Category: Episodes

060  |  Upcoming DS Events and Some of Our Recent Projects

Hey folks, we are back! We really hope you had a good summer.

We start the new season with an “internal” episode. We give numerous updates on Data Stories. Things have changed recently — we have future ideas and two great events to get in touch with us!

  1. The Visualized Conference, taking place in New York on Oct 7-10, 2015, is going to host a Data Stories Meetup on Oct 7, 2015. If you live in NYC or happen to be around please drop by! We’d love to meet and talk with you.
  2. We will also offer an Ask Me Anything on Reddit on November 3. This is a unique opportunity to ask us questions live and chat together.

In the show we also talk about some of our recent projects.

Moritz talks about False Positive, an art project on data, privacy and identity. He also talks about the new Inclusive Growth Report from the World Economic Forum, for which he designed the graphics and website together with Stefanie Posavec and 9elements.

Enrico talks about the RevEx tool and his collaboration with ProPublica for the analysis of millions of medical Yelp reviews, his work with Human Rights experts and a recently published paper on visualization design with climate scientists.


This episode is sponsored by Qlik who allows you to explore hidden relationships within data that lead to insights. Read Patrik Lundblad’s blog posts on the three pillars of data visualization(1,2,3). You can download Qlik Sense for free at: www.qlik.de/datastories.


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059  |  Behind the Scenes of "What's Really Warming The World?" with the Bloomberg Team

Screen Shot 2015-08-20 at 1.17.38 PM

Different people, working for different institutions, in different countries, at different times, all come up with the same answer …

– Eric Roston, Bloomberg (talking about global warming)

Hi folks! We have Blacki Migliozzi and Eric Roston from Bloomberg on the show to talk about their recent data graphic piece on climate change called “What’s Really Warming The World?

The graphic shows, through a “scrollytelling,” what factors may influence the world’s temperature according to well-established climate models. It guides you through a series of questions and visuals to all you to see for yourself what correlates (spoiler: carbon emissions) and what does not.

On the show we talk about how the Bloomberg team came up with this piece, their interaction with the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) scientists who developed the model, and the many challenges of translating important scientific knowledge into more digestible, but not simplistic, articles that everyone can read.

We also talk about how they took inspiration from the children book “Where’s Spot?” (which is a nice narrative technique for vis!) and all the delicate design decisions they had to make.

… And don’t miss the moment when Eric drops the huge IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) report book to give a sense of how big it is!

Enjoy the show!


This episode is sponsored by Qlik who allows you to explore hidden relationships within data that lead to insights. Qlik was named a Top 10 Innovative Growth Company by Forbes, and they published an interesting blog post analyzing the data from the ranking. Check it out! Qlik Sense allows you to create personalized visualizations and dynamic dashboards. You can download it for free at: www.qlik.de/datastories.

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Related episodes

058  |  Data Installations w/ Domestic Data Streamers

daniel-pearson-domestic-data-streamers

I believe we are bored from being 8 to 10 hours everyday in front of the screen, so when we go out from the screen the real life happens and things get more and more interesting.

– Dani Llugany Pearson


Hey everyone, starting from this episode we will add images/photos of projects and ideas discussed on the show so that you no longer have to guess what we are talking about! Try this one below … if you click on it you’ll get high-res pictures. Let us know if you like it!

Hi folks,

We have Dani Llugany Pearson from Domestic Data Streamers to talk about their studio and the amazing participatory data installations that they make.

You really need to see examples of what they do! Go to http://domesticstreamers.com/ and take a look at their projects.

In Data Strings they ask people to add their own thread to a set of physical parallel coordinates. In Life Line they use a grid of 800 balloons to show the point between one’s real age and the age at which one would like to die. In Golden Age they use a grid to let people mark with a log what is their age and what they believe is the best age in people’s life.

On the show we talk about how they got started and the process behind some of their projects.

Enjoy the show!


This episode is sponsored by Qlik who allows you to explore hidden relationships within data that lead to insights. Qlik Sense allows you to create personalized visualizations and dynamic dashboards. You can download it for free at: www.qlik.de/datastories.

