World Population ~ Demographically Transitioning

The WEForum and Visual Capitalist share cool world population infographics from Our World in Data by economist Max Roser spotlighting how Longer lifespans are changing the shape of the world’s population pyramid...

Killing US ~ How We Die vs What We Fear...

Curious how what we die of is only loosely connected to what we fear, write about, and search for...

Technology Adoption ~ Percent in US vs Time...

Visual Capitalist shares The Rising Speed of Technological Adoption from Our World in Data...

Global Flows ~ Submarine Cable Networks

Just a little MapPorn of Global Flows of data via submarine cable networks... And the very first trans-Atlantic cable...

R.I.P. Hans Rosling ~ Edutainer Extraordinaire

Pancreatic cancer has laid low Hans Rosling, the Gapminder co-founder and my favorite public health statistician and data edutainer extraordinaire.  He has many remarkable TED talks and other videos online, but I personally favor his appearance at TEDIndia speaking on Asia's Rise where he compares global growth over 200 years and predicts exactly when India and China converge with the rich!

MIT Media Ventures ~ Thurs 10a-12n Spring '17

UPDATE: Due to MIT's snow closing, our kickoff class was Thursday morning 10a-12n February 16th, 2017 in Media Lab E14-633.

Our MIT Media Ventures ~ Media Lab Entrepreneurship & Digital Innovations class surveys a broad landscape of emerging media technologies interwoven with live- and historic-cases of intre- and entrepreneurship-based on new media ideas, culminating in a term project. The core goal of this Action Lab offering is for students to gain increased understanding of how emergent media and digital innovations translate into commercial reality and transform society.

We survey case examples of both successful and failed businesses and generally grapple with the difficulties of deploying and diffusing products and as a means of exploring a range of business models and opportunities enabled by emerging Media Lab and related innovations. This year we will be especially emphasizing urban innovations, personal data rights, health, civic engagement, financial service innovations, mobile transactions, and social media generally with special focus on social networks, quantified self and society, AI, robotics, automation, and data analytics. Join us at first class Thursday morning 10a-12n February 9th, 2017 in Media Lab E14-633.

earth ~ Global Map of Wind Weather Ocean

earth ~ a global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions!

"A visualization of global weather conditions forecast by supercomputers updated every three hours. Ocean surface current estimates updated every five days. Ocean surface temperatures and anomaly from daily average (1981-2011) updated daily. Ocean waves updated every three hours."

Ventusky ~ Remapping Wind Rain and Temps!

Lovely new Ventusky mapping of wind, rain, and temperature!

"Developed for you at our company, InMeteo [...] a Czech meteorological company based in Pilsen. At our company, we focus on weather prediction and meteorological data visualisation. [...] The name itself, Ventusky, is a combination of two words. The first is the Latin word, Ventus, means wind, and the second is the English word, Sky. The Ventusky application is freely accessible to anyone around the world, aimed at improving awareness about meteorological events in our atmosphere. Images from the application can be redistributed and thus help us achieve our goal."

Flowing Data ~ Plotting Death Cause over Time...

Madlen Davies at the DailyMail spots Nathan Yau's death plots on the Flowing Data website!

MIT Media Ventures ~ Thurs 10a-12n Spring '16

Our MIT Media Ventures ~ Media Lab Entrepreneurship & Digital Innovations class surveys a broad landscape of emerging media technologies interwoven with live- and historic-cases of inter- and entrepreneurship-based on new media ideas, culminating in a term project. The core goal of this Action Lab offering is for students to gain increased understanding of how emergent media and digital innovations translate into commercial reality and transform society.

We survey case examples of both successful and failed businesses and generally grapple with the difficulties of deploying and diffusing products and as a means of exploring a range of business models and opportunities enabled by emerging Media Lab and related innovations. This year we will be especially emphasizing urban innovations, personal data rights, public health, financial service innovations, mobile transactions, and social media generally with special focus on social networks, quantified self and society, and "Big Data" analytics. Join us at first class Thursday morning 10a-12n February 4th, 2016 in Media Lab E14-633.

Tech Sector ~ Charting Market Value over Time...

The Economist's Dailychart‬ shows the changing shape of the US technology sector...

"Founded in 1911 as a manufacturer of punch-card machines, more than a century later IBM remains one of the largest technology companies in the world. But the days of Big Blue’s dominance are long past. It was recently surpassed in market value by Facebook, a company barely a decade old..."

Cultural Map ~ Values Differences @ Global Scale

Brandon Ambrosino at Vox spots the Ingelhart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World...

Migrant Flows ~ Plotting Source & Volume Into US

Ria Misra at io9 spots The Last 200 Years Of U.S. Immigration in One Chart by Natalia Bronshtein of Insightful Interaction...

R.I.P. Lee Kwan Yew ~ Singapore City-Statesman

Strongman Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore has passed away at age 91. Leader of the modern city-state, Lee's achievements are perhaps best summed up by his autobiographical book title From Third World to First and the facts from this Economist infographic...

Snow More ~ Boston Weather Records Buried...

We need to normalize snowfall by a "persistence factor" because otherwise any old flake counts, even if it instamelts. Enduring snowy shit, that's the real deal, and the only thing worth counting...

Religio-Political Plot ~ Moralism vs Statism...

Jack Jenkins at ThinkProgress shares The Politics Of Every Major U.S. Religion, In One Chart...

"A new chart, compiled by Tobin Grant of the Religion New Service and using data from Pew Research’s 2008 Religious Landscape Survey, takes a stab at answering this question by visually illustrating the general political beliefs of religious people on two policy questions."

MIT Media Ventures ~ Thurs 10a-12n Spring 2015

Our MIT Media Ventures ~ Media Lab Entrepreneurship & Digital Innovations class surveys a broad landscape of emerging media technologies interwoven with live- and historic-cases of inter- and entrepreneurship-based on new media ideas, culminating in a term project. The core goal of this Action Lab offering is for students to gain increased understanding of how emergent media and digital innovations translate into commercial reality and transform society.

We survey case examples of both successful and failed businesses and generally grapple with the difficulties of deploying and diffusing products and as a means of exploring a range of business models and opportunities enabled by emerging Media Lab and related innovations. This year we will be especially emphasizing urban innovations, personal data rights, public health, financial service innovations, mobile transactions, and social media generally with special focus on social networks, quantified self and society, and "Big Data" analytics. First class is Thursday morning 10a-12n February 5th, 2015 in Media Lab E14-633.

Gapminder World 2013 ~ Life Expect vs GDP/cap

Gapminder shares latest global figures comparing...

"Life Expectancy & GDP per capita of 187 countries in year 2013. Each bubble is a country. Size is population. Color is region. [Produced Nov 2014. Click to download PDF]"

London Moves ~ Wood Visually Analyzes Biking!

Graham Southorn at HERE Three Sixty write about City life exposed: The science of bike sharing and spotlights Prof Jo Wood speaking at TEDxEastEnd on how London Moves...

Charting Jobs ~ Flowing Data plots US Statistics...

io9's Ria Misra spots Every Job In America And What It Pays, Charted by Nathan Yau at Flowing Data...

"Who used the new stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to create it. Things really get interesting, though, when you start looking at the data not just nationally, but by state."