entry. Is there reason to believe that a more socialistic model works better in sports to maximize profits?

A : A better description than socialistic would be 'well-managed cartels.' A well-managed cartel can come close to maximizing joint profits. Competition among clubs increases player wages and reduces profits, and North American sports leagues, acting as cartels, address that problem quite effectively.

Q : What are the economic advantages of pro sports leagues having a draft? Why don't we see drafts in European football or other foreign sports leagues, and why don't we see drafts in industries other than pro sports?

A : The advantage is simple: the draft eliminates competition between the clubs for player talent. A draft in any other industry would be a violation of anti-trust law. It is somewhat baffling that the courts (for example, in the Maurice Clarrett case) allow the draft to stand in pro sports. This mechanism would never pass muster in the movie industry, for example.

Q : North American pro sports leagues seem to favor owners over players (e.g., salary caps, roster size limits, minimum age requirements, "franchise" tags). Are the owners profiting at the expense of the players, or could this situation be considered efficient?

A : The owners are profiting at the expense of players, no question about it. But this is mostly a question of distribution and not efficiency, since, for example, Peyton Manning would play football regardless of whether he's paid $2 million or $10 million a year.

Q : The major North American sports leagues have settled at around 30 teams each -- is this an efficient outcome, or purely coincidental? Why is it that the major North American sports leagues organize themselves into about 30 teams with 15 teams per conference instead of, say, 300 teams with 10 teams per conference (ala the NCAA)?

A : This is an issue in which the N. American system is inefficient. Monopoly/cartel industry structures limit output to increase producer profits, and the professional leagues do this very well. The NCAA is much more "efficient" and competitive in this dimension. So are the European soccer leagues.

Q : Many NCAA athletes are hugely undercompensated, so why hasn't a junior professional league emerged to offer fair wages and take the undercompensated athletes from the NCAA?

A : Good question, but the answer is pretty simple: fans like NCAA athletic competition. Fans also appreciate seeing the best athletes in the world compete in the NBA, NFL, etc. The combination of inferior (or developing) talent with college loyalty makes NCAA competition viable in the marketplace, whereas minor professional leagues generate little to no interest.

Q : Are league rules profit-maximizing? E.g., would the NBA add a 4-point line if it increased profits?

A : Of course!

Q : Why is it that European stadiums are typically not subsidized by public money, while U.S. stadiums typically are? Is there a difference in political climate that can explain this?

A : It goes back to the monopoly league structure in the U.S. There are only 30 odd teams, and more than 30 cities that would enjoy having a team. So the leagues can set up a bidding competition for the marginal franchise among the marginal locations. This doesn't happen in England, for example, because there are football clubs all over the place. In north London, for example, Arsenal and Tottenham are literally one mile apart. Same for Chelsea and Fulham in south London, and there is also West Ham in the, err.., east end. And that list is just the current clubs in the English Premier League (EPL). Charlton, Crystal Palace, Luton, Milwall, and Watford are a stone's throw from their EPL competitors and try like hell to take their place in the top flight of English football. That's competition, as it was meant to be. In comparison, the U.S. model is a fraud, and one of the consequences of this fraud is a serial hold-up of the public for stadium subsidies. It's that simple, and it is a horrendous failure of public policy.

Q : How soon do you think pro leagues will globalize (i.e., have teams located in foreign countries) beyond Canada? What economic conditions need to change for this to happen?

A : I think the optimal size of a league is small, on the order of 8 to 20 teams. The U.S. is large enough to support that number, obviously. Where your question really has bite is in Europe, where Scotland and The Netherlands, who are passionate about their football, have leagues that are confined to their national borders by UEFA rules. Ajax, Celtic, Feyenoord, and Rangers would love to play in a combined league, but the nationalist rules of UEFA won't allow it.

Q : How big of a problem is gambling in sports? Theoretically, is it safe to assume that player/referee/coaching performance are often swayed by bribes?

A : Gambling on sports is a problem when the commercial value of the gambling outweighs the commercial value of the sport. It is that simple, and always will be.

