515 posts tagged with data.
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Topic 30: talk, anything, work, need, let, better, day, help, ever
That inequality lies at the heart of what we call “data colonialism”
"The term might be unsettling, but we believe it is appropriate. Pick up any business textbook and you will never see the history of the past thirty years described this way. A title like Thomas Davenport’s Big Data at Work spends more than two hundred pages celebrating the continuous extraction of data from every aspect of the contemporary workplace, without once mentioning the implications for those workers. EdTech platforms and the tech giants like Microsoft that service them talk endlessly about the personalisation of the educational experience, without ever noting the huge informational power that accrues to them in the process." (Today’s colonial “data grab” is deepening global inequalities, LSE) [more inside]
He is our collective responsibility. They all are.
In this story, we'll follow hundreds of teenagers for the next 24 years, when they’ll be in their late-30s. They're among the thousands of kids who are part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. This means researchers have followed them since their teenage years to the present day – and beyond. from this is a teenager [The Pudding] [more inside]
"nobody has really considered what they might look like to an outsider"
More in my series curating work by finance expert Daniel Davies, this time focusing on academia and on the cultures and norms of research in general. In "why i am (still after all) an economist" (2023), he asks, "Is there anything that is actually definitional, something that you have to believe or you’re not an economist?" and offers his answer, which is that (I'd summarize) economics treats historical facts as descriptive but not necessarily prescriptive. [more inside]
Troll the ancient Yuletide carol
Christmas just isn't Christmas without a little Roddenberry. Please enjoy a Holodeck Holiday, this year's present from the fabulous (MeFite!) John C. Worsley.
Previously. Previously. Previously. The whole collection (all of which I love). [more inside]
If you sit by the riverside, you see a culmination
This year's U.S. 5th National Climate Assessment Report opens with a poem by Ada Limón, features an Art + Climate Gallery and an Atlas with 15 national maps that show changes in extreme heat & precipitation. [more inside]
How many in the U.S. are disabled?
PLOT OF ALL OBJECTS
"There is a long inspiring pedagogical tradition in physics of putting everything into one log-log plot... We then make the most comprehensive pedagogical plot of the masses and sizes of all the objects in the Universe."
It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed
The Mozilla Foundation has published a study on the data privacy of 25 major car brands. Highlights include Hyundai collecting olfactory data and Nissan collecting and sharing "sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic information." [more inside]
"how it will be allowed to be interpreted"
Fred Clark of Slacktivist (previously) quotes Biblical scriptures on honest weights and measures while critiquing corporate survey metrics and their dishonest usage by bosses to punish individual workers. "Your job is simply to give all 5s. To everyone, everywhere, every time. This is your task because it is the only honest answer available to an honest person. Because 4≠0. Because differing weights are an abomination and false scales are not good. Because your wealthy are full of violence with tongues of deceit in their mouths and bags full of dishonest weights." From June 2019.
London Medieval Murder Map
"Each pin represents the approximate location of one of 142 homicides that occurred in the City of London in the first half of the 14th century. Click on a pin to read the story behind the event." One can filter by gender of victim, private or public location, year, weapon and ward, and switch between two maps of different dates. There are statistics by gender, occupation, day of the week, social space etc. There is a video about the project, and media coverage when this was published in 2018 included articles in the Guardian and the Smithsonian magazine.
The current temperature of the oceans
The Daily Sea Surface Temperature - click on 'World (60S-60N)' to toggle with North Atlantic data - compiled by the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine. BBC: Sudden heat increase in seas around UK and Ireland. Science News: Why is the North Atlantic breaking heat records? New Scientist: UK and Ireland suffer one of the most severe marine heatwaves on Earth. Vox: The world’s oceans are extremely hot. We’re about to find out what happens next. The Conversation: here's what that (ocean heat) means for humans and ecosystems around the world.
