Seriously, I don’t know who at the NY Times has a statistics degree, but their graphs and data presentations never fail to amaze me. Even back in the day, they could present data that absolutely cut through the mess and get at the interesting story. Some things I remember particularly well are the Supreme Court Rulings graphed by Justices, the Graph of Words People Used during the conventions, the split in voting for Obama or Clinton with moveable squares or a graph of Parking Tickets in Manhattan for a year. Many times these are nothing more than just the data cross referenced with a map or interesting display. But doing that simple exercise clarifies the world and bring real knowledge to people who may have missed stories.
But this most recent graph of Twitter during the Super Bowl blew me away.
There’s got to be a place for disseminating information like this in the “new world.” Yes, I know that large media outlets are looked at about as nicely as professional dog fighting coaches these days, but intelligence and insight like this really should have a home. And for those that say, “It already has a home, and it’s called your blog” – I just don’t think that blogging for blogging’s sake is sustainable as a productive output. There are only so many coffee breaks people can take and steal from their corporate masters. If you’re lucky enough, you get to be one of a thousand or so people in the world that can actually make a living blogging, and then you can spend your full time doing analysis like this. But I don’t know if that produces this kind of quality.
