In case you missed the news (where have you been?!) – Questions in Dataviz is to become a book, released later this year. If you are wondering, the current status is that the book is written, the manuscript has been reviewed and submitted, and is currently going through copy editing and production. Rest assured, you’ll […]
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How do we transform information into art?
That’s a big question – we’ll get to that, and the motivation for asking that particular question later! But the most important context about this post is the time of writing it – the third of January of a brand new year is when many of us look either back, or forward, or both. With […]
How do we become active citizens of data?
This post is a review of Jer Thorp’s “Living in Data”. It’s one of the hardest books I’ve had to review, in part because of the nature of the book and in part because of my own circumstances and the nature of how I read this book. But if you want a spoiler (a tl:dr; […]
What’s happening to Questions in Dataviz?
OK, so you’ve seen that I’ve made many book recommendations (though they seem to have dried up recently). And this blog has asked, addressed, answered (and dodged) many questions over the last (almost) five years. Well this post explains why I have found less time for book reviews recently. And it comes in the form […]
Are beeswarm charts possible in two dimensions?
Recently I set about creating a new data visualisation. I don’t think I knew at the time what I was aiming for, but once I’d looked into the data and got inspiration from a few of my favourite sources, it occurred to me that what I was trying to create was a beeswarm chart in […]
Why is data visualisation so important in society?
One of the hardest parts to write about this particular blog post was the title. In the end, I’ve gone with my chosen title to make it clear that this is a book review of “Data Visualization in Society” – a book formed of a collection of data visualisation essays and edited by Martin Engebretsen […]
What are Truchet tiles?
In January, I was inspired by the amount of generative art being produced, in particular on my twitter feed. The hashtag #genuary2021 was full of examples of generative art, with each day having a different “rule” to inspire their participants. It’s hard to pick a favourite given there were 31 days’ worth of contributions from […]
Why have I left it so late to talk about procrastination?
For every post I write, there is a post I don’t write. This, for example, below, in my WordPress instance, is telling me that I have nine draft posts (although, in my defence, this that you’re reading now is currently one of them). These nine unwritten posts go back about four years, and believe me, […]
Can you create a county level tile map for the USA?
Yes you can, I’ve done it – at least I’ve done it for the lower 48 states. The better questions to consider are “Should you …?”, or maybe “What are the pros and cons of such a map type”. Or perhaps “How on earth did you do it?” and the related “Why?” First of all, […]