The Mosaic Effect
The Internet is Not the Tool. I Am the Tool
At all times, I understand that the internet is using data I somehow gave it, and that those processes and technologies are now too complex for me to track. But it feels aggressive to me, in the way it would feel aggressive if suddenly every kind of advertisement everywhere you went in the world was designed only for you. When I say the new situation feels aggressive, I am anthropomorphizing the internet, but in theory the internet is a web of anthros, so that statement might be nonsensical. But is the internet the people? Or is it everything the people see and hear and know and make up, without the people? from You Have a New Memory by Merritt Tierce [Slate; ungated]
Inside the Black Box
Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart: (Archive) A WaPo analysis of the C4 dataset used in training large language models like ChatGPT, LLaMA, and others. [more inside]
Groundhog-Day.com: The leading Groundhog Day data source
There are 69 weather-forecasting prognosticators in Canada or the USA who made predictions in 2022 — including 39 ‘alternative’ groundhogs. [Ed. other parts of the site have been updated for 2023]
Use the Groundhog Map to locate your fave prognosticator.
Use the Groundhog Map to locate your fave prognosticator.
"one of many years of Scrabble that I hold dear"
"A Year of Scrabble. 47 games … 1,533 turns … 30,378 points. I catalogued every game we played for an entire year. The visuals that follow are visual experiments and focus on different ways of viewing personal data rather than exact details of who won or lost." Nicholas Rougeux's data visualization project and how it was made.
Climate Central - Interactive Map showing sea level rises and more
How sea levels rising will impact coastlines around the world From the Web site...
"Climate Central is an independent group of scientists and communicators who research and report the facts about our changing climate and how it affects people’s lives. We are a policy-neutral 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Climate Central uses science, big data, and technology to generate thousands of local storylines and compelling visuals that make climate change personal and show what can be done about it. We address climate science, sea level rise, extreme weather, energy, and related topics. We collaborate widely with TV meteorologists, journalists, and other respected voices to reach audiences across diverse geographies and beliefs."
Probably helpful to determine where to NOT buy a house... and more... one of my favorite coastal day trip locations will likely be gone in less than 30 years. A home I used to own will likely no longer be accessible by road.
Santa, When the Walls Fell
You better watch out: once again, (MeFite!) John C. Worsley brings us holiday cheer from space, the final frontier. Previously. Previously. The whole collection (all of which I love).
Visualization visualization
insects and rodents seem apparently never to enter the buildings
"The Tripitaka Koreana - carved on 81258 woodblocks in the 13th century - is the most successful large data transfer over time yet achieved by humankind. 52 million characters of information, transmitted over nearly 8 centuries with zero data loss - an unequalled achievement." (threadreader; previously: 1, 2; also btw 5 things the Western book as we know it depends on[1,2] and How the Trapper Keeper Shaped a Generation of Writers - or Pee-Chees if you please! ;)
USGS Water Data For The Nation Blog
Atoms and Bits
The story so far: So until some random assortment of matter and energy somehow arranged itself into what we think of as 'life', the universe was just that: a random assortment of matter and energy. After life, life began to arrange matter and energy, according to life -- creating life (and death) at least on the third rock from some star... [more inside]
Brouillard by Brouillard on Brouillard
LOCO: the 88-million-word language of conspiracy corpus
LOCO: The 88-million-word language of conspiracy corpus The spread of online conspiracy theories represents a serious threat to society. To understand the content of conspiracies, here we present (...) an 88-million-token corpus composed of topic-matched conspiracy (N = 23,937) and mainstream (N = 72,806) documents harvested from 150 websites. [more inside]
On the charts
Asteroid Close Calls
Under the right circumstances, asteroids just 20 meters wide can destroy a city. So far, humans have discovered 266 asteroids with possible diameters of this size that have passed or will pass closer to Earth than the Moon. This chart shows each flyby at its relative distance from Earth.
Amazon's Dark Secret: It Has Failed to Protect Your Data
Pouria Hadjibagheri and the Cascade of Doom
Cascade of Doom: JIT, and how a Postgres update led to 70% failure on a critical national service [more inside]
chart junk? more like chart hunk!!!