How NCAA brackets are like hedge funds

From a very good Slate article titled How to Win Your NCAA Pool :

Still, collective wisdom can be eerily powerful in the right circumstances. The national bracket typically performs well, as various commentators have noted, though it will probably win the money in only a very small pool populated by inexpert players. [. . .]

The statisticians and expert bracketologists I talked to all urged one central point: Don't think about guessing the most games correctly. Instead, think about finding "bargains" in the bracket where collective wisdom runs askance of more objective measurements. Exploiting games where your fellow bracketologists are likely to guess wrong—even if the odds of that happening are still against you—will give you the best shot at jetting ahead of the pack. [. . .]

This bracket-picking strategy isn't so different from the way Wall Street became obsessed with modeling risk, as Wired recently chronicled. The key is having access to two data sets: the wisdom-of-the-crowds data from the national bracket and a table of more objective stats. By comparing the two, you'll be able to assess whether you're getting bang for your buck when you throw your lot in with an underdog team.

Tyler Cowen bloggingheads with Peter Singer

I watch every Tyler Cowen video published to the web because he is an incredibly intelligent and fascinating person (more on that in a later post), but this bloggingheads.tv with Peter Singer might be one of his best performances. His questions show a thoughtfulness and depth of understanding that make Singer -- a Princeton Philosopher -- look like an intellectual inferior in his own domain(!). I'll stop trying to explain and let you watch {50 minute video embedded below}:

Dopey quote of the day

From a segment on privatizing water from Marketplace :

No matter the price, John Keesecker of Food and Water Watch argues that selling water for profit is a bad idea.

KEESECKER: I think when folks see water being privatized, they see a price being put on something that's essential.

Oh, you mean like FOOD? This is the classic dopey idea that essential items should be free. Until fresh water becomes infinitely abundant like breathable air, it will not be free. We can pay for part of it through taxes as we currently do, but because we hold water at artificially low prices, shortages result.

Three essential elements for happiness

Todd Kashdan, Associate Professor of Psychology at George Mason University provides the answer in this ScienceDaily article :

• Meaningful relationships
• Gratitude
• Living in the present moment with an attitude of openness and curiosity

Blue Whale infographic

National Geographic has an interactive feature allowing you to compare the length or weight of a blue whale to various objects, e.g. a school bus :



The site also has a gruesome animated video showing what it might look like when a blue whale and ship collide (the young kids in the audience will appreciate the cloud of blood, I'm sure).

[HT: Infographic News]

Cafe owner adopts no price policy

. . . and he reports that it led to a 50-100% increase in sales. {3 minute CNN video}

I've struggled with the idea of when is and when is not a good time to employ a no price strategy. The no price policy apparently works even when no clerk is present (e.g., the bagel story in Freakonomics), but it seems that the value of the good or service being sold must be sufficiently low in value so that the gain from taking the item for a low price does not outweigh the cost of guilt or whatever you want to call the negative feeling resulting from taking the item at an unfairly low price. You don't see any car dealerships offering a no price policy, for example, because if the car is actually worth $18,000, a customer might offer $15,000 and not feel too guilty about it. However, no customer is going to feel in a good enough mood to offer $21,000 for the car -- so the dealership is going to take a loss in the end. I could be way off, but there's my attempt to understand the problem.

Also of interest is the fact that the no price policy is much more common in Europe. Is there something in Europe that makes the no price policy more practical? Do they have a different "guilt threshold" or something?

Kim Jong-il wants pizza

Telegraph.co.uk has the story [HT: Marginal Revolution].

It has taken almost 10 years of work, but North Korea has acquired the technology to launch a project very dear to its leader's heart - the nation's first "authentic" Italian pizzeria...

Last year a delegation of local chefs was sent by Kim to Naples and Rome to learn the proper Italian techniques after their homegrown efforts to mimic Italian cuisine were found by Kim to contain "errors".

In the late 1990s Kim brought a team of Italian pizza chefs to North Korea to instruct his army officers how to make pizza, a luxury which is now being offered to a tiny elite able to afford such luxuries in a country that cannot feed many of its 24 million inhabitants.

Despite the food shortages, high-quality Italian wheat, flour, butter and cheese are being imported to ensure the perfect pizza is created every time.

I am glad the Supreme Commander has used his supreme powers to reverse engineer the pizza.

