A Date with Data — Issue 5

It’s Tuesday, and this is your weekly date with data!
Here’s a roundup of our favorite stories about data from the past week, Aug. 27 — Sept. 2.


How to date someone out of your league
Aug. 30, 2018

A recent study looked into the data behind dating and the results shed light on the numbers. The researchers mined data from a popular online dating site to measure people’s desirability and discover their strategies for seeking partners. What they found was that both men and women pursue partners who are, on average, 25% more desirable than themselves. Also using sentiment analysis to study the content of the messages, they found that when men wrote more positively worded messages they tended to receive fewer responses. Whether you’re picky or playing a numbers game see what strategy works best according to science. MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

Wood-burning stoves, the picturesque polluters
Aug. 27, 2018

Smoking may be out of fashion, but smoking chimneys are all the rage. As The Economist showed in their graph, wood-burning stoves are fast-growing air polluters in Britain, a country that has otherwise taken strict measures in the past decades to reduce fine-particle pollution. These fine particles can enter the lungs, pass into the bloodstream and cause heart and respiratory diseases. And if eco-friendly stoves sound like a responsible alternative, just keep in mind that one of these emits three times more particles per hour than a lorry. Would stove tax or fines help enforce the rules? DAILY CHART-THE ECONOMIST

How Much Hotter Is Your Hometown Than When You Were Born?
Aug. 30, 2018

Let’s face it, no summers are going to live up to our childhood ones, but they may well be hotter due to climate change. A group of scientists, the Climate Impact Lab, carried out an analysis for The New York Times, on how much hotter our hometowns could get in the near future. Specifically, they calculated how many days of 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher we have experienced every year since 1960, and how many we will go on to experience in our lifetime. The beauty of the presentation is that it lets us explore climate data — which would otherwise seem abstract — in a way that we can relate to personally. Let me tell you what I discovered about my hometown. In Athens, Greece, in 1983, we experienced just 8 days with temperatures over 32 degrees Celsius. This year we had 26 such days, in less than 50 years it could be 47 days, and by the end of the century it could climb up to 55 days. THE NEW YORK TIMES

Data visualization, from 1987 to today
Aug. 29, 2018

How were charts once made? And I’m not talking 200 years ago, but 30 years ago. To tell you the truth, I had no idea! Data visualization specialist Graham Douglas, who joined The Economist in 1987, tells the story of graphics creation, from the pre-computer era to the advent of technology in newsrooms, right up to the present day. The transition from rulers and dividers to Adobe Illustrator happened far from overnight, one journey that shaped our present. MEDIUM-THE ECONOMIST

A Leroy stencil set. THE ECONOMIST

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading!

Let's Talk Data

This was a collection of data news and stories from 2018. Stay tuned for more projects and articles.

Aspasia Daskalopoulou

Written by

Science and Data Journalist based in London https://www.aspasiadaskalopoulou.com

Let's Talk Data

This was a collection of data news and stories from 2018. Stay tuned for more projects and articles.

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