LINKS


Related episodes

057  |  Visualizing Human Development w/ Max Roser

max-roserWe have economist Max Roser from University of Oxford to talk about his Our World in Data project where he visualizes the social, economic, and environmental history of humanity up to the present day.

Our World in Data is a remarkable project that Max started on his own and worked on little by little in his spare time until it evolved into a full website with plenty of interesting data, presentations, and visualizations to to better understand humanity.

The nicest thing is that it provides a quite positive picture of the world and about the many ways that we are improving our conditions. Go to the website (http://ourworldindata.org/) and take a look at War and Violence, Poverty, Global Heath, Etc.

On the show we talk about how Max started his work; the process behind finding a topic, collecting, and curating the data; and producing these nice visuals that people can easily understand. We also talk about human biases, persuasion, and how Max learned to build web sites and visualizations.

Enjoy the show!


This episode is sponsored by Visualizing Well-Being, the Wikiprogress Data Visualization Contest 2015. Enter the contest to win a trip to Mexico! To find out more, visit the Wikiprogress website (www.wikiprogress.org) or the facebook page or follow @wikiprogress on twitter.

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056  |  Amanda Cox on Working With R, NYT Projects, Favorite Data

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I’d give two of my left fingers for this data” – Amanda Cox on the show 🙂

We have the great Amanda Cox from the New York Times on the show this time!

Amanda is a graphic editor at NYT and she is behind many of the amazing data graphics that the New York Times has produced in recent years.

In the show we talk about her background in statistics and how she ended up at the Times. We discuss how she uses R software to collect, analyze, and visualize data, and her thoughts on other tools. We also talk about how data graphics are produced at NYT, with lots of funny stories.

Don’t miss the parts about the “what, where, when” of data and the “net joy” concept.

Lots a data wisdom in this show!


This episode is sponsored by Tableau Software,  helping people connect to any kind of data, and visualize it on the fly – You can download a free trial at http://tableau.com/datastories – check the new Tableau 9!

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055  |  Disinformation Visualization w/ Mushon Zer-Aviv

Hi everyone!

We have designer and activist Mushon Zer-Aviv on the show today. Mushon is an NYU ITP graduate and instructor at Shenkar University, Israel.

mushon_bw-pic_2015He wrote the very interesting Disinformation Visualization piece for Tactical Tech’s Visualizing Information for Advocacy and we decided to invite him to discuss the million different facets of disinformation through visualization.

Is data and data visualization bringing some truth or should it always be considered an argument? Is there a way we can mitigate or even prevent disinformation? What strategies can designers use to make their opinions more apparent?

These are some of the questions we discuss on the show.

And don’t miss the part on “data obfuscation,” that is, how to use disinformation to increase our privacy!

Enjoy this thought-provoking show!


This episode is sponsored by Tableau Software,  helping people connect to any kind of data, and visualize it on the fly – You can download a free trial at http://tableau.com/datastories – check the new Tableau 9!


LINKS

054  |  Designing Exploratory Data Visualization Tools w/ Miriah Meyer

[This episode of Data Stories is sponsored by Tableau. You can download a free trial at http://tableau.com/datastories – check the new Tableau 9!]

Hi all!

We have Miriah Meyer with us in this episode to talk about how to build interactive data visualization tools for scientists and researchers. Miriah is Assistant Professor at University of Utah and one of the leading experts on the process of designing data visualizations for scientific discovery.

To know more about her, take a look at her talk at TEDxWaterloo and her projects page, where she has numerous links to applications she developed in biology and other domains (see for instance MizBee and Pathline).

On the show we talk about her work on analyzing and understanding the design process: required steps, major pitfalls and tips on how to collaborate with domain scientists.

We also talk about her recent fascinating ethnographic work on “Reflections on How Designers Design With Data” and her ongoing work on building visualization tools for poetry!

Enjoy the show!

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053  |  Data Safaris w/ Benedikt Groß

[This episode of Data Stories is sponsored by Tableau. You can download a free trial at http://tableau.com/datastories  – check the new Tableau 9!]

