Josh Stevens, a PhD candidate at Penn State, mapped 92 years of sasquatch sightings, based on data from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. Before you furiously type that the map is just population density, Stevens addresses that.

Right away you can see that sightings are not evenly distributed. At first glance, it looks a lot like a map of population distribution. After all, you would expect sightings to be the most frequent in areas where there are a lot of people. But a bivariate view of the data shows a very different story. There are distinct regions where sightings are incredibly common, despite a very sparse population. On the other hand, in some of the most densely populated areas sasquatch sightings are exceedingly rare.

The bivariate view he mentions is the county map on the left. Bright purple is high sasquatch sightings and low population density, and light green is high population density and relatively low sassquatch sightings. So it’s not all about population. More likely, it’s the vegetation level of the terrain, because as we all know, sasquatches prefer dense bushes and trees with grainy overtones.

Emily Chow and Gene Thorp for The Washington Post explored the change in D.C. skyline if buildings rose.

The D.C. Office of Planning has paired up with the National Capital Planning Commission to explore the potential of altering the federal Height of Buildings Act of 1910, which has defined the District’s skyline for nearly a century. With limited space for expansion and a growing population, the city is studying different ways to potentially change the height limit while preserving the distinct horizontality of the monumental skyline.

The height toggling feature and smooth transitions make it easy to compare views.

Tatsuo Horiuchi wanted to learn something new before retiring, so he bought a computer and booted up Microsoft Excel. Traditional graphics software from companies like Adobe were too expensive. Hariuchi’s beautiful results look like nothing you normally see come out of the spreadsheet software.

People like to knock Excel or <insert software program here> as if it’s the leading cause of their challenges with data. Then you come across something like this. Maybe it’s not the easiest way to go about making something, but if you can draw based on data, you’ve got yourself a way to visualize data. Maybe the software isn’t your problem. [via ReadWrite]

In a collaborative effort at The New York Times, a Fashion Week browser shows highlights of the event through thumbnails reminiscent of slitscans. These “fingerprints” are the zoomed out view of pixels and most dominant colors of each piece and designer. It’s a quick sense of what each label showed off this year. Then you can select fingerprints to see the actual images. It reminds me of the old Flickr Clock from years back.

By way of reddit, analog traces, or as they’re more commonly known: dirt.

With just five days left until Grand Theft Auto 5 is out, a map of the game’s landscape was leaked, whatever that means these days. It’s almost as detailed as Mario Brothers.

Ben Shneiderman invented the treemap in the 1990s to visualize the hierarchical contents of his hard drive. In the Treemap Art Project, Sheiderman approaches the tool from an artistic perspective. Each treemap in the 12-piece collection visualizes an actual dataset in a familiar artist’s aesthetic.

Colored rectangular regions have been a popular theme in 20th century art, most notably in the work of Piet Mondrian, whose work was often suggested to have close affinity with treemaps. Not all his designs are treemaps, but many are. His choice of colors, aspect ratios, and layout are distinctive, so simulating them with a treemap is not as trivial as you might think. Gene Davis’ large horizontal paintings with vertical stripes of many colors were more easily generated with treemap layouts. The rectangles in Josef Albers “Homage to the Square” or Mark Rothko’s imposing paintings are not treemaps, but generating treemap variants triggered further artistic explorations. Other modern artists such as Kenneth Noland, Barnett Newman, and Hans Hofmann gave further provocations to the images in this collection.

[Thanks, Ben]

Kirk Goldsberry, known for his basketball analysis and shot charts, has applied his talents to football passes relative to the line of scrimmage. (Football, a.k.a the sport that I might as well watch until basketball starts again.)

More than 68 percent of the league’s passes are short throws that target receivers either behind the line of scrimmage or within 10 yards of it. Some may find it surprising that many of the league’s passes target players behind the line of scrimmage. But screen passes and checkdowns are relatively common. Regardless, the most common throws by far are those short positive-yardage attempts.