Declutter and Focus. This is your data viz mission, if you choose to accept it. A study on effective data communication (aka chart design) from the Visual Thinking Lab at Northwestern University via Policy Viz
Poison in the Air
ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. Using advanced data processing software and a modeling tool developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, we mapped the spread of cancer-causing chemicals from thousands of sources of hazardous air pollution across the country between 2014 and 2018. The result is an unparalleled view of how toxic air blooms around industrial facilities and spreads into nearby neighborhoods.[more inside]
Can Data Die?
Why One of the Internet’s Oldest Images Lives On Without Its Subject’s Consent By Jennifer Ding with Jan Diehm and Michelle McGhee.
"When one of the only women this well referenced, respected, and remembered in your field is known for a nude photo that was taken of her and is now used without her consent, it inevitably shapes the perception of the position of women in tech and the value of our contributions."
previously, previously, previously.
Episode 39: Do You Want To Become A Vampire?
Your Undivided Attention. A podcast from the Center for Humane Technology.
Ep. 39 features philosopher L.A. Paul on social media technology as transformative. (pdf).
Ep. 40 asks "What is the goal of our digital information environment? Is it simply to inform, or also to empower us to act?" (pdf).
Ep. 24 features Julie Owono of Internet Without Borders on Facebook’s “2Africa” subsea cable project and the risks of “digital colonialism.” (pdf). [more inside]
Ep. 39 features philosopher L.A. Paul on social media technology as transformative. (pdf).
Ep. 40 asks "What is the goal of our digital information environment? Is it simply to inform, or also to empower us to act?" (pdf).
Ep. 24 features Julie Owono of Internet Without Borders on Facebook’s “2Africa” subsea cable project and the risks of “digital colonialism.” (pdf). [more inside]
"a kind of tangible curiosity that statistics encourages"
"one of my co-workers had a tortoise called Pietro who could supposedly predict the weather ... I pondered how one might go about rigorously evaluating this claim". Conner Jackson collects and analyses data on the accuracy of weather prediction by Pietro the tortoise. The Royal Statistical Society explains why the article won their early-career writing award. Pietro's Instagram account. Other weather-forecasting tortoises include Herman in New Zealand.
Simpson's Paradox
If you look at Covid data from Israel across all ages, vaccine efficacy against severe disease is 67.5%. But if you break it down by age it turns out to be significantly higher: for those under 50 it's 91.8%, and those over 50 it's 85.2%. What's going on? "Simpson’s paradox arises when there are 'lurking variables' that split data into multiple separate distributions." [more inside]
Democratizing Data Ownership
The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
From a 13th c. merchant's annoyance at bookkeeping to VisiCalc to the recent UK Govt 'misplacing' 16,000 Covid cases, spreadsheets are the swiss army knife of data. A chapter adaptation from Tim Harford's podcast Cautionary Tales, an exploration of Excel and its limits.
This chart is a work of art
Katelyn Gadd highlights a CNN chart which is more than a little misleading. Bonus: more terrible charts!
patron records and circulation privacy in libraries
Librarian and researcher Dorothea Salo teaches an information security and privacy class that "asks students to investigate various aspects of the privacy/security situation surrounding their choice of campus-related data." Based on what they dug up, Salo requested records of her own library usage data at the University of Wisconsin, and published the dataset. It's big and detailed, goes back to 2002, and violates traditional library-patron privacy expectations. Librarian Kendra K. Levine: "The circulation data should not exist. I know it’s valuable for collection assessment but to the level of granularity tied to an individual?" Salo wrote a follow-up to "give you some idea where to go looking if you’re curious about a library’s stated practice".
Tubes consume a lot of electricity, as it turns out
Myth: Asian Americans are high earning and well educated
6 Charts That Dismantle The Trope Of Asian Americans As A Model Minority Characterizing Asian Americans as a model minority flattens the diverse experiences of Asian Americans into a singular, narrow narrative.
