March 28, 2026

Subway Sign

After the parking signs last time, here is a subway sign.

Subway sign with Queens-bound trains, headed No Kings

A borough-specific sign to display

Here’s a direct link to the PNG and the PDF. Once again, put it onna stick and exercise the constitutional rights to freedom of expression, speech, and assembly enjoyed by everyone in the United States. ❧ Continue reading…

March 23, 2026

Confessors in Harmony

Charles Fourier was an early socialist utopian, part of the French tradition of thinkers who came up with various schemes for the complete reorganization of society on more rational grounds, and whose views now read to us as an unstable admixture of obviously sensible notions, delusional crankery, and things that seem to encapsulate both of those elements at once in a way that brings out the weirder aspects of our own dominant forms of social organization. Fourierist communities, known in as phalansteries, got off the ground in several countries, including a few in the United States. The basic social unit he had in mind was called a phalanx; in his mind, this would consist of 1,620 people, because of course there are 810 types of personality and you need two of each kind. A phalanstery is thus the large housing complex that houses a phalanx. Horace Greeley founded a couple, including the Sylvania Colony in Pennsylvania that eventually became the town of Greeley, PA. ❧ Continue reading…

March 9, 2026

Using Quarto to Write a Book

I’ve spent the last couple of months revising my Data Visualization book for a second edition that, ideally, will appear some time in the next twelve months. As with the first edition, I’ve posted a complete draft of the book at its website. The production process hasn’t started yet, so it’s not ready to pre-order or anything, but the site has a one-question form you can fill out that asks for your email address if you’d like to be notified with one (and only one) email when it’s available. A lot has changed since the first edition, reflecting changes both in R and ggplot specifically, and in the world of coding generally. I may end up highlighting some of those new elements in other posts. But here, I want to focus on some nerdy details involved in getting the book to its final draft. I’ll discuss Quarto, the publishing system I used, its many advantages, and its current limits with respect to the demands I made of it. ❧ Continue reading…

March 6, 2026

Data Visualization, Second Edition

I’ve written a second edition of Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction, which ideally should come out with Princeton University Press later this year. As with the first edition, a full draft of the book is available at https://socviz.co. The production process is just getting started so there’s no new cover yet, and there isn’t a link to pre-order. But (also like last time) I’ve put up a link to a form that lets you add your email if you’d like to be notified when it’s available to buy. You’ll only get one email (from me personally, not a marketing department) if you do; no spam or anything. ❧ Continue reading…

November 13, 2025

Ordinal Exchanges

The Socio-Economic Review has published a book symposium on The Ordinal Society with contributions from Nitsan Chorev, J.P. Pardo-Guerra, and Greta Krippner, followed by a reply from Marion and myself. (Here’s a PDF of the exchange.) There’s also a symposium at the Journal of Cultural Economy with contributions from Hatim A. Rahman, Juan M. del Nido, Julien Migozzi, and Michelle Jackson, again with a reply from us. Finally there’s also a new review from Michael Sauder in ASQ (PDF), which follows on reviews from Barbara Kiviat in Social Forces (PDF), and Laura Nelson in Acta Sociologica. ❧ Continue reading…

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All Posts

2026

March 28   Subway Sign · March 23   Confessors in Harmony · March 9   Using Quarto to Write a Book · March 6   Data Visualization, Second Edition

2025

November 13   Ordinal Exchanges · November 10   Trustworthy Data Visualization · November 6   Mamdani vs Sliwa and Cuomo · October 28   GSS Release · October 25   Manhattan Plot of Manhattan · October 19   gssrdoc Updates · October 13   Parking Signs · October 8   Halloween in the Round · October 3   Iterating some sample data · August 21   The Road to Selfdom · August 7   Blueberry Hill · July 22   The Sound of Silence · July 9   Embeddable Mac · June 28   American · June 26   Razor, Gun, Fence · June 18   Oh Leave it Out · June 9   LA County Population · February 20   TSA Screening Volume and Epiweeks · February 19   MTA Ridership · February 16   Burn Notice · February 6   Kerning and Kerning in a Widening Gyre

2024

October 12   Halloween Data Cleaning · September 6   Dr Drang and the Electoral College · July 17   Apple's First Post-Taboola Event · June 1   A New York City Adults and Children Dotmap · May 31   A New York City Race and Ethnicity Dotmap · May 30   A Population Dotmap of New York City · May 29   Race and Ethnicity in New York City · May 20   Harrison White 1930--2024 · May 16   New York City's POC Population · May 8   Inspirational Quotes · April 16   Six to Ten Hours of Poly-Processing · April 15   gssr is now two packages: gssr and gssrdoc · April 12   Daily Average Sea Surface Temperature Animation · April 9   The Eclipse via Satellite · April 4   Make Your Own NOAA Sea Temperature Graph · April 1   gssr Update · March 28   Book Day · March 14   Pi Day Circles · March 3   A PCoA of New York City Neighborhoods and Street Tree Species · February 29   New York City's Street Tree Species · February 29   Street Tree Diameters and Income in New York City Neighborhoods

2023

December 21   The Ordinal Society Site · December 20   The Baby Boom Again · December 6   Dorling Cartograms · December 2   gssr Update · August 10   Flipbookr for Quarto · June 19   The Naming of Stats · May 10   Free Speech Tsar · March 30   Assault Deaths in the OECD 1960-2020 · March 29   Life Expectancy and Health Spending in the OECD · March 25   Reading Remote Data Files · January 8   Escaping the Malthusian Trap

2022

July 22   Unhappy in its Own Way · June 29   Skyline Timeline · June 24   New York Building Ages · June 23   Manhattan Building Heights · May 20   Every Springer Math Text · May 11   Academia Explained · April 27   Map and Nested Lists · April 10   Indexing Iterations with set_names() · April 8   Iterating on the GSS · February 15   Clustering Pundits · February 14   Desktop Mac

2021

December 19   Comparing Distributions · October 30   The Polarization of Death · October 21   Excess Deaths in 2020 · October 9   Building a PDP-11/70 Kit · September 3   Covid Trajectories · May 4   Map, Walk, Pivot · May 2   Contributions to the Literature · February 24   Excess Deaths February Update · January 26   Income and Happiness · January 8   What Happened?

2020

December 18   Cross National Death Rates · October 10   Excess Deaths Overview · October 8   Excess Deaths by Jurisdiction · October 6   Excess Deaths by Cause · October 1   Walk the Walk · September 26   National Weekly Death Rates · September 24   US Excess Mortality · September 14   Dataviz Interview · August 25   Some Data Packages · June 3   The Politics of Disorder · May 23   Get Apple's Mobility Data · May 21   The Kitchen Counter Observatory · May 9   Covid Concept Generator · April 28   New Orleans and Normalization · April 23   Apple's COVID Mobility Data · April 16   Upset Plots · April 10   Covdata Package · March 28   This Is Just to Try to Say · March 27   A COVID Small Multiple · March 21   Covid 19 Tracking · March 15   U.S. Census Counts Data · March 14   Animating U.S. Population Distributions