"Links and Causal Arrows: Ambiguity in Action"

INFO VISUALIZATION: Edward Tufte has posted a draft chapter of his forthcoming book. It appears to cover displaying graphs (as in the graph theory sense of the word -- think vertices and edges, not as in meaning "charts," as is often colloquially used).

Here is a complete draft of a chapter on linking lines and causal arrows from my Beautiful Evidence.



This chapter suggests methods for showing linking lines and causal arrows, and also demonstrates ideas for assessing the credibility of various links. That is, the links themselves are taken as explanatory evidence.

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but will spend some time with it this afternoon. If there was one thing I learned in data structures class, it was that graphs are awesome and kind of fun in a perverse sort of geek way, but hard to display in a clear and intuitive way.



Oh, and Steve Tanimoto is awesome too. The best CS instructor I've ever had.

Suprnova Adds Referer Check; Blocks RSS / Hotlinking

INTERNET: Dan and I noticed last night that Suprnova has blocked "hotlinking" (linking directly to a torrent file on Suprnova's server). This is a bummer because I look for torrents using RSS and rarely go to their site. But it's unterstandable from Suprnova's POV, that kind of bandwidth doesn't come cheap, I'm sure.



Read more about Suprnova's change in policy at Varchars and go here to find unofficial Suprnova RSS Feeds.

Wall Street Self-Defense

DATA: I've been reading Slate's The Complete Guide to Wall Street Self-Defense by Henry Blodget fairly regularly. While all of the columns have been good, the latest addition, Smart? Skillful? Probably Just Lucky: The (vast and unappreciated) role of luck in investing is right on the money when it comes to the ridiculous business of stock forecasting.

It's that time of year again. […] And, as usual, most strategists are predicting that the market is going to go … up.



Which is understandable. Because the market usually does go up. If not for the exact reasons that the strategists predict, well, then, just because it usually goes up. From 1872 to 2003, according to data compiled by Yale's Robert Shiller, the S&P 500 rose in 83 of 132 years (63 percent) and fell in 49 (37 percent). Strategists who predicted the market would rise every year, in other words—regardless of the logic used—would have been right nearly two-thirds of the time. In the investing business, you can make a lot of money and acquire a solid reputation if you are right two-thirds of the time.

Folding Paper

DATA: Have you ever heard that if you could fold a piece of paper in half 100 times, it would sit taller then the radius of the known universe? I hadn't until recently. Raju Varghese does the math.

Freedom Tower

DATA: The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has a nice collection of Freedom Tower¹ images available on their site.







However, I must warn you before opening up that page. Those little images you see aren't thumbnails, but the entire image scaled down via the "IMG" tag. *Sigh* For a page with 20 megs of graphics, that's inexcusable. Whoever designed this webpage should be fired.



But the building itself actually looks pretty cool in my view. If you watched the PBS special about the tower on September 7th, you'd know that the design was an outright battle between the biggest asshole in Manhattan, Larry Silverstein and his architect David Childs, and the coolest Polish immigrant since my great-great-grand-parents, Daniel Libeskind. To read a discussion about the fight over the tower's design, check out Gothamist's post on the PBS special.



Also interesting is a piece in the NY Times about other large buildings being built in New York and a story in the NY Daily News about a $1,300,000 studio in the West Village with a view of an alley. Insanity!

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¹ Freedom Tower, how lame does that sound already? And it hasn't even been built yet. Hopefully New Yorkers will come up with their own little nickname for the building -- Seattle's Darth Vader Building comes to mind -- or just continue to call it the WTC.

Forecasting Emotion

ASSEMBLEME: Sorry for the light posting for the last week. I've been trying to figure out how my boyfriend and I can tackle a pretty large debt that struck us out of left-field. (Long story short: never trust your immature younger brother to an apartment that has your name on the lease.)







Anyway, I found myself coming back to an interesting article that I read about a year ago in the New York Times Magazine. It's called "The Futile Pursuit of Happiness" and is about Daniel Gilbert's research of human emotion and behavior. It really changed my views about my own "future forecasting" and consumerism generally. I highly suggest it to everyone. Here's a clip to pique your stubborn curiosity.

One experiment of Gilbert's had students in a photography class at Harvard choose two favorite pictures from among those they had just taken and then relinquish one to the teacher. Some students were told their choices were permanent; others were told they could exchange their prints after several days. As it turned out, those who had time to change their minds were less pleased with their decisions than those whose choices were irrevocable.

