Nathan Yau

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Make It Mean Something or It Didn’t Happen

The Process / audience, purpose

Visualization as template-filling content is lazy visualization that no one draws benefit from. Give people a reason to care.

Google Dataset Search now in public beta

Data Sources / Google, search

Datasets are scattered across the web, tucked into cobwebbed corners where nobody can…

Experience a soccer game through crowd noise

Statistical Visualization / soccer, sound, sports

Sports visualization and analysis tends to focus on gameplay — where the players…

Hotter days where you were born

Infographics / climate, New York Times, temperature, uncertainty

It’s getting hotter around the world. The New York Times zooms in on…

Counting baseball cliches

Statistics / baseball, cliche, Washington Post

Post-game sports interviews tend to sound similar. And when you do say something…

Weaponised design

Design / ethics, human

When the web was relatively new, things were more of a free-for-all. Everything…

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Better than Default

The Process / custom, default, tools

Defaults are generalizations to fit many datasets, which means you usually get barebone charts. For analysis, all well and good. However, data graphics for presentation require more care after the initial output.

Considering the “valuable-ness” of the things we make

Design / Nicky Case, value

Nicky Case ponders the “valuable-ness” of the things he makes as the product…

Algorithmic art shows what the machine sees

Data Art / algorithms, neural network

Tom White is an artist who uses neural networks to draw abstract pictures…

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How to Make Better-Looking, More Readable Charts in R

Tutorials / parameters, R

Defaults are generalized settings to work with many datasets. This is fine for analysis, but data graphics for presentation benefit from context-specific design.