Chernoff faces showing multi-dimensional data in 2D: Google Quick Draw meets t-SNE, but from the 1970s. Via Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.
Sea Level Visualizations from 1854
Two amazing marigrams (diagrams showing sea level, including tides and waves) from December 23 and 24, 1854. Via the always great NOAA FTP server.
Campbell-Stokes Sun Recorder
The Campbell-Stokes sun recorder, a device made with an optical glass sphere that records the movement of the sun through the day by burning into strips of paper.
Paper strip images via the Pierce College Weather Station blog.
Electron Diffraction Slide
A slide showing an electron-diffraction pattern. Saved from the trash at the Stevens Laboratory for Multiscale Imaging.
Mobile Phone Antenna Radiation
Simulation of mobile phone antenna radiation at two different GSM bands, via Computer Simulation.
Computer Count And NASDAQ
I’ve recently had an interesting conversation with Rhizome’s Michael Connor about why the number of computers in Law & Order drops in the early 2000s (because of this project).
While my initial PurplePayday argument was that this slump was the result of ubiquity (us becoming accustomed to computers and internet use), Michael suggested there might be another reason: the bursting of the dot-com bubble.
Curious, I made a chart of the closing price for the NASDAQ for the same years as the show (in light gray) and superimposed it on the computer count on Law & Order (dark gray, with the running-average count as a red line). There is a striking parallel: a slow incline followed by a spike around 1999/2000 that shows up in both. The charts diverge toward the final seasons; while Law & Order did build storylines around the recession of the late 2000s, this didn’t effect the appearance of computers in offices and homes.
A quick Google Ngram chart for close to the same period (1990-2008) for the words computer (in blue) and internet (in red) also shows the same slump in the early 2000s.
Screw Descriptor Wheel
Another great wheel-based combinatorial tool, this one for screws (and bolts too, technically). Allows for various combinations of heads, threading, and my favorite, washers printed on clear plastic. Perhaps McMaster Carr should create some version of this…
Law & Order Stats: Gender and Computer Counts
What are you looking at? From the final episode (season 20, episode 456).
Having finally finished all 456 episodes of “Law & Order” (totaling approximately 20,520 minutes or 342 hours or 14.25 days) I now have just under 11,000 screenshots of computers and people using them. While watching, I also gathered extra data: I recorded the victim and perpetrator’s gender, as well as the total number of computers per episode. Below are some thoughts on those stats, for those interested such ephemera.
While the Law & Order Database has some great data, surprisingly it is missing the gender of victims and perpetrators. Since the show is “ripped from the headlines”, it is especially interesting to compare those numbers from the show with real murder statistics in the US.
Continue reading “Law & Order Stats: Gender and Computer Counts”
Gradient Vector
Gradient vector, via Math ∩ Programming, via Elementary Calculus.
3d Weather Data
Data visualization of weather over San Jose on Nov 19, 1997, via this very interesting article on color in data visualizations.