Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · 10d

fixed it for you

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · 11d

Faceted area chart titled “How often students read for fun on their own time,” showing trends from 1984 to 2023. Each facet represents a reading frequency category: “Almost every day,” “Once or twice a week,” “Once or twice a month,” “A few times a year,” and “Never or hardly ever.” The x-axis shows years, labeled as '84 and '23. The y-axis shows percentages. Grey-shaded areas indicate the proportion of students in each category over time. The chart reveals a decline in daily reading and an increase in students who rarely or never read for fun. Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2023.

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · 13d

If you thought that was bad, I'll give you this beauty from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons' 2024 report on cosmetic surgery trends that the WSJ cites:

Screenshot from https://www.plasticsurgery.org/documents/News/Statistics/2024/plastic-surgery-statistics-report-2024.pdf "Increase in Chest and Cosmetic Procedures reported since 2023". Series of concentric ellipses and one spiral labeled 1% for Breast Reduction, Tummy Tuck, Breast Augmentation, Liposuction and 0% for Breast Lift.

5

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · 14d

Betteridge’s Law of Headlines

1 1

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · 14d

Deontic vs epistemic modalities?

1 1

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · 20d

You’re welcome, but wouldn’t you want a better version?

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · 20d

The patterns are easier to see in a small multiple

Small multiple scatterplot of 4 groups along 2 axes "Non" - "Oui" and "Faible" - "Fort" the top red, red group shows a distinct triangular pattern: the lower values one the "Faible" - "Fort" axis are closer to the middle on the "Non" - "Oui" axis.

1 1

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Sep 6

I read the second largest first. The largest is too big and somehow falls apart. It only works if I zoom out so much that the smallest text becomes illegible.

2

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Aug 28

Never tell a data visualization designer how old you are, lest you fall into one of their "age cohorts" and they start personalizing their charts "for your age": ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/110...

#dataviz 📊

An Age-based Study into Interactive Narrative Visualization Engagement

Research has shown that an audiences' age impacts their engagement in digital media. Interactive narrative visualization is an increasingly popular form of digital media that combines data visualizati...

ieeexplore.ieee.org

1

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Aug 19

"De plank misslaan" is een verhaspeling van "de (loop)plank mis zijn" en "de bal misslaan". 🤦

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Aug 8

People's motives for doing so become much clearer if you think of talking to an LLM as talking to yourself.

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Aug 6

Rephrased as testable hypothesis: Charts that maximize social proximity between maker and viewer while minimizing aesthetic intimidation will outperform technically superior charts in engagement metrics, provided they affirm the viewer's biases and offer an insight that is retrospectively obvious.

1

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Aug 6

My aesthetic theory of crap: The viewer perceives a shitty chart as something they could have made, but didn't, and the reasserts their competence by sharing it. If a chart is really good, they can't do that. Those get shared only by people who –think– they're as competent as the creator.

1 1

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Aug 5

Hagan Blix, in Why we fear AI has been making a similar argument.

1

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Aug 1

www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/1...

Data Visualization in Excel | A Guide for Beginners, Intermediates, an

This book closes the gap between what people think Excel can do and what they can achieve in the tool. Over the past few years, recognition of the importance of

www.taylorfrancis.com

2

Reposted by Michiel Duvekot

Civic Tech Toronto @civictechto.bsky.social · Jul 26

Civic Spark is built by us — the civic tech community.

Join us Aug 16–17 for a volunteer-led gathering shaping the future of public life.

Full story → civictech.ca/announcements/civic-spark
Tickets → civic-spark.com

16 16

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Jul 26

That's a bit like asking if yellow is red or green.

1

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Jul 19

What it means? That's easy: You know have permission to finally cancel your subscription to the Washington Post.

3

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Jul 19

Türkiye, I think.

1 2

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Jul 18

I have an alt email address that's a very close match for the personal email address of some military dude who kept receiving confidential work emails with threatening footers about how much of a crime it was to disclose their content to unauthorized personnel. Took 'em a while to figure that out.

1

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Jul 16

But thanks to him, every weekday is a holiday!

1

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Jul 15

That could have been so much clearer:

Arrow chart comparing countries' opinion of China in spring 2024 and spring 2025, showing improvement in Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Britain, Spain, France, Canada, Germany, Australia Sweden and Japan, except in South Korea.

4

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Jul 15

Noticed when I rotated the whole chart that Democrats seem to think that "other people" experience discrimination. Republicans think that nobody really does, perhaps a little, except them.

1

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Jul 14

The Song of Choice, Peggy Seeger and/or The London Critics Group:

So close your eyes, stop your ears
Close your mouth, take it slow
Let others take the lead and you bring up the rear
And later you can say you didn't know

Michiel Duvekot @duvekot.bsky.social · Jul 12

If you think you're 20% faster but you're actually 19% slower, you're 32.5% slower than you think.

1 2