Data is Beautiful

Visualization of how often “language” is a tag in TED Talks.

I’ve mentioned data visualizations in several previous posts, so it may not be surprising that I’m writing a trove I’ve recently found: the dataisbeautiful subreddit.  In addition to lots of excellent data visualizations (and some mediocre ones) there’s lots of interesting discussion, including responses to previous visualizations (for example, compare this early version of “How we die” to this follow up.)

One I just came across is someone asking about a pattern in some data, specifically why Google searches for “1990s” peak in May of almost every year.  Other decades follow the same pattern.  Several correlates are suggested (high school reunions, for example) but it turns out that high school proms look like the best correlate.  So, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and, yes, 1990s, seem to be heavily-Googled prom themes.

If you’re not familiar with Reddit, this is a great subreddit to jump into.  One of the key features of Reddit is that users can vote content up or down, which means that the best content rises to the top (though the definition of “best” is open to the interpretation of every user.)  It’s free to join and not even an email address is required.  You can lurk for a while, simply up / downvote, or jump right into conversations with people from across the internet on almost every conceivable topic, including the data visualizations in dataisbeautiful.