I scraped my inbox when I got a bunch of emails on Cyber Monday. It seemed like a lot, but I wondered by how much. It was about five times more than usual, which is a bigger shock to the system when volume a few days before on Thanksgiving was nearly zero.

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How to Draw in R and Make Custom Plots

When base graphics and existing packages don’t do it for you, turn to low-level graphics functions to make what you want.

How to Display Text in R

Text can provide much needed context to traditional visual cues and can be used as a visual cue itself in some cases.

Moving Past Default R Charts

Customizing your charts doesn’t have to be a time-intensive process. With just a teeny bit more effort, you can get something that fits your needs.

How to Make a Graph in Adobe Illustrator

You can use the vector-based software normally reserved for designers and artists to make and edit charts.

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How the American Work Day Changed in 15 Years

The American Time Use Survey recently released results for 2018. That makes 15 years of data. What’s different? What’s the same?

Cuisine Ingredients

What are the ingredients that make each cuisine? I looked at 40,000 recipes spanning 20 cuisines and 6,714 ingredients to see what makes food taste different.

Redefining Old Age

What is old? When it comes to subjects like health care and retirement, we often think of old in fixed terms. But as people live longer, it’s worth changing the definition.

Counting Happiness and Where it Comes From

Researchers asked 10,000 participants to list ten things that recently made them happy. I counted and connected the dots.