A Data Visualization Newsletter

Here’s a contributed piece by Anahita Bahri for all you Game of Thrones fans out there. Using GoT script data, Anahita looked at how much certain characters contributed to the dialogue of Season 7. By the way - if you’re interested in contributing a post, feel free to drop us a line.

In their new study, a team of Stanford researchers led by Raj Chetty studied the sort of people who become inventors in America. Using anonymized tax and patent filings, the team traced the likelihood that students became patent holders based on their 3rd grade math scores. Overall, those who excelled in math were more likely to become inventors; yet, low-income students in the top 5% of standardized math testing were just as likely to hold a patent later in life as affluent students in the bottom 25%. These are the “lost Einsteins.”

Last Friday, the November jobs report came out to plenty of hoopla. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 228,000 American jobs were added last month, an indication of solid economic growth. FiveThirtyEight’s Julia Wolfe, however, wants everybody to pump the brakes a bit. Her analysis shows why there’s some statistical uncertainty in these numbers that every reader should consider.

The Alabama special election for Jeff Session’s vacated U.S. Senate seat will take place this Tuesday. Analysis by the Washington Post shows that support for Roy Moore has been soft in his previous campaigns for the Alabama Supreme Court and has become more so in light of recent allegations. Still, to flip Alabama blue, Doug Jones needs a good turnout from the Black Belt and some Trump supporters to stay home.

In The Pudding’s latest project, Amber Thomas and Russell Goldenberg show how hatred can unite us. Using data from the dating app Hater, they show us the things that Americans universally dislike -- like dirty bathrooms, wet socks, and bad Wifi. They also look at the most controversial topics in the dataset, which can serve as a good resource if you’re trying to stir up any family reunions this holiday season.

A humanitarian crisis has been unfolding in Myanmar since August, when the military started attacking Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state and burning their villages. Since then, over half a million Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh and occupied refugee camps near its border. This series from Reuters tells the story of the crisis in dramatic fashion, with their latest piece focusing on the inhumane conditions of these makeshift camps.