Fair Warning - The 100th edition! 🥳
Hello! Well this is exciting, I've somehow managed to send out 100 of these things over the last 2.5 years. Mad, huh? And because it's almost Christmas and because this issue is special, I've been working on creating a living archive of Fair Warning links that I can easily maintain as I send out new issues.
It's partly for myself so that when I do talks, I can find good stuff immediately, but I'm also hopeful that other people will find it useful too. I've never seen a database of this kind of work before other than Jeremy Singer-Vine's Data is Plural archive (which inspired the archive; thanks!)
I've never used DataTables before, so any suggestions on making it look less awful would be super useful; the code is on GitHub and all you need to do is reply to this email to get in touch. Or poke me on GitHub or whatever.
Other than trying to solve issues with my code, this week has been alright. I have mostly been telling everyone to go for walks every day, wearing a customised hoodie of Neil Armstrong's space suit at every opportunity (YES), and getting cross about mince pies.
NOW ON TO THE FUN STUFF. This issue is long. *So* long...
On the home front
The Archaeology of Greater London online map — www.arcgis.com
This is a super cool multi-layered map showing greater London across Prehistoric, Roman, Saxon and Medieval periods. Nice.
I didn't spot anything else worth sharing that wasn't to do with Brexit and/or the election, and I'm bored of it all. If you saw some interesting UK stuff, please do let me know :)
Over the pond
California climate change: Fires, floods and a fight over free parking — www.washingtonpost.com
This is a long read about the realities of climate change in California and how it's impacting different people in different ways. Some counties have already warmed by one degree celsius, which is worrying. Lovely graphics in this too.
NYC median income and health insurance
I really liked the concept of this but I think because there's so much data and because the slider functionality is a bit slow, you can't really efficiently compare across the two variables... But, there's the core of a good idea here.
How Bad Is Distracted Driving? Data Shows Americans Are Still Texting — www.bloomberg.com
This is great. I mean, not great. It's bad. But the article is good. I feel a bit like maybe putting the cars-moving-around-really-fast stuff right at the top is somewhat jarring as a user, but I like the rest of it.
Locations of American Burger Chains
Interesting to see how some chains seem to be in only a few nearby states. I had no idea that In-N-Out was a west coast thing, and there's a few here I've never heard of before. Seems a good opportunity for a taste test...
[Related: America's biggest pizza joints]
These L.A. homes come with a $1-million property tax bill — www.latimes.com
What, what, what, hold on, what!?!?
Kind of interesting Tableau dashboard with maps and graphs showing which international cuisines are represented by which restaurants.
Two things: 1) Cannot believe there are more Russian than British restaurants. 2) This dataset is mad (not available publicly; you have to sign up to get it. Ugh. But also: Get it, and do something cool with it?)
The New York City Subway Map as You’ve Never Seen It Before — www.nytimes.com
I really dislike the subway map and find it massively confusing even though I love NYC. This is a great look at how the map was designed, but TWENTY DIFFERENT FONT STYLES?!?!? *faints*
This is a Tableau dashboard of UFO SIGHTINGS IN THE US!!!!! So many caps because I absolutely love this stuff. I went to Roswell a few years ago and it was a right proper laugh. Data here. Omgomgomg please someone take another look at this data.
Elsewhere
See How the World’s Most Polluted Air Compares With Your City’s — www.nytimes.com
Grim. Just grim. We should probably, you know, do something about air pollution in cities. Maybe ban cars (when I am Queen, both land rovers and range rovers will be BANNED from cities) and make sensible cycle lanes so that people are encouraged to cycle which is better for everyone.
The dogs who conquered the South Pole
Nice Minard-inspired graphic showing dogs who went to the south pole ... and died... So, I mean, it's not cheerful, but...
Urban Street Network Orientation
I have definitely seen these before, and I am so sure that I've put it in Fair Warning before, but I couldn't find it in the archive (maybe it was in the Tiny Letter days!)... Street orientation charts for different cities. I like them a lot! There's a slightly more complex one someone else made here which shows orientation by city and road type (ie 'street', 'road', 'avenue').
I thought this was a really powerful Tableau dashboard which shows the scale of gendered violence (against women) in Mexico. Shocking stat: 9 women are murdered there every day.
Odds and ends
Welcome to the end of a decade. Ready for your 2019 Wrapped? — www.spotify.com
If you have a Spotify account, you can find out your most listened to songs over 2019. In winter I listened to Halsey, in Spring I listened to Seventeen from the Heathers episode of Riverdale (srsly), in summer I listened to True Faith by New Order (thank you, Blue Dot!), and in fall I've been listening mostly to Holes In The Sky by M83 feat HAIM. Most played artist is M83, quelle surprise; they are banging. My second most listened song is Easy Lover and I'm not even embarrassed. My artist of the decade is "Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton". But enough about how extremely cool I am...
I stumbled across this dataset of 'jump scares' in movies, because I saw a Tableau dashboard about it. I didn't like the dash so much BUT the data is awesome. Includes jump counts and jump scare ratings. I have not seen any of the films rated five stars. Maybe I should consider this a challenge.
Finding the Worst, Highest-Paid NBA Player, Ever — pudding.cool
You know sportsball doesn't interest me but I figure someone out there might like the NBA and be interested in this, which I fully expect to be completely mean about whoever this person turns out to be.
And you know... I admire that bluntness.
Sunrise and Sunset - Worldwide / Observable
I've been wanting to try out Observable notebooks but not had an excuse to and my js skills are much weaker than R or Python. Anyway, I really like this visualisation of Sunrise and Sunset times, and the fact you can of course choose your own location! Wicked.
Podcast episodes got shorter in 2019 — blog.pacific-content.com
Analysis of podcast episode length. Just by two minutes, though, so it's not as bad as we thought.
Text-mining & Sentiment Analysis:The Basics
Tutorial on how to do text-mining and sentiment analysis in R. I really need to set up a separate thing for tutorials that I stumble across because I'm never going to remember this but it'll be useful some day!
Bad chart of the week
"Hi, is that the police? I'd like to report a MURDER" (from here):
That's everything for this week! If you enjoyed this issue or think the archive might be useful in your training/teaching/life, consider buying me a coffee, or becoming a Fair Warning Patron. Also, let your data nerd friends and family know about Fair Warning - they might find it interesting! See you next time. Soph x