Newspaper decline mapped

The NYT does it again with a map showing (ironically) the decline of newspapers. My one complaint is that the map is not interactive so we can't see the names of the newspapers nor their underlying data.



[HT: Cool Infographics]

Beware Bad Goals

From a Boston.com article called "Ready, aim . . . fail. Why setting goals can backfire" :

It is a given in American life that goals are inseparable from accomplishment. [. . .] But a few management scholars are now looking deeper into the effects of goals, and finding that goals have a dangerous side. [. . .] The argument is not that goal setting doesn't work - it does, just not always in the way we intend. "It can focus attention too much, or on the wrong things; it can lead to crazy behaviors to get people to achieve them."[. . .] Even the most vehement critics admit that sometimes nothing works like a goal. But ensuring that it doesn't backfire requires care.

Rather than reflexively relying on goals, argues Max Bazerman, a Harvard Business School professor and the fourth coauthor of "Goals Gone Wild," we might also be better off creating workplaces and schools that foster our own inherent interest in the work. "

[HT: The Alternate Blog]

<3 Capitalism <3

Craig Newmark links to a story about an Indian teenager making $400,000+ /year selling e-books about Parrot parenting (www.parrotsecrets.com). And get this, the guy knew nothing about parrots -- he just decided it was an unexploited market.

This raises an interesting question for me: in entrepreneurship, what should come first . . . finding a passion, or finding a market opportunity? It's a familiar refrain that entrepreneurs must be passionate about what they're selling or they will get bored and sloppy. There's probably some truth to that, but who's to say an entrepreneur can't be passionate about the journey without being passionate about the product they're selling? This guy clearly has no passion for parrot parenting; rather, his passion lied in finding an unsatisfied market segment and satisfying it. I think too many entrepreneurs today are motivated by some grandiose save-the-world idea, leaving lots of opportunities for the Parrot Secrets of the world.

LeBron vs. MJ [chart]

{click to enlarge}

Points, assists, and rebounds don't tell you everything, but it's still interesting to compare Michael Jordan's career numbers to LeBron's so far.

I created this chart using OpenOffice. I wish there was a way I could highlight sections of the lines to signify playoff games, but I could not find a way to do it. Any tips would be appreciated.

Megacities world map

Shown are the cities with at least 1 million inhabitants {click to enlarge} [HT: DataViz]. I did not realize there was such a high density of megacities in East China. It's interesting to compare this map to the earth at night, as seen below.

Month 3 blogging in review

In 3 months, Wehr in the World published 205 posts and drafted 50 more.


Readers came from 61 countries >> mostly from the U.S. >> mostly from NC >> mostly from Durham and Raleigh.




Thanks to those who provided valuable feedback in the survey of Wehr in the World readers. Some of the information is charted below {click to enlarge}. The survey is still accepting responses if anyone would like to add their feedback.



According to Quantcast, the demographic profile of Wehr in the World readers is the following (although this does not include the 35 or so RSS subscribers):



It's been a great quarter year. Thanks for reading!

Month 2 blogging in review
Month 1 blogging in review
Week 1 blogging in review

Visualizing large numbers

I'm very happy to see the movement toward visualizing very large numbers. For too long, large numbers have been recklessly thrown around when most people do not have a good basis for understanding the size. For example, most people severely underestimate the size of a trillion relative to a billion, and even those who know that a trillion is a thousand billions, it's still incredibly difficult to wrap our heads around such enormous numbers.

For recent examples of visualizing large numbers, see visualizing billions or visualizing $1 trillion.

The latest example was created by The Big Picture to visualize the number of Cambodian deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies. All of a sudden, we can get a sense of awe for the number that wouldn't be possible with a cold figure on a page.

Infographic News, who linked to the above graphic, shares this quote :

When we really want to explain a really big amount of things, we have two good ways: compare it with just one thing or visualize it as big as it is.

Immigration Map

This is a beautiful piece of work from the NYT. [HT: FlowingData]

Tips from a 60 year marriage

WRAL reports :

They reflected on the busy years of raising their children, including a monthlong vacation to the western United States that their neighbors thought they were crazy for taking with children in tow. Tom showed off a Valentine drawn by his great-granddaughter recently with a loving letter written on the back by her mother, the Tilletts' granddaughter.

