Design & Analytics' Blog

Presenting at hackNY Masters: 3 statistical tricks

published by adam on Sat, 09/28/2013 - 17:17

If you're in NYC today around NYU, I'm presenting at the HackNY Masters conference.  I'll be presenting at 8:30---the topic being "3 Statistical Tricks Every Hacker should know." 

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Alright, maybe NYC is a little Warmer than Chicago

published by adam on Fri, 08/09/2013 - 17:14

Since moving to New York from Chicago, every time I mention to New Yorkers that Chicago is a much better city, without fail they almost always reply, "But Chicago is so cold!"  I have brushed this off as a parochial New York-ism for some time ("But isn't everywhere west of the Hudson cold and miserable?"), feeling that in my experience in the two cities, they're both about the same amount of cold.  New York is at 40.7N, Chicago is at 41.8N---this is all of 60 miles, or about an hour's drive difference.  I'd hardly believe that amounts to a significant change in temperature.

But today, I decided to actually check data and play with a new charting tool.  Here's what data source World Climate has to say about it:


 

Ah well. Next time.

There's no such thing as Unstructured Data and MongoNYC 2013 wrap-up

published by adam on Sun, 06/23/2013 - 16:39

I made this point with Venkatesh Rao in our Future of Data Project for the CSC, but found myself at a table at the MongoDB NYC conference talking through it again---I think it's a useful enough idea, and maybe even an original enough one, to devote a post to.  (Thank you to my Data Science employer Noodle Education for sending me there.)

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Google has "alot" of trouble spell-checking

published by adam on Thu, 03/14/2013 - 20:51

I encountered a strange bug while using Google Drive today--it suggested auto-correcting "a lot" to "alot."  No google, I did not mean "alot."  I never mean alot, and neither should you.

Can someone fix this immediately?!  I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes---google wants you to type like a texting teenager, #kthanksomglol.

Here's the close-up:

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Site out of Sight

published by adam on Sun, 01/20/2013 - 20:07

Just some quick news: I've recently taken a job as a Data Scientist at a future-of-education startup in New York.  This means Design & Analytics is no longer taking new paid clients, but I will keep posting to the site blog on techy things related to design, data visualization, R, networks, and amateur cartography.  Also, still feel welcome to shoot me an email if you have any questions about anything I've posted.

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Geography is Destiny (or totally made up)

published by adam on Sat, 01/12/2013 - 18:55

...and maps are great.  As I learn mapping software, I've shown the following map to three smart people, who didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, except the sharp cut-off of Antarctica:

Buster Map

Did you catch it?  I look at this, and it's deeply dissonant to my brain.

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Introduction to R today in Chicago

published by adam on Wed, 11/14/2012 - 16:02

It's beginner's night in Chicago.  Alongside Chase Carpenter, Paul Teetor, and Jeffrey Ryan, I'm teaching Data Munging 101 in R at Jak's tap.  The meetup information is available here.

Here are my slides, as promised:

Feel free to download, use this, share it---or ask me questions.

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A Network Graph of CRAN package dependencies

published by adam on Tue, 10/09/2012 - 16:51

Continuing on my recent project of making interactive network graphs (on projects where other brilliant people have already done the difficult querying), here's a visualization of the CRAN package dependencies.  Sure, the philosophers graph is maybe more interesting, but this is a very real map of people power, too---and maybe as influential in these statistical times. 

The absolutely artful data munging here comes from librestats.  Check out his post!

CRAN view

 

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Slides from Chicago R User Group Presentation

published by adam on Thu, 10/04/2012 - 13:31

Are posted as promised:

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Visual Social Network Analysis in R and Gephi Part II

published by adam on Mon, 10/01/2012 - 00:05

Resuming from last time, I've made some updates to the philosophers' social network including publishing two interactive maps.  Quick introduction: you know that sidebar on wikipedia where it tells you someone was influenced by someone else, linking to them?  These graphs are generated from asking wikipedia for a comprehensive list of every philosopher's influence on every other.  There are some sample-bias issues and data problems I went over in the first part of the series, but overall it's both beautiful and interesting.

Interactive visuals

The first lets you zoom dynamically and makes it easier to see local networks.  When you hover over individual philosophers, those who are not linked to them or from them disappear.  This uses a tool called sigma.js.

Go ahead, click it.

The second lets you...

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