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alexjbowers.bsky.social
Alex Bowers
@alexjbowers.bsky.social
260 followers 190 following 16 posts
Professor of #EdLeadership Teachers College, Columbia University studying #EdResearch #EdAdmin w/ #DataScience #Bigdata #DataAnalytics. Affiliate @DataSciColumbia https://www.tc.columbia.edu/faculty/ab3764/
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Reposted by Alex Bowers
datawrapper.de
What movie remakes are most common? And how much do we like them, compared to originals? Our developer Julian sets out to tell fact from fiction in the movie remake world. 👀 🎞️ 🍿

www.datawrapper.de/blog/movie-r...
Is there a movie remake crisis? | Datawrapper Blog
In this Weekly Chart, we map out the strange world of movie remakes.
www.datawrapper.de
December 18, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
simongerman600.bsky.social
The fact that a train (!!!) can travel under ideal conditions at over 600km/h is unbelievably amazing to me. Also, I had no idea that Indonesia would pop up in the top 10 list!
December 17, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
datavisfriendly.bsky.social
ANNOUNCE: #dataviz #rstats #psy6136 📊
This winter I'm teaching a new instance of my course on Categorical Data Analysis, featuring analysis and
visualization methods for frequency data and model-based methods (loglinear models, logistic/Possion regression).
December 18, 2025 at 2:37 AM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
cfiesler.bsky.social
The ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.
Screenshot of a paper entry: Fictional Failures and Real-World Lessons: Ethical Speculation Through Design Fiction on Emotional Support Conversational AI Authors: Faye Kollig, Jessica Pater, Fayika Farhat Nova, Casey Fiesler (There are tabs with "abstract" and "summary" and "summary" is selected.)
December 16, 2025 at 11:31 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
jwolondon.bsky.social
Interested in a fully-funded #datavis PhD with training?

Applications for our 2nd cohort of PhD students at Diverse-CDT open! We're keen to diversify the sector, encouraging anyone with enthusiasm for using 📊 to make change, even if you've not considered PhD study before:

diverse-cdt.ac.uk
Photo of students and staff from our first Diverse CDT cohort working through a group data visualization exercise together around a table in our dedicated visualization lab. Photo of three students from our first cohort of Diverse-CDT PhD students reading and discussing visual thinking in our dedicated visualization workspace. Sketch of a 'skills map' design co-created by Diverse-CDT PhD students during their first 'immersion week' at the start of their PhD journey. Sketch courtesy of Ana Marques, one of the students. It comprise a series of coloured dots, each representing a skill held by one or more of the students. Dots are clustered by skill type with some labelled for context. Dots are connected with lines in a tree-like structure with 'Diverse CDT' at the centre emphasising relationship between skills and skill types. A photo of our first cohort of Diverse CDT PhD students who embarked on their PhD journey together in October 2025. Students are located in our dedicated Visualization learning space, posing for the camera with arms folded.
December 18, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
matthewfacciani.bsky.social
"less than 48 hours since the product was released, people within the Post have flagged what four sources described as multiple mistakes in personalized podcasts. The errors have ranged from relatively minor pronunciation gaffes to significant changes to story content"
Exclusive: Washington Post’s AI-generated podcasts rife with errors, fictional quotes
Errors in the Post’s new AI-generated podcasts have frustrated the paper’s journalists.
www.semafor.com
December 15, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
merriam-webster.com
Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.
December 15, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
infobeautiful.bsky.social
An unhealthy outlier...
ourworldindata.org/grapher/life...
A line chart comparing life expectancy vs. health expenditure per capita from 1970 to 2022 across multiple countries. The y-axis shows life expectancy (60-85 years), x-axis shows health expenditure ($0-$10,000). Lines track each country's progress, with the United States notably showing high expenditure but lower life expectancy than peers like Japan and Switzerland. Countries are color-coded by continent. Source: Our World in Data
December 11, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
cedricscherer.com
I ignored the strip.clip argument in #ggplot2 for way too long 😲

Combined with a small negative margin tweak, you can place facet labels inside each panel. A tiny trick that makes small multiples feel so much cleaner.

