The Olli library aims to make it easier for developers to improve the accessibility of existing charts:

Olli is an open-source library for converting data visualizations into accessible text structures for screen reader users. Starting with an existing visualization specification created with a supported toolkit, Olli produces a keyboard-navigable tree view with descriptions at varying levels of detail. Users can explore these structures both to get an initial overview, and to dive into the data in more detail.

Simon Willison asked a straightforward question about the tools people use:

If someone gives you a CSV file with 100,000 rows in it, what tools do you use to start exploring and understanding that data?

Then he expanded the question asking what people use for files with 1 million rows, 10 million rows, and 1 billion rows.

Browse the thousands of replies, and you quickly see that (1) there are many options to explore a dataset and (2) many people feel that what they’re using is the best option. There’s click-and-play programs, web-based products, programming languages, and command-line options. Some use a combination of whatever works for them at a given time for a certain dataset.

This is why when people ask me what the “best” tool is, I usually have to follow up with what they know already and what they want to do with the tool. It’s also why best-of lists for data exploration are usually not worth your time, unless you account for the assumptions about usage.

It seems a lot of data scientists have either left or were laid off from their jobs during the past few months. Jacqueline Nolis and Emily Robinson, data scientists who hosted a podcast and wrote a book on building a career in the field, happened to be in the lot. So naturally, they brought back the podcast for a bonus episode on their experiences with sudden unemployment and the job search.

I’ve never had a “real” job (as some tend to tell me), so workplace experiences are always interesting to me, like peering into an aquarium. The layoff process seems not fun.

Kelton Sears used a vertical scroll upwards to think about trees and time.

Bringing in data from various federal agencies:

Climate Mapping for Resilience and Adaptation (CMRA) integrates information from across the federal government to help people consider their local exposure to climate-related hazards. People working in community organizations or for local, Tribal, state, or Federal governments can use the site to help them develop equitable climate resilience plans to protect people, property, and infrastructure.

You know those signs in workplaces that keep track of days since injury? Making use of NASA APIs, Neal Agarwal used that concept to keep track of natural disasters. As of this writing, it’s been 9,691,764 since the last Apocalyptic Volcanic Eruption (VEI 8). Pretty good.

NOAA provides a map of potential flooding due to Hurricane Ian headed towards Florida. Red indicates greater than 9 feet of flooding above ground.

When someone fires a gun into the air, the bullet travels thousands of feet in elevation. Gravity pulls the bullet back down, and it accelerates fast enough to penetrate a human skull by the time it reaches ground-level. Acceleration and trajectory vary by type of gun and the shot angle. 1Point21 Interactive shows the variation and dangers with a visual explainer.