I was driving recently, and realised that I was near a road that appeared to have a large gap. By that I mean: road A joins road B and stops, but some distance further along B there’s a bit more road A. It’s as if A has been chopped into two by B, and the … Continue reading GB roads with gaps
Category: Visualisation
Simulating how birds form flocks
This article is about using a computer to simulate how birds form into flocks. This probably also applies to fish forming shoals and dinosaurs moving and grouping together like they apparently did. There’s a static snapshot of this simulation below, and clicking on the picture will take you to a live version where you can … Continue reading Simulating how birds form flocks
Great British Place Names Made of Smaller Bits
I was driving recently and saw a sign for a place whose name was built up of two things joined together. That got me wondering about other places I’ve seen whose names were like that. So I found some data, downloaded it, played around with it, and this is the result. There’s no great point … Continue reading Great British Place Names Made of Smaller Bits
Coronavirus, risk and software testing
I was catching up with old episodes of the Radiolab podcast, and one on Coronavirus and numbers made me think about risks to do with Coronavirus, and that thought expanded out to risk more generally and also how it can apply to software testing. UK Coronavirus numbers I need to prefix all this with quite … Continue reading Coronavirus, risk and software testing
How far is it to the coast?
We recently felt like escaping to the seaside, but it's quite far away from us and the weather was awful, so we settled for tea and cake nearby instead. That got me wondering how far it was to the (UK) coast, and which bit of the UK was furthest from the coast. So I dug … Continue reading How far is it to the coast?
Analysing the names of artists in the UK music charts using R
This is a silly little bit of data crunching and very limited visualisation, based on the names of artists who have been in the UK music charts. I fancied using R for a change and also trying out notebooks (I’ll explain both a bit below), and this seemed to be about the right size and … Continue reading Analysing the names of artists in the UK music charts using R
Which bits of the EU are closest to the UK?
This is a short and simple post, that is part 3 in a series: How far away is the most remote part of the UK?How far away is the closest bit of the EU?Which bits of the EU are the closest? The code I wrote to calculate the distances for the previous article also kept … Continue reading Which bits of the EU are closest to the UK?
Describing films and code using pictures
This article is the combination of a few different things. For a long time, I’ve wanted to visualise in some way the details of the plot to the film Ocean’s 11. Also, occasionally I get grumpy about decrees about how people should document their code. Finally, I recently attended a talk given by my friend … Continue reading Describing films and code using pictures
How far away is the EU?
This article is part two in a series: How far away is the most remote part of the UK?How far away is the closest part of the EU?Which bits of the EU are the closest? The previous article talked about how I produced a kind of choropleth map – instead of the colour on the … Continue reading How far away is the EU?
Bump or bumps charts
I recently came across a kind of visualisation called a Bump Chart. This looked oddly familiar to me, and I realised that I knew it as a Bumps Chart (plural). I searched the internet to see if one was the origin of the other, but couldn’t find anything. I’m not claiming to be the authoritative … Continue reading Bump or bumps charts