🔵 no manual coordinates
🔵 inherits theme styling
🔵 scales nicely when resizing
Side-by-side comparison of two multi-panel bubble charts faceted by world region. The left column shows the default facet labels placed above each panel (“Africa”, “Americas”, “Asia”, “Europe”, “Oceania”). The right column shows the same charts, but the facet labels are moved inside each panel at the top-left using a negative margin. In the center, there is a title reading “Want to place your facet labels inside each panel?” with an arrow pointing right, followed by a short ggplot2 theme code snippet demonstrating how to move strip text inside the panel.
December 12, 2025 at 12:51 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
andrew.heiss.phd
Some closing thoughts for my students this semester on LLMs and learning #rstats datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-12...
Will you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course in the future? No. Why won’t you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course? These tools are useful for coding (see this for my personal take on this). However, they’re only useful if you know what you’re doing first. If you skip the learning-the-process-of-writing-code step and just copy/paste output from ChatGPT, you will not learn. You cannot learn. You cannot improve. You will not understand the code. In that post, it warns that you cannot use it as a beginner: …to use Databot effectively and safely, you still need the skills of a data scientist: background and domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability. There is no LLM-based shortcut to those skills. You cannot LLM your way into domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, or coding ability. The only way to gain domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability is to struggle. To get errors. To google those errors. To look over the documentation. To copy/paste your own code and adapt it for different purposes. To explore messy datasets. To struggle to clean those datasets. To spend an hour looking for a missing comma. This isn’t a form of programming hazing, like “I had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow and now you must too.” It’s the actual process of learning and growing and developing and improving. You’ve gotta struggle. This Tumblr post puts it well (it’s about art specifically, but it applies to coding and data analysis too): Contrary to popular belief the biggest beginner’s roadblock to art isn’t even technical skill it’s frustration tolerance, especially in the age of social media. It hurts and the frustration is endless but you must build the frustration tolerance equivalent to a roach’s capacity to survive a nuclear explosion. That’s how you build on the technical skill. Throw that “won’t even start because I’m afraid it won’t be perfect” shit out the window. Just do it. Just start. Good luck. (The original post has disappeared, but here’s a reblog.) It’s hard, but struggling is the only way to learn anything. You might not enjoy code as much as Williams does (or I do), but there’s still value in maintaining codings skills as you improve and learn more. You don’t want your skills to atrophy. As I discuss here, when I do use LLMs for coding-related tasks, I purposely throw as much friction into the process as possible: To avoid falling into over-reliance on LLM-assisted code help, I add as much friction into my workflow as possible. I only use GitHub Copilot and Claude in the browser, not through the chat sidebar in Positron or Visual Studio Code. I treat the code it generates like random answers from StackOverflow or blog posts and generally rewrite it completely. I disable the inline LLM-based auto complete in text editors. For routine tasks like generating {roxygen2} documentation scaffolding for functions, I use the {chores} package, which requires a bunch of pointing and clicking to use. Even though I use Positron, I purposely do not use either Positron Assistant or Databot. I have them disabled. So in the end, for pedagogical reasons, I don’t foresee me incorporating LLMs into this class. I’m pedagogically opposed to it. I’m facing all sorts of external pressure to do it, but I’m resisting. You’ve got to learn first.
December 9, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
scientificdiscovery.dev
Big new blogpost!

My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more.

--> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...
screenshot of my post
December 9, 2025 at 8:28 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
socialmedialab.ca
Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds. "In almost every region, the top 1% was wealthier than the bottom 90% combined, the report found, with wealth inequality increasing rapidly around the world." www.theguardian.com/inequality/2...
Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
Data from World Inequality Report also showed top 10% of income-earners earn more than the other 90%
www.theguardian.com
December 10, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
aeraedresearch.bsky.social
AERA Open invites submissions for a Special Topic Collection focused on understanding the complex processes that shape engagement, participation, & long-term persistence in STEM pathways across K–20 and workforce contexts. The deadline for abstracts is February 1, 2026. www.aera.net/Portals/38/1...
December 4, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
andrew.heiss.phd
Got to experience the "this paper completely made up research by me" phenomenon a couple weeks ago when reviewing a manuscript and it was so demoralizing. What are we doing here, people?!
jeremylittau.com Jeremy Littau @jeremylittau.com · 18d
AI has made journal manuscript reviewing so awful. It's worse than having to account for the possibility in student work. Depressing on so many levels.
December 4, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
joachimschork.bsky.social
Have you ever run into problems when a project stops working because a package was updated? The renv R package makes it easy to create isolated project environments, so your code always runs with the same package versions it was written with.

