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Code to make your own movie barcodes available
You know those compressed movie barcodes that we saw last week? Here's a Python script by Benoît Romito to make your own. Run a .avi format movie through, and voila. Free gift idea: digitize some old...
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Sorting algorithms demonstrated with Hungarian folk dance
We've seen sorting algorithms visualized and auralized, but now it's time to see them through the spirit of Hungarian folk dance. In a series of four videos (so far), folks at Sapientia University in...
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Programming gets you freedom to do what you want with data
Casey Reas and Chandler McWilliams asked visual designers why they write their own software and how it affects their process: The answers reflect the individuality of the designers and their process,...
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Live Coding Implemented
Remember Bret Victor's live coding talk from last month? He presented an example where he would edit code on one side, and the corresponding visual would automatically update on the other side. It was...
View ArticleIntroducing R to a non-programmer, in an hour
Biostatistics PhD candidate Alyssa Frazee was tasked with teaching her sister, an undergraduate in sociology, how to use R. She had only one hour. Once you load in a dataset, things start to get fun....
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R for cats and cat lovers
Following the lead of JavaScript for Cats by Maxwell Ogden, Scott Chamberlain and Carson Sievert wrote R for Cats. It's a playful introduction to R intended for those who have little to no programming...
View ArticleCreate a barebones R package from scratch
While we're on an R kick, Hilary Parker described how to create an R package from scratch, not just to share code with others but to save yourself some time on future projects. It's not as hard as it...
View ArticleOptimizing your R code
Hadley Wickham offers a detailed, practical guide to finding and removing the major bottlenecks in your R code. It's easy to get caught up in trying to remove all bottlenecks. Don't! Your time is...
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Responsive data tables
Alyson Hurt for NPR Visuals describes how they make responsive data tables for their articles. That is, a table might look fine on a desktop but then it might be illegible on a mobile device. This is a...
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Accessible Web visuals and code with p5.js
Visualization on the Web can be tricky for those unfamiliar with code. The new JavaScript library p5.js, developed by Lauren McCarthy and collaborators, aims to make your first steps easier and less...
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Arduino Workshop, a good book for getting started
I started working through Arduino Workshop by John Boxall over the holidays, and it's a lot of fun so far. I highly recommend it if you're thinking about getting into Arduino projects and you're brand...
View ArticleR is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success
Most people who use R on the regular learned the language in the context of a subject outside of programming. They learned R as they learned statistical methods, or they picked up bits of R as they...
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Tufte style charts in R
Lukasz Piwek is chipping away at a collection of Tufte-style charts using R, along with the code snippets. Fittingly, the project is called Tufte in R. The Tufte stuff is nice and all, but that's not...
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Extracting NBA player movement data
NBA basketball teams have tracking systems installed in their arenas called SportVu, essentially a system of cameras pointed at the court to track player movements. Some of that data is browsable...
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R growth on StackOverflow reigns supreme
Joshua Kunst did a quick analysis on tag usage on StackOverflow, the question and answer site for programming. The R tag isn't the top of course, but it is growing in usage the quickest, based on...
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Practical tips for scraping data
It’s an unpleasant feeling when you have an idea for a project and the data you need is sitting right in front of you on a bunch of random-looking webpages instead of a nice, delimited file. You could...
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D3 in Depth
D3 is the most commonly used JavaScript library for visualization on the web, but there’s a bit of learning curve, especially for those new to programming. Peter Cook hopes to make this beginning step...
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Interactive charts in R
Interactive charts in R are still so-so, but if you don’t mind giving up some flexibility and just want something quick without having to learn a new language, there are a handful of options. RStudio...
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R graph gallery
One of best ways to learn visualization in any given software is to look at examples and apply to your own data. The R graph gallery helps you with the first part providing plenty of examples and the...
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Textured SVG patterns in JavaScript
In case you didn’t get the memo, pattern fills are back and so hot right now. In the category of new-to-me, Textures.js by Riccardo Scalco is a JavaScript library that makes adding lines and dots in...
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