The original article used to be here, but the Gray Lady will charge you three bucks to read it. Instead, read it here or here.



Another good article written about Gilbert's work is here. This one being about forecasting regret rather then happiness.

People thought they'd feel worse having just missed the subway than arriving several minutes late. What researchers also found, however, was that no matter how much regret subjects anticipated, none actually experienced anywhere near as much as they expected. It turns out the human ability to absolve ourselves, to rationalize quickly and to dodge blame, even from ourselves, is quite remarkable.

You can also check out Daniel Gilbert's home page at Harvard for a ton of psycho info goodness.







Speaking of good reads, I'm about halfway through Sam Harris' The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. I'll wait to post my feelings about the book until I'm done, but so far I can say without a doubt that it's the most interesting and objective book on current affairs I've read in years. You can read the review in the Times (until they charge you $3 for it that is) here. More to come.

Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women

INFO TECHNOLOGY: Hrmn, a gadget blog for girls? Does this mean that Gizmodo and Engadget are for boys?



Weeelll, grabbing two random images from Engadget and Gizmodo suggests that in fact, yes, those blogs are for boys.











So where are the gay male and militant dyke gadget blogs? Those two would be in my RSS reader in a fucking instant.

Frances; Ivan; El Destructo

DATA: Tired of hearing Floridians whine about hurricane Frances, Ivan, and El Destructo? (Good Ol' Destructo hasn't been officially announced yet, but my spidey-sense is tingling. And I heard a dog barking this morning. Don't dogs always bark before crazy weather? They sure do in the movies, and that's proof positive in my book! Or maybe I'm thinking of earthquakes. Eh, who cares.)



Well I was bouncing around online looking for info on why there seem to be so many extreme weather events this year. Along with the answer¹, I found an interesting paper on why the U.S. is spending more and more on natural disasters.



Here's a cute little graph that demonstrates the problem. (Too bad they did it in actual dollars rather then adjusted dollars. I think we all know how real estate in urban areas has grown exponentially in price and this graph doesn't disregard that inflation.)







The bottom line?

The long-term economic impact of low-probability, high-cost events such as earthquakes and hurricanes are not being incorporated into the planning and development of our societal infrastructure. Economic incentives for responsible land use have been stifled by legislated insurance rates and federal aid programs that effectively subsidize development in hazard-prone areas. And while there will always be great political pressure to provide economic relief after a disaster, there has been little political interest in requiring predisaster mitigation.

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¹ Turns out this year has had more hurricanes then the average year, but for the past several years we have been below average so this year seems much more extreme then it actually is.

FSU Strikes "Deal" With Apple for Free iTunes; Students Confused

INTERNET: In a puzzling move to combat piracy (yarg!) Florida State University has signed a deal with Apple to allow students to download free iTunes for free and buy 99 cent songs for 99 cents. Yes, this is by far the stupidest article you'll see today.

In an effort to prevent illegal file sharing on campus, Florida State University is on the verge of finalizing a deal with Apple Computer, Inc. -- a deal that would provide free iTunes software to students and allow them to download music for 99 cents per song.



Carl Baker, the director of university computer systems at the FSU Academic Computing and Network Services Department, was appointed chair of a committee charged with finding a way to stop illegal file sharing on campus. The committee, known as the Online Music Committee, was created this spring semester and is made up of members of FSU's administration and a small group of students.

(via Engadget)

Word Recognition

VISUAL COMMUNICATION: There is a fascinating read over at Microsoft Research called The Science of Word Recognition. It's all about how you do what you're doing right now: recognizing words.

[O]ur eyes don’t move smoothly across the page, but rather make discrete jumps from word to word. We fixate on a word for a period of time, roughly 200-250ms, then make a ballistic movement to another word. These movements are called saccades and usually take 20-35ms. Most saccades are forward movements from 7 to 9 letters,* but 10-15% of all saccades are regressive or backwards movements. Most readers are completely unaware of the frequency of regressive saccades while reading. The location of the fixation is not random. Fixations never occur between words, and usually occur just to the left of the middle of a word. Not all words are fixated; short words and particularly function words are frequently skipped. Figure 5 shows a diagram of the fixation points of a typical reader.

I actually found it difficult to read, simply because I had become too aware of my eye movement and thought processes to pay attention to a number of passages, so I had to reread large sections of the paper.



Sometimes I think if I could do it all over again I would go into cognitive psychology... This paper makes me want to read my Steven Pinker books again.



(via EyeBeam reBlog via SlashDot)