Adam's Blogroll: click through to the author's blog
Welcome to The Process, where we look closer at how the charts get made. This is issue #242. I’m Nathan Yau, and I’m wondering who or what will be making charts in a couple of decades.
Become a member for access to this — plus tutorials, courses, and guides.
Posted by in AI, jobs, The Process
Andrew Van Dam for The Washington Post used a bar chart with corrections to show new monthly estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for job growth:
After the revisions, disappointing months like August looked a lot more like October, a month that was hailed as a labor market rebound. In hindsight, while a blockbuster June and July were even better than they looked, they didn’t lead to months of stagnation — they diminished somewhat, but still produced solid, steady growth that continued through October.
It’s like the data carries uncertainty, which can make estimation a challenge. Imagine that.
Tags: jobs, uncertainty, Washington Post
Posted by in jobs, Statistical Visualization, uncertainty, Washington Post
Roger Peng outlines four main roles of a data scientist:
If you’re reading this and find yourself saying “I’m not an X” where X is either scientist, statistician, systems engineer, or politician, then chances are that is where you are weak at data science. I think a good data scientist has to have some skill in each of these domains in order to be able to complete the basic data analytic iteration.
The good thing about data science is that you can apply the skills to different fields and tasks. It’s also one of the challenges when you’re in the early phases of learning, because you have to figure out what to work on. This should point you in the right direction.
See also: Peng’s tentpoles of data science.
Tags: data science, jobs, Roger Peng
Posted by in data science, jobs, Roger Peng, statistics
Krist Wongsuphasawat, who recently interviewed for a healthy helping of visualization jobs, outlines the questions asked and the general flow of things.
[T]here are some sessions that your data visualization skills will play the key roles, but there will be tests for other skills as well. As I have mentioned earlier, data visualization is one of the main skills, but having only that is usually not good enough to land the roles. So do your homework, figure out what are the skills required for the target roles and make sure you can tick all of the checkboxes. If you are choosing the engineering track, there will be lots of expectations for front-end engineering skills.
From there, the tasks presented to you seem to vary a lot depending on what a company is looking for. Sounds stupendous.
Tags: interviews, jobs
Posted by in Interviews, jobs, Visualization
Some jobs are common nationwide, because they are needed everywhere. Others are more specific to geography. See where job falls on the spectrum. Read More
Posted by in Data Underload, jobs, work
These are the jobs in each state that are most specific to the place. Read More
Posted by in Data Underload, jobs, work
About 18 percent of couple households are single-income. I wanted to know what the earner in these homes usually do. Read More
Posted by in Data Underload, income, jobs, work
Instead of looking at only the most common job in each state, I found the top five for a slightly wider view. You still see the nationally popular occupations — drivers, cashiers, and retail workers — but after the first row, you see more regional and state-specific jobs.
The sore thumb in this picture is Washington, D.C., whose top five ordered by rank was lawyers, management analysts, administrative assistants, janitors, and, wait for it, chief executives.
Next step: compare metro areas instead of states for something more apples-to-apples.
Working With Choropleth Maps and ShapefilesHere’s a tutorial on how to make maps like the above.
Posted by in Data Underload, jobs, work
There are many ways to estimate how similar two cities are — weather, demographics, taxes, etc. Jed Kolko from job site Indeed and Josh Katz for The Upshot used the distribution of job offerings. Just enter your city or a nearby metro, and you get something like this:
I punched in cities I’ve lived in or visited, and the results looked pretty good.
The analysis is based on job postings on Indeed, but I wonder if this would work with Census data. And can we apply this similarity index or some form of it to, say, individuals? Just think of the possibilities, Match.com.
Tags: demographics, jobs, Upshot
Posted by in demographics, jobs, statistics, Upshot
Jumpstarted by Elijah Meeks asking why visualization people are leaving the field for less visually-centric industry jobs, there’s been ample discussion about data visualization’s role in companies.
This naturally leaks over to the ongoing discussion about what visualization is and should be. Moritz Stefaner, who’s been at it since before I even knew what visualization really was, chimed in with his experiences and what he’s seen as a freelancer.
Yet, as I argued earlier already, I don’t think we gain much from overemphasizing the (supposedly) fundamental differences between “serious/functional” and “aesthetic/entertaining” data visualizations, or, conversely, diminishing Excel dataviz work as “not really data visualization”.
I am thinking back to the time when it was fashionable to “draw lines in the sand” or to attack designers on live TV. The harsh, narrow-minded criticism that novel designs and approaches faced for a while did not always lead to better results, but, in contrast, scared talented folks away from the community. I am really quite happy that, by now, we have a data visualization community that understands the many purposes of data visualization beyond scientific analysis.
Many purposes. That’s the key here.
Visualization can be a tool or a skill set that aids in the overarching goal of understanding data, whether it be quantitatively, qualitatively, or emotionally. Maybe you use the tools. Maybe you make the tools. Maybe you use the tools that you make. You can go as far as you want with any of these routes, and the one you choose brings various job titles.
I’m completely detached from industry. (I mean, I’m one guy running a site from a home office, so I’m detached from a lot of things.) But in my experience, visualization can and should be a stand-alone profession. It’s not a big conceptual jump — if you go far enough — to see how the person who knows how to make charts can become the chart-maker.
Posted by in industry, jobs, Visualization