Hi folks! We have Benedikt Groß with us on the show. Benedikt defines himself as a “speculative and computational designer who works antidisciplinarily.” Benedikt graduated from the Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Art and he works for his studio in Stuttgart, Germany. He is the co-author of ‘Generative Design,’ one of the standard books on the topic.

In the show we talk about some of his amazing data projects at the intersection of art, design, science, sociology, etc. Aerial Bold, for instance, is a project about searching satellite images to find buildings and geographic features that look like letters. The Big Atlas of LA Pools, is a project about mapping all pools in LA. And Population.io is about showing demographic data in an engaging way and even giving you a prediction of when you are going to die! This is an amazing episode with stories about how Bill Gates crushed Population.io with one tweet, how they published 74 books of pool images totaling about 6000 pages, and how they outsourced some of the work to an Indian company to trace the pools. Amazing stuff!

Enjoy it!

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Related episodes

051  |  Smart Cities w/ Dietmar Offenhuber


We are now sponsored by Qlik. You can download it for free here.


Hi Folks!

Dietmar Offenhuber

We have another great guest on the show. Dietmar Offenhuber visits us to talk about smart cities and visualizing data coming from cities.

Dietmar has an interesting background. He has a background in architecture with a Dipl. Ing. from the Technical University Vienna and then he got a MS in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab and a PhD in Urban Planning from MIT. He’s also been a key researcher at Ars Electronica Futurelab.

Now he is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in the departments of Art + Design and Public Policy, where he does research on the technological and social aspects of smart cities and urban governance.

In the show we talk about many of his super interesting projects such as Wegzeit  (timespace visualizations of LA) and Trash Track (on tracking and visualizing where garbage goes), and interesting concepts such as Accountability Technologies and Infrastructure Legibility. We also talk about the future of smart cities and what we should expect to get our of smart cities.

Enjoy the show!

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(Moritz Launched ON BROADWAY with Lev Manovich, Dominikus Baur, Daniel Goddemeyer)

Our Guest: Dietmar Offenhuber
Arts Electronica Future Lab
MIT Senseable City Lab
Northeastern University Department of Art + Design
Wegzeit – timespace visualizations of LA
Comment Flow (social media visualization)
Semaspace (graph editing tool)
Trash Track (tracking and visualizing trash)
Smartcitizen (distributed crowdsourced sensors)
Bill Mitchell (MIT Media Lab Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences)
Mapping the archive (project with Dietmar and Moritz on the Arts Electronica Archive)
Dietmar’s Interview: Sorting Out Cities
Deitmar’s Book: Inscribing A Square (how urban data shapes public space / discourse, and what kinds of representations are involved, and what is their function)
Dietmar’s Book: Accountability Technologies – Tools for Asking Hard Questions
Dietmar’s Book: Decoding The City

050  |  Happy Birthday Data Stories!


We are now sponsored by Qlik. You can download it for free here.


Ah! We made it to 50 episodes and three years of this lovely podcast of ours. We have loved every bit of it, every guest, every single discussion and all the support we received from everyone.

For this episode we asked repeatedly to submit a short audio snippet or text and we received a few amazing ones. We are very grateful to you all guys, this is amazing.

In the episode we talk about a few statistics we extracted on episodes with highest number of listeners and blog posts with highest number of visits. We then read the text messages we received. And finally we have inserted the audio messages we received. THANKS A LOT! This is amazing.

P.S. Special thanks to Erik Jacobson for his amazing collage! 🙂

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Most popular episodes (of about the last 12 months)

Data Stories #39: DensityDesign w/ Paolo Ciuccarelli
Data Stories #38: Visual Complexity w/ Manuel Lima
Data Stories #40: Narrative Visualization Research w/ Jessica Hullman
Data Stories #44: w/ Tamara Munzner

Most popular pages:

Data Stories #5 – How To Learn Data Visualization (with Andy Kirk)
Data Stories #22: NYT Graphics and D3 with Mike Bostock and Shan Carter
Data Stories #35: Visual Storytelling w/ Alberto Cairo and Robert Kosara

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Talking Machines (on Machine Learning)
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