Monthly Update: Dec, 2023
The series I am working on. Upcoming posts. My interview with Data+Love. Great comments to some of the posts. Future plans. Etc.
Wow! A month has passed since my last update, and this month passed by so fast!
With the end of the semester approaching, I have been busier than usual, but I am glad I could maintain my schedule of one post a week (almost). Here is a recap of what happened and an update on my future plans.
Series on Data Transformation
At the end of October, I announced my series on data transformation for visualizations, called “Shape the Data, Shape the Thinking,” and I published the first two posts on this topic:
After writing the second post, I received some really good comments, and some of them made me realize the limitation of my approach to describing the problems with statistical aggregations. I described the problems, but I did not provide some clear solutions. I have a post in preparation to cover some solutions.
Writing a whole series is much harder than I thought, but I have a good plan for the upcoming posts of the series. There should be two additional ones, one on filtering and ranges and one on granularity.
Rhetorical Data Visualization (RhetVis) Course at Northeastern
Last week, I concluded my new course on Rhetorical Data Visualization at Northeastern University. It’s been very challenging to start a new course from scratch, but I am very happy with the experience. The students learned a lot about data thinking and quickly became proficient with Tableau. I was really surprised at how quickly they learned to use it proficiently, confirming that it is one of the best tools out there to teach data visualization, both for analysis and presentation.
Online Version of RhetVis
At the beginning of the semester, I was committed to reworking and recording video lectures of the course to create an online version everyone could enjoy. Unfortunately, doing that turned out to be way more challenging than I expected, and I could only record the first lesson.
However, it did not give up! The second lesson is almost ready, and I intend to publish more video lectures early next year.
Interview with Data + Love Podcast
Last week, I was interviewed by Zach Bowders on the Data+Love Podcast. We have been trying to make this interview happen for a long time, and I am very glad we finally made it happen. It was a kind of stream-of-consciousness chat, so I don’t even fully remember what I said, and I am curious to listen to it. Chatting with Zach was much fun, and it felt like chatting with him in a pub about visualization. I think I have been a bit opinionated, so I hope it’s an interesting listen. You can listen to the episode here:
P.s. It seems like now that Moritz and I have not been recording the Data Stories Podcast for a long time, people feel the need to hear what we think!
Great comments from readers!
This month, I received many useful comments from some of the readers. It’s great to see some real engagement with the newsletter! My post on statistical aggregations generated useful recommendations.
Srini suggested a post on “How Not To Sort By Average Rating” that I really liked.
Some readers suggested that I address more explicitly how to solve the problem outlined in my post, which I will try to do soon (a follow-up post is in the works)!
My last post on data questions also generated some really interesting comments.
Bella shared a citation that seems to come from Jacques Bertin, “Graph is an answer to a question.” I could not verify it, but how cool is it if it’s true?!
Susan shared her experience with data questions and seems to have a similar experience. She also pointed out that knowing your audience is an important preliminary step when developing data questions. I agree!
Future plans
I could share a lot more, but I want to wait for an end-of-the-year (or beginning-of-the-year) post. Things are quite hectic right now with the end of the semester, and I need some time to breathe and reflect. I am incredibly excited about how this newsletter grows and what I have in store for the new year. Having a direct link to your inbox makes it very special and makes me work way more carefully. I want to be mindful of your time and attention. I’ll write more about my future plans as soon as I have some time to reflect.
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P.s. I will be in Rome, my hometown, for the Christmas holidays. I know there are some Italian readers here. If you happen to be in Rome, let me know!