"I don't know if anybody would get a divorce if they could look forward and see what's ahead of them. [. . .] When there is so much love at stake it would have to be awfully bad to give up all of that."

Stephen Fry sings the praises of the web

Article from BBC News.

A few selected quotes :

Why the web needs a red light district . . .

But the internet is a city and, like any great city, it has monumental libraries and theatres and museums and places in which you can learn and pick up information and there are facilities for you that are astounding - specialised museums, not just general ones. [. . .] And I think people must understand that about the internet - it is a new city, it's a virtual city and there will be parts of it of course that they dislike, but you don't pull down London because it's got a red light district.

How to be a web snob . . .

For some of us a MySpace page is just pretty low rent. It's a pink, sparkly thing that's very charming for a 14-year-old girl, but a serious adult with a MySpace page has a problem. And Facebook is becoming a bit low rent too.

Why email liberates the voice . . .

As I talk to you now, and as one talks, especially to strangers, all the terrible problems of class, differences in education, race and gender all have their part to play in the embarrassment of real life conversation, but the moment one's let loose with a keyboard or a pen you can express yourself properly.

Why books and the web go together . . .

And we love them. I love them. You don't throw away your books when you buy a computer. You keep both. The beauty of living in the present day is you don't abandon the past. The past co-exists.

Internet access by education level [chart]

{click to enlarge}

I created the above chart using statistics from Nielsen's An Overview of Home Internet Access in the U.S.

On a related note, access to the internet and computers are increasing at about the rate you would expect based on historical product adoption rates . . .


{click to enlarge}

"When improbable events are expected"

Revolutions has a post that should please any statistician.

The post reasons that although the probability of submarines or satellites colliding seems extremely small given the size of the ocean and space compared to the relatively few submarines and satellites occupying them, the recent collisions can be explained by a simple theory long taught in introductory statistics courses, the Birthday Paradox:

If I pick two random strangers off the street, there's less than a 0.3% (1/365) chance they share the same birthday. But put 23 random strangers in the same room, and there's better than a 50% chance that two of them will be eating birthday cake on the same day.

They also pull a gem of a quote from statistician Peter Westfall:

Everything we see has about a zero probability. Calculating these probabilities after the fact is kind of meaningless.

A survey of Wehr in the World readers

Edward Tufte course notes and reactions

I could not have picked a worse day to be sick. I was in no shape to leave the friendly confines of my bed, but I was not going to miss this course. My condition certainly hindered my enjoyment and processing of the course, but I will share my experience anyway . . .

Reactions.

• It was a surprisingly large crowd: I would say 250 would be a conservative estimate (250 * $380 = $95,000!). There were a few empty chairs, but I would say the course was probably sold out. The crowd was composed of adults of all ages (I'm guessing there were many I.B.M.ers in attendance).
• Tufte was in the room an hour and 15 minutes before the course in order for people to begin with a reading assignment and to allow people to come meet him and get a book signed.
  
• I thought it was unusual that the course did not begin with any formal introduction (at no point did he really say who he was or his goals for this course, etc). Instead, the course began with the lights dimmed and a visual of a Chopin song.
• Most of the course involved turning to pages in one of his four books and listening to him describe the principles of information design as related to this visual. There was no question and answer session at any point during the course (I guess that's what the "office hours" were for). I probably prefer it this way, but still found it interesting.
  
• He bashed Powerpoint all throughout the course, but it seemed to be more of a series of short rants rather than an organized critique.
• I thought there was a bit too much self-promotion on Tufte's part. After lunch, he spent a good half an hour going over the features of his web site and so on.
• Subtracting out the self-promotion time and the time spent individually reading, the actual course time was probably not much over four hours. To be honest, I would not advise anyone to spend $380 to take this course, but he is such a big name he can get away with charging such high prices.
  

Notes.

• Don't pre-specify types of data or types of displays. Instead, the attitude should be whatever it takes to explain something.
• Strive for efficiency in design, meaning there is nothing in the display that you can erase.
• With visualizations, there is no relationship between the amount of information and the difficulty of reading. Often we think more information makes it harder to read, but this is untrue. There is no such thing as information overload . . . there is only bad design.
  
