Stamen Design’s gorgeous, free basemaps at risk, #MapPromptMonday starts next week, and Sarah Battersby speaks at the Tampa Bay Tableau User Group in January — My Dad might be partially to thank (or blame? 😂) for my career in data visualization. In 1984, when I was a first-grader at Immaculate Heart of Mary, he bought our family the original Apple Macintosh computer. (I’m currently clacking away at my new, satisfyingly noisy Daydream Mint-colored Logitech POP…

Get to know the social work professor, bassist, and maker of marvelous maps. — Now you can access all of the previous (and future!) installments of Meet the DataFam and — if this is your first one — learn a little more about how it works here. ⏪ The Background Thanks to this fantastic Observable Notebook template for analyzing your Twitter archive, I know EXACTLY when I first interacted with Dennis on Twitter. On March 19, 2021, he posted an image of the viz Asian Hate in the U.S., which visualized the 3,795 incidents of anti-Asian harrassment, assault, and other…

A short and sweet reflection on impactful data visualizations I encountered organically this week — On Monday, The Washington Post published the latest update to their ongoing analysis of individuals shot and killed by on-duty police. (The data is available on Github.) They employed a variable-width bar chart — also known as a barmekko chart — very effectively to show the disproportionately large number of…

She contains multitudes. — Hey, reader! Happy Friday! If you’ve read Meet the DataFam previously, you know how it works. I usually include an explainer at the beginning, but since I decided to put all the Meet the Datafam posts in one place online, I put my explainer on the same page. Now you can access all the previous (and future!) installments of Meet the DataFam here, and learn a little more about the folks I’ve interviewed, too.

🗳 This week’s Midterm elections in the United States provided yet another opportunity for journalists, analysts, and citizens to assess the state of our republic and to vote accordingly. Exhausted by the past several years of MAGA, domestic terrorism, and blatant incivility among Americans generally, I was elated to learn…

Learn more about Boston Tableau User Group co-lead, Florida native, and scatterplot enthusiast John Whitmer. — 👋🏼 Welcome back to another installment of Meet the Datafam! John Whitmer is my guest this week. ICYMI, check out previous editions with Brittany Rosenau and Elisa Davis. The Format I’ve chosen the following structure for Meet the DataFam. 1️⃣ The Background. The backstory regarding my interactions with my guest. Seems like there’s always a fun little anecdote to share.