The Filing Cabinet
The filing cabinet was critical to the information infrastructure of the 20th-century. Like most infrastructure, it was usually overlooked (Places Journal): "But if it appears to be banal and pervasive, it cannot be so easily ignored. The filing cabinet does not just store paper; it stores information; and because the modern world depends upon and is indeed defined by information, the filing cabinet must be recognized as critical to the expansion of modernity. In recent years scholars and critics have paid increasing attention to the filing systems used to store and retrieve information critical to government and capitalism, particularly information about people — case dossiers, identification photographs, credit reports, et al. But the focus on filing systems ignores the places where files are stored. Could capitalism, surveillance, and governance have developed in the 20th century without filing cabinets? Of course, but only if there had been another way to store and circulate paper efficiently. The filing cabinet was critical to the infrastructure of 20th-century nation states and financial systems; and, like most infrastructure, it is often overlooked or forgotten, and the labor associated with it minimized or ignored." via things magazine [more inside]
Pop! Pop! Pop(ulation) music!
2021 census includes music playlists In 2015, the Canadian conservative government tried to undermine the census by making it optional. But Canadians fought back and won.
Since then, gleeful social medial posts announce "I got the long form!" and Stats Canada has now provided a CanCon music playlists to enjoy while you enumerate. [more inside]
See No REvil
Apple’s Ransomware Mess Is the Future of Online Extortion — This week, hackers stole confidential schematics from a third-party supplier and demanded $50 million not to release them. WIRED, 4/23/2021 [alternate Ars Technica link]: After years of refining their mass data encryption techniques to lock victims out of their own systems, criminal gangs are increasingly focusing on data theft and extortion as the centerpiece of their attacks — and making eye-popping demands in the process. “Our team is negotiating the sale of large quantities of confidential drawings and gigabytes of personal data with several major brands,” REvil [WP] wrote in its post of the stolen data. “We recommend that Apple buy back the available data by May 1.” Related: DOJ Forms Ransomware Task Force as REvil Demands $50M, SDX Central, 4/22/2021.
Accellion FTA leak spreads
a trove of data on children, a group famously difficult to track
This online reading platform that mines kids’ preferences to create new books is deeply creepy (LitHub): "Maybe it’s just because I am an Old, but when I read about the data collection activities of Epic—an online reading platform that, in fairness, is free to schools and has helped kids access digital library books during the pandemic—I was extremely creeped out. [...] The company is using this data to customize reading recommendations, but also to create its own children’s books, including a series called “Cat Ninja,” which has subsequently inspired a spin-off about the eponymous Ninja’s owl sidekick (whose appearance generated a lot of clicks)." [more inside]
If you followed this thread, you're both a crazy person and I appreciate
Twitter user @bzotto posts a really long thread about manually retrieving data from a 5.25" floppy disk from the Apple ][ era. Here's a threadreader link. Enjoy the 80s nerdiness!
This guy tracked every single piece of clothing worn for three years
Have you ever wondered whether expensive clothes are worth their price? Or had that subtle feeling of guilt when buying something pricey, and then justifying it because you will wear it so many times, even if you have no clue if it’s actually true? If you thought yes, then this is for you. 4800 words from Olof Hoverfält at Reaktor.
I work less than I thought I did and that's OK
Turns out my top three activities of the year are sleeping (7h 45min on average per day and I'm very proud of this), working (6h 20 min on average per day) and socialising (3h 25 min on average per day). It is mostly what I would expect except that it always scares me how much time we actually spend unconscious. I can't decide whether 1h 20 min spent on human function (eating and showering etc) is a lot or not.All through 2020, Ala Szalapak logged her daily activities at 15 minute intervals. She collected over 35,000 data points.
2020: A Year Full of Amazing AI papers- A Review
A curated list of the latest breakthroughs in AI by release date with a
clear video explanation, link to a more in-depth article, and (when available) code.
(Also available on Medium)
Even with everything that happened in the world this year, we still had the
chance to see a lot of amazing research come out. Especially in the field
of artificial intelligence. Many important aspects were highlighted
this year, for example, the ethical aspects, important biases, and much more.
Artificial intelligence and our understanding of the human brain and its
link to AI is constantly evolving, showing promising applications in the
near future. [more inside]