• In a presentation, focus on 1.) What's your story?, and 2.) Can I believe this? Every paragraph and figure in your presentation should provide reasons to believe.
• Always take the stance "at least until better explanations come along" and be thinking about what would be better evidence to make this case, and what are the alternative explanations.
• We need to get out of the authoritarian cognitive style. With Powerpoint, there is a contempt for the audience that they have to be read through one line at a time. The biggest mistake people make is underestimating their audience. Never tailor the presentation to appeal to the lowest common denominator of your audience -- show them some respect. Find a good "supergraphic" (i.e., a graphic loaded with information) and hand it out to the audience at the beginning of the presentation and let them explore it using their own cognitive style.
• You should have an indifference to the mode of information. Sometimes words are best; sometimes tables are best.
  
• If possible, bring a relevant 3D object to your presentation for your audience to look at.
  
• Annotation is at the heart of explaining things.
• Reduce optical clutter by reducing contrast (e.g., graying out lines). "Local optimizing leads to global pessimizing." Tufte said this principle will probably lead to the end of the world, but sticking to visualization, this means make all marks as small and subtle as possible.
  
• You only need 4 or 5 templates for your design career, and one of them is from Envisioning Information, p. 56-57. (It is just a simple annotated list of medical expenses at the end of a person's life.)
• Nature is the best designed scientific journal; Science isn't bad. The NY Times and Wall Street Journal are the best designed newspapers; the Washington Post is good, too.
• We can do lots of interesting things with visualization, but we should avoid the temptation to do them all at once.
• There are about 15 publication quality graphics programs. Origin and R are examples, Excel is not (unless you hack it). Adobe Illustrator gives complete 2D control over graphics if you can figure out how to use it.
• Strive for improvements in resolution: the rate of information throughput. Resolution can be taken to mean intelligence.
• Thoughtful design can reduce about half of all detouring to legends and so on. You want people reasoning about the content rather than format.
• The fundamental analytical question is "compared to what?"
• Fundamental Principles of Analytical Design: 1.) show comparisons, 2.) show causality, 3.) show multivariate data, 4.) don't separate words from graphics, 5.) document everything and tell people about it, 6.) serious presentations stand or fall based on quality and relevance of content, and 7.) important things should be adjacent in space.
• The principles of analytical design are the same as the principles of analytical thinking.
  
• The grand principles are indifferent to the modes of design.
  
• Detail helps credibility.
• Tufte's top suggestion for improving your visual capabilities (other than to get a Mac): get a great big high resolution monitor.
• Small multiples might be the best kind of graphic around.
• Graphics are not competitors; they complement each other. There is no perfect or optimal graph ("whatever it takes").
  
• The presentation operating system should be Word, not Powerpoint.
• Allen Cooper: "No matter how beautiful your interface is, it would be better if there was less of it."
• Tufte was complimentary of most things about the iPhone, except he thinks it is too heavy on the icons and has too "cartoony" of graphics in some places.
• "To clarify, add detail."
• "Clutter and overload are failures of design, not attributes of information."
• Tufte recommended Sparklines -- the open source program he helped create, although he mentioned the open source version has some flaws.
• Tufte guaranteed that meetings would be 1/3 shorter if you bring an 11 X 17 handout (technical report) and let your boss explore it with their own cognitive style, skipping over the details they're not interested in, and then asking you questions at the end. This handout holds the equivalent of 50 to 250 Powerpoint slides of information. In the technical report, you should lay out 1.) the problem, 2.) the relevance, and 3.) the solution in a couple of sentences each.
• Other suggestions for presentations: 1.) practice, practice, practice, 2.) show up early to your own presentation to get them started reading, 3.) finish early -- everyone will be happy.

Income tax rates [chart]

{click to enlarge}

More from the excellent See What I Mean blog written by a fellow Tufte fan.

P.S. - As mentioned in an earlier post, I will be attending my first Edward Tufte course today! I will post notes and reactions in the next couple of days.

Shape-shifters [video]

This is a little bit frightening . . .

