Congressman Kevin Brady from Texas distributes this visualization of reformed health care in the US (click for a bigger picture): Here’s a PDF at Brady’s page, and a local copy of it. Complexity has its costs. Beyond the cost of writing it, learning it, following it, there’s also the cost of checking it. John Walker [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Art category.
Why modern art is all in the mind
This looks cool: Ten years ago researchers in America took two groups of three-year-olds and showed them a blob of paint on a canvas. Children who were told that the marks were the result of an accidental spillage showed little interest. The others, who had been told that the splodge of colour had been carefully [...]
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I see that somebody wrote a book about 4’33″. It would be cool if the book were completely empty, but I have a horrible feeling that there are actual words in it. For one thing, the Amazon listing says it’s 272 pages and retails for $24. If it were really what I hope it was, [...]
Quick summary of statistics for media
Thanks to Piled Higher and Deeper.
Notes from someone who’s seen exactly 3 movies in the past 6 years
1. From what I read, 2012 is a big-budget, low-brains remake of Miracle Mile, while completely missing the point of the original. So sad. 2. Meryl Streep was totally wasted in Fantastic Mr. Fox. And I don’t mean she was drunk–well, maybe she was, who knows?–but her talent went largely unused. Seems like a crime [...]
Silly stat-based music video
Richard Morey writes: I don’t know if you are into this sort of thing, but I came across it on the web and thought it was entertaining. Essentially, it is a music video made up of visualizations of quantitative information. It follows a day in a workers life. I suspect some of the data is [...]
Num Pang
Get the mackerel.
Luc Sante has a blog
Here (I found it through a link from Jenny Davidson). Only one update in the past six months, but still, it’s the great Luc Sante…
50 Things to Do with Kids in New York City This Summer (mostly free)
Aleks was nice enough to pass this on to us.
A wacky clock
Could someone build me a physical version of this?
Two kinds of book
One of the things Brad Paley talked about the other day was the computer program he used to make a visualization of the text of Alice in Wonderland [link fixed]. (Click on the “Alice in Wonderland” link; it’s really cool.) My first question when I saw this was, why is the book presented as a [...]
More on data visualization, beauty, etc.
Nathan Yau makes some good points in response to my belated comments on his “5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year.”
First off, I’d like to apologize for saying the projects “suck,” That was just rude. Would I like it if somebody said that the examples in Bayesian Data Analysis “suck” because they’re not completely realistic, or if somebody said that the demos in Teaching Statistics “suck” because they’re not tied closely enough to the lecture material? A better thing for me to say would’ve been: “I don’t particularly like these as data displays, but I’m impressed by the effort that went into them, and I’m glad to see these sort of data-based displays getting a broad audience.”
In the interest of constructive discussion, I’d like to make a few points.
Fun sounds
Click over and check it out.
Forecasting the future
Carpenter’s 1981 movie Escape from New York was a dystopian vision of the 1997. There was plenty of technology shown, but I was struck by Lee Van Cleef making a call using a two-handed cell phone: For comparison, an actual 1997 cell phone on the right (via Niels Hoffmeyer). Science fiction tends to imagine new [...]
This guy is to music as I am to statistical graphics
I had lunch with Fred Lerdahl, a guy in the music department who does research in expectations–what motifs might be expected next in a musical piece–and I was reminded of the Bugs Bunny episode where Yosemite Sam rigs up the piano to explode when a certain note is played, then puts up the sheet music [...]
Cartoon
I don’t see the humor here, but two different people emailed this to me so I think there’s some sort of legal requirement that I blog it. . . .
Comic books about statistics?
Slashdot has a review of “The Manga Guide to Statistics”. Here is a snippet: The story is silly and sets up some humorous examples of how to use statistics. Ramen noodle prices get graphed, Rui looks at grading on a curve and explores why her and a class mate get different grades for identical scores. [...]
I’m sure someone can explain this one to me
“Miseducation” was so awesome, how come Lauryn Hill has done essentially nothing since then?
The statistics of art, or, The silly things that people say when they think the social world is described by physics-like iron laws
Tyler Cowen links to a news article about David Galenson, an economist who is “convinced that the type of economic analysis that explains the $4-plus gas at the pump can also explain the greatest artists of the last 100 or so years.” I assume that this line about gas prices is just something that the [...]
“We expect sound effects in the movies, but we’re not going to pay to hear them in the concert hall”
I’ve always felt that Joe Queenan has gone straight downhill since “If You’re Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble,” but, following this link from Fabio Rojas, I see an interesting recent article from Queenan. I didn’t know he did serious stuff too. (Yes, I know that Queenan’s claims are debatable–in particular, I’m [...]
We need cover ideas, and we need them now!
Our publisher is putting together our new book (no, not Red State, Blue State, I’m talking about our next book, A Quantitative Tour of the Social Sciences), and we need a cover design. Now. Any ideas? Free book to the person with the best idea. And anybody with a particularly good idea, I’ll take to lunch. (Or maybe Jeronimo, my coeditor, will take you to lunch if you’re in Houston…)
Some background: The book has sections on history, economics, sociology, political science, and psychology, and each section has a different author (or set of authors). It’s not a statistics book; rather, it’s a set of discussions and case studies, giving the reader (most likely a student of one of the social sciences) a sense of how to think like a historian, economict, sociologist, etc. It’s based on a course I created for our Quantitative Methods in Social Science program at Columbia. Anyway, there will be plenty of time for book promotion later; now, I’m just trying to give you enough information to come up with a good cover design for us.
Here’s the table of contents:
Congrats to our Applied Statistics Center art contest winners!
We’ve chosen the winners of the ASC art contest!
A sad but true fact
The New Yorker has a circulation of a million and this has a circulation of zero (rounding to the nearest million). The winner and finalists are just so, so, so, so much funnier than anything the New Yorker ever has for these things. Not even close. Winner: “Fuck, it’s the dream again. I’m on trial, [...]
Objects of the class “Whoopi Goldberg”
I’m talking about actors who are undeniably talented but are almost always in bad movies, or at least movies that aren’t worthy of their talent. Sure, Whoopi was in The Color Purple, but that’s it. Other examples: Martin Short. Michael Keaton (well, I liked Mr. Mom and Johnny Dangerously, but they’re still not worthy of [...]
Rockumentaries are the best
I first twigged to this when that Theremin movie came out. That was really cool. Then the Brian-Wilson-o-mentary, which was excellent also (although it could’ve used some interviews with skeptics who said that Brian is no big deal). The Keith-Richards-produced Chuck Berry movie was fascinating in a different way. And Monterey Pop, Gimme Shelter, Don’t [...]