I sense player-by-player pass maps in the works.

Weddings are special events where friends and family come together to celebrate, and we encapsulate them in their special day. What if you looked at weddings over time though? Todd Schneider provides a view into wedding announcements in The New York Times in Wedding Crunchers, and although the announcements are mostly New York-based, you get a peek into events and social trends. Simply enter terms or phrases and see the trends over time.

Be sure to check out Schneider’s detailed description and highlights of the data. [Thanks, Todd]

Forecast, one of the best if not the best quick-look weather sites, uses various weather models to predict temperature, wind, humidity, and pressure. Whereas the main result is an estimated map view along with highs and lows for the week, Forecast Lines shows you the the weather models that drive the site.

Forecast works by statistically aggregating a number of different weather models into a single forecast. Because I can peek under the hood, I was able to take a look at all the raw models and see how many dipped below freezing. I saw that none of them did, which gave me confidence that my plants would be okay.

Today we’re launching a new weather app that lets everyone “peek under the hood.” We’re calling it Forecast Lines.

And like the main Forecast site, it works fine and dandy on your iPad or mobile device.

There is a possibility the UK Census is scrapped for cheaper options next year.

The census faces its biggest shake-up in its 200-year history under Office for National Statistics proposals.

An online survey could replace the study – carried out every 10 years – or information could instead be collated using data already held by government.

The plans will be fleshed out and put out to consultation this month before Parliament makes a decision in 2014.

This is both surprising and expected. On the one hand, a decennial Census provides a granular view of a nation that is hard to match. However, on the other, it can be expensive to count everyone, and there are more data sources now than there were 200 years ago that can be drawn upon. The catch is that a lot of data sources use the Census as a baseline or a seed to make estimates.

The main issue seems to be cost, which is estimated to be £482 million over a ten-year period and comes out to about $1.10 per person per year. In contrast, the 2010 United States Census cost $13 billion, which comes out to about $4.20 per person per year. So it’ll be interesting to see what the ONS decides, as I’m sure it’s going to get US officials thinking about prices, too, especially since the US Census cost almost four times more per capita.

In any case, hopefully the UK Census sticks around. A complete cut of the program can’t possibly be beneficial at this point.

When we think about the age of cities, it’s common to think of when it was founded or established. However, the growth of a city is often more organic, as buildings and homes spring up at different times and different areas. So when you map buildings by when they were built, you get a sense of that growth process. Thomas Rhiel did this for Brooklyn.
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In 1953, the BBC filmed a train ride from London to Brighton and then did the same thirty years later from the same point of view. They did it again this year. The video below shows all three rides side-by-side.

For this rainy Labor Day, here’s an uplifting talk by DataKind founder Jake Porway. He talks data and how it can make a worthwhile difference in areas that could use a change.

There are a lot of poorly conceived graphics that make little sense or do the opposite of what they’re supposed to do. You know what I’m talking about. We see them often. You can either (1) get upset and overreact a bit; or (2) you can laugh. The latter is more fun, and that is the premise of the new Tumblr WTF Visualizations. Enjoy.

Pro tip: When you Google “define <INSERT WORD HERE>” and open the information card, you can see the etymology of the word in flowchart form and word usage over time.

[via @wattenberg]

NPR digs into accessible playgrounds, because everyone should get to play.

Remember running around the playground when you were a kid? Maybe hanging from the monkey bars or seeing who could swing the highest?

It wasn’t just a mindless energy burn. Many have called play the work of childhood. Play teaches children how to make friends, make rules and navigate relationships.

But for kids whose disabilities keep them from using playgrounds, those opportunities can be lost.

New federal requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act are changing the landscape for public playgrounds, requiring them to include equipment, materials and designs that provide children with disabilities the same play opportunities as typical children.

Be sure to look at the app, which serves as both a way to find the nearest playground near you and as a way for you to help build a reference for parents. They’ve found over 1,200 playgrounds for kids to play at so far.