PSFK reports on Intel's development of shape-shifting, programmable matter that can rapidly transform into any shape or color.

How am I supposed to fit this into my understanding of the physical world? And doesn't the geek in the video recognize that this has implications far beyond better-fitting sunglasses?

{80 second video embedded below.}

Taco truck for the Latte crowd

Via Design Milk.

Full Frame Film Festival

The world's premier documentary film festival is making its annual trek to Durham April 2 - 5. The list of films was released this week, and I can't help but to be excited. Last year was my first year in Durham, and so my first Full Frame. It did not disappoint. Encounters at the End of the World fit my quirky taste perfectly and became one of my all-time favorite movies (notice I said favorite movies and not favorite documentaries -- yes, it's that good).

Here are some interesting-sounding films on the docket this year :

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo. A look at how steadfastly the Japanese revere insects, from celebrating their place in history and literature to collecting them as pets.

Bitch Academy. In St. Petersburg, bitch really is the new black as attractive and accomplished young women enroll in the Vixen Academy to learn how to “turn off their heads” around men and dance like strippers for imaginary sugar daddies.

California Company Town. Combining contemporary and archival footage, this haunting film unfolds as a series of portraits of abandoned company towns, where the mishmash of kitsch, cultural detritus, and natural majesty reveals the lost promise of the United States’ frontier.

The Flying Shepherd. Romanian shepherds and their sheep find a way to get along with “the German,” owner of a hang-gliding business, and his airstrip in this meditative study of lifestyles in collision.

Mechanical Love. Exploring the possibility of love between humans and robots, Mechanical Love challenges conceptions of companionship and loneliness in the modern age.

Oblivion. A portrait of modern Peru, as told by the bartenders, vendors, craftsmen, and street performers who struggle, with great resilience, to survive in the midst of the political corruption.

Owning the Weather. Juxtaposing interviews with weather scientists and lay obsessives with evocative images that subtly comment on the way humans interact with their environments, this compelling study of weather modification becomes a stark meditation on, and cautionary tale about, our all too human need to control.

Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall. A monument to consumerism, the South China Mall is missing two important pieces: stores and shoppers.

Effects of age and gender on blogging

I just got around to reading a paper from 2005 called Effects of Age and Gender on Blogging, and found it to be pretty interesting. I charted some selected data in the figures below. The sample size used in the study is huge, so the margins of error are tiny.

Figure 1. Relationship of gender (left) and age (right) with emotional content in blog posts. {click to enlarge}


Figure 2. Relationship of age and gender to words per post.


For more research on blogging, I recommend Aaron Schiff and John Whitehead's presentation on "Economics of Economics Blogs" (10/08).

Finally, a university offers MA in the Beatles

How cool would it be to have a degree in the Beatles from Liverpool Hope University?

There have been over 8,000 books about the Beatles but there has never been serious academic study and that is what we are going to address," said Mike Brocken, who is directing the program.

Brocken said students would be expected to study the Beatles' songs, stardom, hometown and cultural impact through four 12-week courses and a dissertation.

AP article.

The State of Things

The local NPR station in the Triangle (WUNC) has an excellent little program called The State of Things hosted by Frank Stasio. Frank Stasio is a skilled interviewer who is competent on a wide range of subjects. Plus, he has a whole slew of quality guests to choose from in the Triangle schools.

The last two shows have been especially good . . .

1. What Are Those Kids Eating? featuring a nutritionist and pediatrician from UNC.

2. Making Sense of the Stimulus Package featuring NC State political science chair Andy Taylor, and Duke economist/political scientist/NC libertarian gubernatorial candidate/blogger/and frequent guest of EconTalk podcasts Mike Munger.

You can subscribe to the Podcast or listen to past shows on The State of Things web site.

In other WUNC news, the Triangle Business Journal reports that WUNC promoted Connie Walker to lead the station (and its $7.4M annual budget).

Religion distribution of the world [map]

{click to enlarge}

HT: DataViz

Charting drum beats

These songs were of course recorded prior to click tracks (an audio metronome that keeps the drum beat to a constant pace), which are employed by Britney Spears and Greenday :



More from Music Machinery. [HT: Revolutions]