I'll be teaching a course in the fall on data communication.

[justinderrick@mstdn.ca]

@chu When it comes to charts, the one thing I hate is that most finance-related charts/diagrams are 'zoomed in' and exaggerate volatility... When you zoom out, and set the vertical axis to zero, you often see what appears to be a dramatic shift in price is actually very small.

I'd illustrate this by choosing literally any stock that's having a bad month (or 3) after having a year (or more) of good performance. The most dramatic example of this I can think of is Bitcoin -- the 6-month chart looks awful. The two year chart tells a different story. The 10 year chart shows an insane increase, because the value 10 years ago was far closer to zero than it is now. (This is not an endorsement of crypto -- merely an observation.)

[chu@climatejustice.social]

@JustinDerrick

Fair. Don't worry. It'll go back to zero.

[a_cubed@mastodon.social]

@chu
PM me and I'll happily share handout and slides for my presenting course (env sci at UTokyo) if you think it might be useful.

[mdwaroff@mastodon.social]

@chu My all-time favorite for this is "How to Lie with Statistics" https://dn710604.ca.archive.org/0/items/HowToLieWithStatistics_201608/How-to-Lie-With-Statistics-1954-Huff_text.pdf

[pinhman@humanwords.party]

@chu Neil Brooks analysis of Fraser Institutes "Tax Freedom Day" could be good.

Fraser I., is a conservative Canadian "Think tank" (political advocacy organization)

It releases a new "study" each year, it has received wide uncritical coverage in Canadian media for decades

https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/attachments/tax_freedom_day.pdf?x46002

Just a moment...

(pressprogress.ca)

[chu@climatejustice.social]

@pinhman

Thanks

[wnd@fosstodon.org]

@chu if you are interested in #OpenData you may want to consider the following, although it is quite UK specific:

The transport energy and environment data tables: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/energy-and-environment-data-tables-env
UK National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI) showing various emissions https://naei.energysecurity.gov.uk

(There is a bigger list of open data collated here https://anisotropi4.github.io/shed/opendata.html
It is less relevant to the ask but is stuff I have used in talks or visualisations.)

[2qx@mastodon.social]

@chu

In 1998, Bill Clinton read a book called The Cobra Event, about a biological terror attack on US soil. The ultimate outcome was two things: 1) the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), and 2) a new anti-vaccine movement.

In the Fall of 2001, in the wake of 9/11, Dick Cheney watched the outcome of a war game exercise called "Dark Winter" and upped the stockpile to 300M vaccines.

Is there a non-zero possibility you might consider assigning fiction?

The Monterey Protocols - A novella for non-proliferation

A short fictional thriller posing pressing strategic questions on a set of latent issues in civil defense.

monterey-protocols (montereyprotocols.org)

[rob@social.afront.org]

@chu — Supreme Court decision rates. You can make it appear the Court is hyperpartisan or hypercollegial depending entirely on how you define a Supreme Court case.

The majority of SCOTUS cases are disposed of via GVR. In a single order they (G)rant the request for SCOTUS review, (V)acate the lower court decision, and (R)emand to the lower court for further hearings — usually with a Post-It attached explaining to the lower court judge where they screwed up and what they should've done instead.

GVRs represent the majority of their output and are overwhelmingly (>90%) 7-2, 8-1, or 9-0.

Cases that get invited for full argument before the Court represent the smallest chunk of their output, and tend to break down 5-4 or 6-3 along predictable fault lines.

Very few national pundits nattering about the "factionalism" of SCOTUS are ever honest enough to talk about the GVR rate, or other measures which do not support the factionalization narrative.

[chu@climatejustice.social]

@2qx

Will look. Thanks

[chu@climatejustice.social]

@wnd

Thanks

Do you know if this exists for other countries?

[carstoid@mathstodon.xyz]

@mdwaroff @chu I love How to Lie with Maps (title is a tribute to How To Lie with Statistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lie_with_Maps

[chu@climatejustice.social]

@carstoid @mdwaroff

Thanks!

[wnd@fosstodon.org]

@chu yes. There is the EU Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) @CopernicusECMWF data here https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/GHSLDataTools.php
I've used urban classification data and note "Climate Change" data https://climate.copernicus.eu/ but as I have never used it, I'm not sure how much use this is.

There is also @WorldPopProject
data https://hub.worldpop.org/. They have population and Global flight data https://hub.worldpop.org/project/categories?id=13

(Noting I'm a dilettante with a focus on European public transport and heavy rail...)

[wnd@fosstodon.org]

@chu (this then off the intent of your question but there is then stuff like the @openstreetmap which also provides an interesting map resource for features and names https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=6/47.42/20.92.

Just to get a plug in here, here are some examples of #DataVisualisation from the #30DayMapChallenge which shows what you can draw with this date, if nothing else
https://anisotropi4.github.io/shed/30daymapchallenge.html)

[chu@climatejustice.social]

@wnd @CopernicusECMWF @WorldPopProject

Thanks.

Will go through all these resources as I really start to put the course together over the summer. Appreciate it

[hypolite@friendica.mrpetovan.com]

@rob @chu The current hyperpartisanism of the US Supreme Court has nothing to do with how votes are split but the policies they allow. From recent memories, they’ve allowed post-hoc political corruption (“it’s not a bribe anymore after the vote”), erosion of women’s reproductive right by repealing Roe vs Wade and enabled political segregation in Louisiana. None of the vote splits on these cases will speak louder than the political and social consequences of these decisions.

[chu@climatejustice.social]

@wnd @openstreetmap

Thx

[akavel@merveilles.town]

@chu Will you also explain the core idea of the Scientific Method, why it was a breakthrough, and how delicate (even while also powerful) it is even by itself, in context of the "replication crisis" and various perverse incentives ("publish or perish", pressure for positive results, non-double-blind results, poor/manipulated statistics, publishers monopolies, overloaded and underpaid reviewers)? To me realizing and understanding this (taught on a course during my studies) was a major worldview shock.

Also the classic "scientific news progression" from a paper saying foo and bar may be correlated through univ. press saying "our scientist says foo could be a cause for bar" to popular press "Uni of Herethere scientists say foo causes bar".

A few communications thing that come to my mind in photography and video: One, using even the same photo or film but cropping it differently can give very different impression (e.g. person A hits person B, vs. a longer footage when person B first heavily abuses, or even hits, person A). Or how to make a photo of whatever number of people look like a crowd by lowering camera position and tightening the frame (I cannot unsee it since I learned about it). Or, lying by showing different photos claiming they're from elsewhere (difficult to check if you're not an expert - show any hurt people and they can be anywhere in the world). Or how a neutral-expression face looks either angry or sad depending on how you primed the watcher by narrative.

Anyway, you're doing an amazing thing for those students and for the better world, thank you!

[chu@climatejustice.social]

@akavel

Great ideas. I honestly haven't thought it all through yet. I'll get working on it over the summer so may hit you up in July and August when I'm ready to piece it all together.

Thanks