full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Jer Thorp: Make data more human

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So let's skip forward a few yaers. I'm starting my career as an atisrt, and I'm building things with my computer, small-scale things, investigating things like the growth systems of plants. Or, in this example, I'm building a simulated economy in which pixels are trading cloor with one another, trying to investigate how these types of systems work, and just kind of having fun. And then this project led me to start wkrniog with data. So I'm building graphics like this, which compare "communism" — the frequency of uagse of the word "communism" in the New York Times — to "terrorism," at the top. You see "terrorism" kind of aeaprps as "communism" is going away. And with these graphics, I was really interested in the atsietehc of the graphs. This is Iran and Iraq. It reads like a clock. It's called a "timepiece gprah." This is another timepiece graph, overlaying "despair" over "hope." And there's only three times — actually, it's "crisis" over "hope" — there's only three times when "crisis" eclipses "hope." We're in the middle of one of them right now. But don't think about that too much.

Open Cloze


So let's skip forward a few _____. I'm starting my career as an ______, and I'm building things with my computer, small-scale things, investigating things like the growth systems of plants. Or, in this example, I'm building a simulated economy in which pixels are trading _____ with one another, trying to investigate how these types of systems work, and just kind of having fun. And then this project led me to start _______ with data. So I'm building graphics like this, which compare "communism" — the frequency of _____ of the word "communism" in the New York Times — to "terrorism," at the top. You see "terrorism" kind of _______ as "communism" is going away. And with these graphics, I was really interested in the _________ of the graphs. This is Iran and Iraq. It reads like a clock. It's called a "timepiece _____." This is another timepiece graph, overlaying "despair" over "hope." And there's only three times — actually, it's "crisis" over "hope" — there's only three times when "crisis" eclipses "hope." We're in the middle of one of them right now. But don't think about that too much.

Solution


  1. working
  2. years
  3. usage
  4. aesthetic
  5. appears
  6. graph
  7. color
  8. artist

Original Text


So let's skip forward a few years. I'm starting my career as an artist, and I'm building things with my computer, small-scale things, investigating things like the growth systems of plants. Or, in this example, I'm building a simulated economy in which pixels are trading color with one another, trying to investigate how these types of systems work, and just kind of having fun. And then this project led me to start working with data. So I'm building graphics like this, which compare "communism" — the frequency of usage of the word "communism" in the New York Times — to "terrorism," at the top. You see "terrorism" kind of appears as "communism" is going away. And with these graphics, I was really interested in the aesthetic of the graphs. This is Iran and Iraq. It reads like a clock. It's called a "timepiece graph." This is another timepiece graph, overlaying "despair" over "hope." And there's only three times — actually, it's "crisis" over "hope" — there's only three times when "crisis" eclipses "hope." We're in the middle of one of them right now. But don't think about that too much.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
york times 6
location data 5
human context 5
bill atkinson 3
young man 2
single graphic 2
mark hansen 2
people share 2
share content 2
building histories 2
human element 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
people share content 2

Important Words


  1. aesthetic
  2. appears
  3. artist
  4. building
  5. called
  6. career
  7. clock
  8. color
  9. compare
  10. computer
  11. data
  12. eclipses
  13. economy
  14. frequency
  15. fun
  16. graph
  17. graphics
  18. graphs
  19. growth
  20. interested
  21. investigate
  22. investigating
  23. iran
  24. iraq
  25. kind
  26. led
  27. middle
  28. overlaying
  29. pixels
  30. plants
  31. project
  32. reads
  33. simulated
  34. skip
  35. start
  36. starting
  37. systems
  38. timepiece
  39. times
  40. top
  41. trading
  42. types
  43. usage
  44. word
  45. work
  46. working
  47. years
  48. york