Making Data Visual – A Practical Guide to Using Visualization for Insight, by Danyel Fisher and Miriah Meyer is a slim volume that fills an important niche in the data visualization literature. It is not your typical data visualization book that provides tips on creating charts, the use of color, or the importance of annotation.[…]
Avoiding Data Pitfalls: How to Steer Clear of Common Blunders When Working with Data and Presenting Analysis and Visualizations, by Ben Jones (Founder and CEO of Data Literacy) is one of those rare books that you want to read, reread, put on your shelf, and then reread again once each year. Jones, a self-deprecating Canadian,[…]
Master Address Points This past October, the City of Charlottesville released the Master Address Points dataset. This may be the most significant dataset released to the public since the start of the Charlottesville Open Data Portal and will be an invaluable resource to any users of city data. The importance of address information cannot be[…]
One Name, Two Parts Charlottesville … the name conjures up images of a beautiful, historical community at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains with iconic features such as Monticello and the Rotunda. Like most place names, people associate the name with visual images of the place, such as the Eiffel Tower for Paris or[…]
Introduction Some of first things that come to mind when we think of open data are tables, charts, and maps, where digital facts and figures are transformed to graphics for printing on paper or visualization on digital screens. This may be true in practice, but it is a limited vision for our data. Our numbers,[…]
The Charlottesville Fire Department (CFD) is using community volunteers to expand its capabilities and integrate data-driven processes into the core of its operations. Volunteers contribute both time and an expanded range of technical skills allowing CFD to focus on its core mission while also investigating new capabilities, forming unique data collaboratives. The era of regular[…]
A report on Charlottesville arrest data was recently written and released by Bill Mendez. The open dataset shows interesting (read: alarming) disparities in charges between African American and White residents of Charlottesville. Before summarizing the dataset we’d like to go over a few critical caveats: 1. Though the dataset provides the gender and race of[…]
Smart Cville is hosting an Addressing Deep Dive at 7:00 PM on Thursday, 28 March. The deep dive will be hosted at UVA’s Campbell Hall Room 220C, located on Bayly Dr Charlottesville, VA 22903. Deep Dives are unique events combining presentations by local experts with hands-on activities. This would be very useful to anyone working[…]
Over the past three years, our Charlottesville-based non-profit, Smart Cville, has partnered with staff across numerous local municipalities and organizations to increase and improve the use of data in local decision making, community improvement, and civic innovation. Personally, I’ve also sat on the City’s Open Data Advisory Group and JAUNT, one of the most data-driven[…]
On October 12, 2018, the New York Times published an article on a remarkable achievement from Microsoft, “A Map of Every Building In America.” The map provides insight on the structure and form of our impact on the environment, as well as the influence of history, geology, and culture on the manmade landscape. In addition[…]