I had a very nice chat recently about data visualization with Brian Fannin, a research actuary with the
CAS. We covered a variety of topics from R and ggplot in particular, to how to think about data visualization in general, and what the dataviz community is learning from COVID. You can watch it here:
25 August 2020
If you’re teaching statistics, data analysis, or data visualization with R this semester, especially in the social sciences, I’ve pulled together various bits of data into packages that I use in my own teaching. You might find them useful once you’re sick of Gapminder. They cover a variety of topics and range from single tables of data to whole longitudinal and panel surveys.
The cavax package contains a school-level table of rates of Personal Belief Exemptions (PBEs) in California kindergartens for the 2014-15 school year.
3 June 2020
The wave of protest and unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by the police shows little sign of abating just yet. Unrest nationwide is, if anything, increasing as protesters are met with repression by the police. Civil unrest of this scope is unusual. The conjunction of mass protest and widespread disorder should be worrying to those in authority.
When property damage and theft happens as a side-effect of real mass protest, authorities in a democracy cannot baton, tear gas, or shoot their way to legitimacy.
23 May 2020
I’ve been maintaining covdata, an R package with a variety of COVID-related datasets in it. That means I’ve been pulling down updated files from various sources every couple of days. Most of these files are at static locations. While their internal structure may change occasionally, and maybe they’ve moved once or twice at most since I started looking at them, they’re generally at a stable location. Apple’s Mobility Data is an exception.
21 May 2020
Every day begins in the same way. I get up. I make my coffee. I look at the data. Everything about this is absurd. To begin with, there’s the absurdity that everyone with a job like mine faces each day. Locked down at home with the kids, trying to get things done, unable to properly teach, write, or think. The household is like a little spacecraft, drifting in the void. Occasionally you venture outside to get supplies, or to check the shields.