Culture Making is now archived. Enjoy five years of reflections on culture worth celebrating.
For more about the book and Andy Crouch, please visit andy-crouch.com.

Posts tagged data

25 February 2010
postAnd then your anthems raise
by Nate Barksdale for Culture Making

I’ve just launched my latest passion project, A graphical analysis of national anthem lyrics, with attention to religious expression, Olympic performance, and general bloodthirstiness.

re: data, language, nations, song, words
18 September 2009
image How jobs stack up
image
from Job Voyager, a sample application powered by the Flare open-source data visualization toolkit :: via GOOD
Click through on the image for this great interactive chart from 1850–2000, showing the various professions people with jobs reported to the US Census—blue layer s for men and red/pink for women. It seems quite obvious that being an actual full-time homemaker never made the chart (and the scarcity of female farmers suggests that wives' (and daughters') contributions to running the farm didn't register. I'm also fascinated by the drop in farmers (and increase in farm laborers) between 1860 and 1870. I'm guessing the Civil War had something to do with it, but I'm not quite sure what.
re: cultural worlds, data, history, technology and change, work
Nate:
20 January 2009
image The perils of measurement
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xkcd - A Webcomic
What does measuring something make possible? What does it make impossible? Ah, the ease of trotting out the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for all sorts of non-quantum physics applications.
re: data, drawings, graphs, horizons of the possible, statistics
Nate:
30 October 2008
repost The counter-intuitive comparison of all things
The video, for all its self-knowingly unironic earnestness (parse that!) is a little longwinded, and at times sounds like an unedited section of a Wes Anderson opening act—but I must say it fared exceedingly well with the small test audience I forwarded the link to yesterday. And, as Andy points out in the book, culture making is all about not just creating new stuff, but about careful and thoughtful cultivation and celebration of the good stuff that's already there.
re: cultivation and creation, data, disciplines, horizons of the possible, ideas, sport, video
Nate:
a kottke.org post, 29 October 2008

The goal of the creators of The Big Chart, The Counter-Intuitive Comparison Institute of North America (CICINA), is to find the single best thing in the world through an NCAA basketball tournament-style bracketing system. This video explains their plans.

“Is the Bilbao Guggenheim better than McDonald’s french fries?Are penguins better than Miracle Grow? Can anything beat heated seats on a cold November day?”

(via design observer)

6 October 2008
image Visualizing the Bible
image
Visualizing the Bible, by Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild :: via National Geographic
This diagram arose from a collaboration between a Carnegie-Mellon Ph.D student and a Lutheran pastor to create a grand map of Biblical cross-references: "We wanted something that honored and revealed the complexity of the data at every level –- as one leans in, smaller details should become visible. This ultimately led us to the multi-colored arc diagram... The bar graph that runs along the bottom represents all of the chapters in the Bible. Books alternate in color between white and light gray. The length of each bar denotes the number of verses in the chapter. Each of the 63,779 cross references found in the Bible is depicted by a single arc - the color corresponds to the distance between the two chapters, creating a rainbow-like effect."
re: bible, connections, convergences, data, primordial stories, story
Nate:
8 September 2008
image Human red cone pigment gene quilt, by Beverly St. Clair
image
"Human red cone pigment gene" (double-sided quilt, 63" x 63") by Beverly St. Claire, Genome Quilts :: via Boing Boing
From the artist's description: "This gene is involved in color vision. Part of its DNA sequence is encoded in the triangle blocks, which are then quilted in a double helix design. The base sequence and location of the gene are quilted into the border." Along with genome quilts, Beverly St. Clair also makes beautiful liturgical quilts and stoles for her congregational church in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts.
re: biology, craft, data, quilts, science, vision, visual arts
Nate:
29 August 2008
excerpt Doing science in the open
A challenge to the culture of peer-reviewed scientific authority (and secrecy). Not surprisingly, the traditionalists don't think this premature openness is such a good idea, partly because of how it might change the way scientists work with (and against!) each other—but perhaps more, due to its potential effects on how "Science" and scientists interact with the broader public.
re: cultural worlds, data, open-source, publication, science
Nate:
from "Out in the open: Some scientists sharing results," by Carolyn Y. Johnson, Boston Globe, 21 August 2008

Barry Canton, a 28-year-old biological engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has posted raw scientific data, his thesis proposal, and original research ideas on an online website for all to see.

To young people primed for openness by the confessional existence they live online, that may not seem like a big deal. But in the world of science—where promotions, tenure, and fortune rest on publishing papers in prestigious journals, securing competitive grants, and patenting discoveries—it’s a brazen, potentially self-destructive move. To many scientists, leaving unfinished work and ideas in the open seems as reckless as leaving your debit card and password at a busy ATM machine.

Canton is part of a peaceful insurgency in science that is beginning to pry open an endeavor that still communicates its cutting-edge discoveries in much the same way it has since Ben Franklin was experimenting with lightning. Papers are published in research journals after being reviewed by specialists to ensure that the methods and conclusions are sound, a process that can take many months.

“We’re a generation who expects all information is a Google search away,” Canton said. “Not only is it a Google search away, but it’s also released immediately. As soon as it happens, the video is up on YouTube and on all the blogs. The old model feels kind of crazy when you’re used to this instant information.”