News

• What day is it? It’s Data Privacy Day!

  January 28, 2010 to News  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter
  

  Today is Data Privacy Day 2010, apparently. Was there a Data Privacy Day 2009? I dunno. To be honest, I didn't even care all that much about data privacy a couple years ago.

  But it's grown in importance as everything goes digital (and Google acquires every business under the sun).

  Take a moment and think about what Google knows about you. Correspondence and contacts via email, schedule via calendar, interest via feed reader, purchases via Checkout, and most importantly your day-to-day via search. How do you feel about a single company knowing that much about you? Don't you want to know how they use all that data and more importantly, how they protect it?
  Continue Reading

• Join the Great American Hackathon

  November 11, 2009 to News  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  Sunlight Labs, one of my new favorite data groups, has partnered with Google, RedHat, Mozilla, and several others to get the open source community involved in open government projects. They're calling it the Great American Hackathon and it's happening December 12-13.

  For those unfamiliar with Sunlight, it's an organization that promotes open government data and transparency, and they fund technology projects (mainly online apps) that move this idea forward.

  Organize an Event

  If you're a developer or designer and want to help out, organize an event in your local area for December 12-13, and get as many people involved as you can. The more we make use of open government data, the more people that will see its usefulness, and the more people that care, the more the government will put into data. Get involved now.

• Workshop: Visualization on the Web – Join Me at VisWeek

  June 29, 2009 to News  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  Visualization on the Web is growing, but a lot of the really good stuff is just sitting around on someone's computer. So to get a discussion going about how we can get more visualization out there - theory and application - Robert Kosara of Eager Eyes, Andrew Vande Moere from information aesthetics, and myself are heading up a workshop at VisWeek in October. It's in Atlantic City.

  We'll share some of our experiences, but mainly we want to know what's on your mind. Submit your one-page position statement and tell us about your experiences, propose discussion topics, or ask questions that you're wondering about. We'll review the topics and you'll hear from us by the end of July. Get your submissions in by July 17.

  Find more details here.

• Non-profit Seeks Infographic Designer

  June 11, 2009 to News  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  Are you an information designer looking for a project?

  The East-West Center in Washington is currently looking for a designer to create a series of information graphics for an online and print publication. They want a series of graphics that will cover a broad range of topics from economics, politics, demographics, history and culture. They provide the data, and you provide the creativity.

  The job description is a little wordy, but basically, they just want to see your portfolio and a sense of what kind of work you do. You can find more details here. It sounds like a fun opportunity.

• Turning Statistics Into Knowledge – 3 Days Left to Sign Up

  April 27, 2009 to News  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  The US Census Bureau, World Bank, and OECD have organized a seminar to discuss innovations in visualization and blossoming Web technologies to disperse the stories in data. Innovative Approaches to Turn Statistics into Knowledge will be held July 15-16, 2009 in Washington, D.C.

  While dynamic graphics and communication tools are at the heart of the seminar, we also want to focus on a broader range of tools. The seminar will also include the use of videos, as explored by GapMinder and others, and participative approaches, as seen in some web 2.0 initiatives; and – although innovative tools are themselves of great interest, and worthy of being presented at the seminar – the focus of the seminar will be on innovative applications of tools, for example, so-called story-telling applications.

  With participants [pdf] from all over the world and major organizations, and no registration fee, the seminar looks promising. Hurry though, there are only three days left to sign up. The deadline is April 30.

• Do You Want to Learn How to Make Statistical Graphics?

  March 14, 2009 to News  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  If you're interested in learning how to use R for statistical graphics or tools like GGobi for exploratory data analysis, check out this workshop in Washington, DC during the end of July right before the annual Joint Statistical Meetings. The workshop's called Looking at Data.

  Graphics are a fundamental part of data analysis, used in initial data inspection and exploration, model building and checking and also communicating information. In this course we will teach the basics of static graphics and move on to the new developments in direct manipulation and dynamic graphics that facilitate exploratory data analysis. The methods taught are readily available in open source software, enabling all participants to reproduce, extend and use them with their own data after the workshop.

  This workshop will be focused on the analytical side of things (after all, three statisticians are running it) with static graphics on day 1 and dynamic graphics on day 2, so if you're interested in learning graphics for analysis, this should be fun.

• Position Available for Professor of Statistics at UCLA

  March 26, 2008 to News  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  While we're on the topic of what you plan to do with your PhD in statistics - UCLA department of statistics recently announced that it is looking for a new professor.

  Applications and nominations are invited for the position of Professor of Statistics, any level (tenure-track Assistant Professor, tenured Associate Professor or tenured Full Professor), in the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

  The position targets candidates with high quality research, a strong teaching record, and with expertise preferably in one or more of the following areas: Environmental Statistics, Social Statistics, and Spatial Statistics. Qualified candidates must have a Ph.D. in Statistics or Biostatistics. The position is effective July 1, 2009.

  UCLA department of statistics is one of the best stat programs in the country with a talented faculty and really cool students. Albeit, I might be a little biased, but still. If you're interested, go for it; or if you know anyone who might be qualified, do them a solid and forward them the information.

• Highlights From Journalism 3G – Symposium on Computation + Journalism

  March 6, 2008 to News  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  These highlights from Journalism 3G are pretty overdue, but better late than never. Here's what I thought was most interesting.

  Sensemaking and Information Visualization

  Naturally, my ears perked up on the second day when the sensemaking and information visualization panel began. Jeff Heer, who I've referred to a few times before, was the standout of the group. His presentation was for the most part on his paper - Voyagers and Voyeurs: Supporting Asynchronous Collaborative Information Visualization with Fernanda B. Viégas and Martin Wattenberg. It's a pretty good read that covers topics like vizster and the pre-Many Eyes project sense.us.

  

  However, it wasn't so much the material that was so interesting. It was the way Heer presented his material that captivated the audience. From the static visualizations to the animated ones, it was another great example of how powerful visualization can be.

  John Stasko from Georgia Tech also had some fun visualization work to show. His presentation was more of an overview of why journalists should care about visuals. As chair of last year's InfoVis conference, he did a good job.

  Journalistic Video Games

  

  Ian Bogost gave an interesting talk on the role of video games in journalism. The focus was mostly on his work with Persuasive Games:

  Our games influence players to take action through gameplay. Games communicate differently than other media; they not only deliver messages, but also simulate experiences. While often thought to be just a leisure activity, games can also become rhetorical tools.

  Think games are just for fun? Think again.

  One thing that Bogost said stuck with me. He said that video games are usually bad at telling stories. Many games put up a road sign for an issue but don't really go any further than that. Persuasive Games tries to go deeper to make players think about the issues presented.

  We can say this about a lot of data visualization projects out there (you know which I'm talking about); they try to make a statement but don't really go into the why or how we can change.

  Citizen Scientists

  Finally, there was Mark Hansen, who was actually the first speaker of the conference (and happens to be my adviser). Hansen talked about his recent work with Ben Rubin at The New York Times building and moved on to citizen science.

  Brad Stenger did a good job summarizing Hansen's talk in his detailed recap on infosthetics, but the main point to take away -- citizens certainly play an important role in data collection and reporting. Over time, as technology advances, citizen science will only play a larger role in ubiquitous journalism collecting, analyzing, and making use of data.

  Lasting Impressions

  The Journalism 3G coordinators put together a very good set of talks covering a lot of different areas. As journalism spreads outside of the conventional paper, it's clear that collaboration between journalists and techs is vital to future success.