Florence Nightingale's Statistical Diagrams.
Famous as the mother of modern nursing, she was also an immensely talented applied statistician and visual information artist. These skills were instrumental in persuading 19th century British health authorities to improve hospital hygiene. She originated a graph type now known as “Nightingale's Coxcomb” and used it to dramatic effect. Examples of these graphs were presented in her monograph, “Notes on matters affecting the health, efficiency and hospital administration of the British army” published in 1858. That same year she became the first female fellow of the Statistical Society of London (now Royal Statistical Society). An animation of the coxcombs here
. The Nightingale Crimean War coxcombs are considered by some to be one of the three best graphics in history
. [more inside]
posted by storybored
on Sep 15, 2011 -
Statistical analysis of OKCupid profiles
exposes some sexually fascinating revelations:
like giving oral more than omnivores
- Twitter users are more likely to masturbate today
- Christians and Atheists are just as likely to claim they have never
- The correlation between men who prefer gentle sex & use of the word 'boating'
I f**king love statistics [more inside]
posted by 0bvious
on Aug 31, 2011 -
A corpus analysis of rock harmony
[PDF] - The analyses were encoded using a recursive notation, similar to a context-free grammar, allowing repeating sections to be encoded succinctly. The aggregate data was then subjected to a variety of statistical analyses. We examined the frequency of different chords
and chord transitions ... Other results concern the frequency of different root motions, patterns of
co-occurrence between chords, and changes in harmonic practice across time.
More information, analysis, and explanation here
posted by Wolfdog
on Jul 29, 2011 -
Although much has been said
about the demographic composition of the United States Congress, much less has been said about the thousands of staffers who work behind the scenes, drafting legislation, interacting with constituents, and advising their congressperson. The National Journal has created two infographics
that attempt to describe this silent, but influential workforce.
posted by schmod
on Jun 20, 2011 -
is a veteran American cartoonist best known for his delightful comic-book guides to science and history, many of which have previews online. Chief among them is his long-running Cartoon History of the Universe
(later The Cartoon History of the Modern World
), a sprawling multi-volume opus documenting everything from the Big Bang to the Bush administration. Published over the course of three decades, it takes a truly global view -- its time-traveling Professor thoroughly explores not only familiar topics like Rome and World War II but the oft-neglected stories of Asia and Africa, blending caricature and myth with careful scholarship (cited by fun illustrated bibliographies
) and tackling even the most obscure events with intelligence and wit
. This savvy satire carried over to Gonick's Zinn
chronicle The Cartoon History of the United States
, along with a bevy of Cartoon Guides
to other topics, including Genetics, Computer Science, Chemistry, Physics, Statistics, The Environment
, and (yes!) Sex
. Gonick has also maintained a few sideprojects, such as a webcomic look at Chinese invention
, assorted math comics
), the Muse magazine
mainstay Kokopelli & Co.
(featuring the shenanigans of his "New Muses"
), and more
. See also these lengthy interview snippets
, linked previously
. Want more? Amazon links to the complete oeuvre inside! [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 6, 2011 -
Go figure: How to succeed in business by doing nothing
Article about variability in business and why it is sometimes better to do nothing.
"You're a dynamic business leader. Let's say you make widgets - though you might equally make big-budget Hollywood movies.
Your widgets, or your movies, vary. Some widgets are perfect, some a tad too long. Some movies make mega-bucks at the box office, some bomb.
So what do you do? Well, you're dynamic, so you react, of course. Something must be done. "
posted by marienbad
on Apr 28, 2011 -
Cracking the Scratchie.
With cheating and money laundering and statistics, this story seems like it should be about something more exciting than scratch-off lottery tickets. But it isn't.
posted by jacquilynne
on Feb 1, 2011 -
"Nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion.... At least half of American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by age 45, and, at current rates, about one-third will have had an abortion." Abortion is one of the most common medical procedures in the U.S., but it can be very difficult to get unbiased information about the procedure. From Jezebel: The Girl's Guide to Having an Abortion
posted by jokeefe
on Jan 16, 2011 -
Wins-above-replacement, or WAR
, is a Sabermetric term of art
for baseball player comparison. Fangraphs
, one of the go-to sites for baseball nerdlingers, now offers a way to make WAR grids
, an amazingly easily comprehended visual display comparing players based on WAR, sortable by team, position and season, with a default topline of player age. [more inside]
posted by klangklangston
on Jan 14, 2011 -
give their hopes and dreams for data, data tools and data science
Already, Google has provided Google Refine
) to help clean your datasets. While great visualizations
can be created with online tools
or by combining R (great posts previously
), with ggplot2
, and even Google Motion Charts With R
(already built into Google Spreadsheets
Need data? Needlebase
, helps non-programmers scrape, harvest, merge, and data from the web. Or if you’re introspective, Your Flowing Data
provide tools to measure and chart details of your own life.
posted by stratastar
on Jan 11, 2011 -
Following the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
's decision to publish Daryl Bem's writeup of 8 studies
(PDF) purporting to show evidence for precognition (previously
), researchers from the University of Amsterdam have written a rebuttal
(PDF) which finds methodological flaws not only in Bem's research, but in many other published papers in experimental psychology. Could this prove to be psychology's cold fusion moment
? [more inside]
posted by yourcelf
on Jan 8, 2011 -
Google is known to ask the following question in job interviews: In a country in which people only want boys every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?
Think you know the answer? If so, Steve Landsburg may be willing to bet you up to $5000. [more inside]
posted by gsteff
on Jan 1, 2011 -
"Normal" human pregnancies last 40 weeks, right? Well, no; they can vary quite a bit by the mother's race
, number of previous children
, family history of delivering early or late
, home state
, work habits
, and even the fetus' HLA type
. So where does that "40 week" thing come from? Oh, dear.
So check out this super-nerdy pregnancy statistics
website, from an engineer mom who is collecting data from the public
(see the raw data
and auto-generated graphs
, and read the FAQ about the survey, with more cool graphs
). Looking for day-by-day
probabilities on when that baby's due? This would be your stats table with daily prediction
(adjust dates at top of page as needed). Of course, you could always shut up your constantly inquiring relatives and friends another way
posted by Asparagirl
on Dec 16, 2010 -
Measure-theoretic probability: Why it should be learnt and how to get started.
The clickable chart of distribution relationships.
Just two of the interesting and informative probability resources I've learned about, along with countless other tidbits of information, from statistician John D. Cook
and his probability fact-of-the-day Twitter feed ProbFact
. John also has daily tip and fact Twitter feeds for Windows keyboard shortcuts
, regular expressions
, TeX and LaTeX
, algebra and number theory
, topology and geometry
, real and complex analysis
, and beginning tomorrow, computer science
posted by grouse
on Dec 5, 2010 -