More: eepurl.com/gH6myT

#datascientists #statisticians
December 4, 2025 at 10:38 AM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
cghlewis.bsky.social
If you want your work to be reproducible, you have to remember that others don't have the insider knowledge you have. You have to be explicit.

This morning I was able to recreate a file made by someone else because they explicitly documented their definitions, calculations, and their assumptions. 🫶
November 24, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
datarescueproject.org
New post on our efforts to back up the NCES Datalabs tables. Big thanks to all of the volunteers involved in backing these up! #DataRescue

www.datarescueproject.org/nces-datalab...
NCES Datalabs Tables: Rescue Complete!
If you have been following along with the Data Rescue Project newsletter, you have been receiving occasional updates on our struggle to find and download all of the summary tables that were created by...
www.datarescueproject.org
November 13, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
datarescueproject.org
We get asked all the time about how people can get involved to protect public data. @prbdata.bsky.social has compiled a list for you! We agree that "even small actions" can help!
Five Things You Can Do to Protect Public Data
Even small actions, taken together, can help strengthen the case for the importance of public data to our shared future.
www.prb.org
November 14, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
moritzstefaner.bsky.social
A pretty entertaining gallery of misleading visualizations + discussion

www.vislies.org/2024/gallery/

(already a year old, but I only discovered it through this year's VIS conference)
November 9, 2025 at 11:50 AM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
katestarbird.bsky.social
Really excited to share this new paper on "Data Visualizations as Propaganda", co-led by PhD students Priya Dhawka and Nina Lutz, which just won a Best Paper award at the CSCW conference: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

[Short thread]
Data Visualizations as Propaganda: Tracing Lineages, Provenance, and Political Framings in Online Anti-Immigrant Discourse | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Along with other visual content, data visualizations are increasingly used within online discourse, including political communication. Though often considered to be ''objective'', data visualizations ...
dl.acm.org
October 27, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
datarescueproject.org
@amstatnews.bsky.social is launching a citizen science effort to monitor the health of the federal stats system. We ❤️🛟 citizen science efforts 😉

Get involved today! docs.google.com/forms/d/1jI4...
Call for Volunteers — Citizen Science Project: Monitoring Federal Statistical Product Releases
As part of the American Statistical Association project assessing and monitoring the health of the federal statistical agencies, the project team is launching a “Citizen Science” project. This project...
docs.google.com
October 2, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
datavisfriendly.bsky.social
Interrupting the usual #datavis #rstats broadcast:

📰ANNOUNCE: Big Day here -- 📘📗📕

✔️Finished final editing and tweaks on my book
✔️re-built PDF & web versions,
✔️clicked SEND to forward to my editor.
✔️Published the online version
✔️DONE, for now: Visualizing Multivariate Data and Models in R
Image of the online version of Visualizing Multivariate Data and Models in R
October 3, 2025 at 2:52 AM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
vincentab.bsky.social
{tinytable} 0.14.0 for #RStats makes it super easy to draw tables in html, tex, docx, typ, md & png.

There are only a few functions to learn, but don't be fooled! Small 📦s can still be powerful.

Check out the new gallery page for fun case studies.

vincentarelbundock.github.io/tinytable/vi...
a table about lemurs a table about students and schools a table about wines
September 29, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by Alex Bowers
cghlewis.bsky.social
Data Science in Education Administration, Policy, and Practice from @alexjbowers.bsky.social

academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/...
August 19, 2025 at 1:30 PM
alexjbowers.bsky.social
How can #DataScience help schools improve? 📊
Despite huge investments in #EdData #Dashboards, evidence shows weak links to student outcomes. We need a new approach. #EdPolicy #SchoolLeadership #EdResearch
👉 Preprint: doi.org/10.7916/amq5...
August 21, 2025 at 1:24 PM