Nathan Yau

Think Like a Statistician – Without the Math

Guides / data literacy

I call myself a statistician, because, well, I’m a statistics graduate student. However, the most important things I’ve learned are less formal, but have proven extremely useful when working/playing with data.

Visualize your Last.fm listening patterns with LastHistory

Self-surveillance, Software

Frederik Seiffert provides this nifty tool, LastHistory, to visualize your Last.fm listening history.…

Where Bars Trump Grocery Stores

Maps / homeviz

FloatingSheep, a fun geography blog, looks at the beer belly of America. One…

The State of the Internet

Infographics

From JESS3 is this video on the state of the internet. It’s essentially…

Data Underload #11 – American Hockey

Data Underload

American interest in hockey went from practically zero to near Canadian status.

Olympic musical – how fractions of second make all the difference

Infographics / homeviz

Like everyone, I’ve been watching the Olympics, and it continues to amaze me…

Weekend Fodder

Quicklinks

Snake oil? Scientific evidence for health supplements – Some work as advertised. Others…

News Topics as Social Network

Network Visualization / homeviz

All news is connected in some way or another. News Dots from Slate…

Evolution of Olympic Pictograms

Infographics / homeviz

Every Olympics since 1936 has had a series of pictograms (i.e. icons that look like restroom signs) that represents the events.

Challenge: make this graph easier to read

Discussion, Statistical Visualization

The Economist discusses the return of big government and includes this graph showing total government spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product. Is there a better way to represent the time series?