HUGE NEWS AT NIGHTINGALE!

Plus, Three Questions with Pei Ying Loh and the sexiest jobs of the 21st century

Claire Santoro

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Nightingale

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5 min readMay 13, 2021

When we started Nightingale on July 15th, 2019, we wanted to create a new destination to share the knowledge of our global community. But it is time to evolve, and in the next few days, we will officially announce that we will be leaving Medium and setting up our own website! We know there are MANY questions that you may have, and we will be publishing a statement next week to share our enthusiasm and our detailed plans for the new site (as well as our print magazine! 😎). Our team will be sending out a survey to all our writers to learn more about how you want your articles to be considered during this transition.

Three Questions With… Pei Ying Loh

Pei Ying Loh is the co-founder and head of Kontinentalist, a data-driven editorial studio based in Singapore that seeks to change global narratives and conversations about Asia. Her work experience in museums and passion for history is the driving force behind many of her stories, which delve into cultural and historical contexts. Connect with her on Twitter @hellopeiying.

One of Pei Ying’s recent stories, “What was Singapore like 100 years ago?”: https://kontinentalist.com/stories/singapore-bicentennial-colonial-history-19th-century-data

1. If you could be any type of chart, what would you be?

I would want to be a circular bar plot. It’s basic and simple, which means it’s still easy to read and understand for most audiences. The circular element just makes it fancy enough to be eye-catching and make people go ‘ooo’ and ‘ahh,’ and score easy impression points. It’s also just a tad difficult to read the differences in bar size, which leaves a certain degree of intrigue…

2. If you were stuck on a desert island, what viz would you want to create and what would you use to make it?

This is probably really pessimistic, but I’d make a waffle chart, and make an estimation of how many days I have left to live with the provisions I can find. Maybe I would use a mini rock and carve it on a large rock?

3. What is one visualization that has inspired you?

There are so many I’d like to pick, but one came to mind right away, and it’s Jane Zhang’s “Preserving My Family’s Recipes.” It’s an incredibly personal project and speaks to the idea that, if there’s a will, there’s a way. Data is everywhere, and it needs only our discipline and drive to gather it. It also really tugs at my heart strings and [on] a personal anxiety I share — I love to cook and have also been trying to learn recipes from my mother and my mother-in-law, in an effort to trace and better understand my heritage. It’s also, of course, super beautiful and fun to look at! Jane’s really nailed down the user experience of the project, and made it intuitive to understand.

Screen capture from Jane Zhang’s video, “Preserving My Family’s Recipes”

Trivia

In Lilach Manheim’s Nightingale article, she notes that data scientist was proclaimed the Sexiest Job of the 21st Century back in 2012. According to Tinder data, what were the actual sexiest jobs (defined as those most likely to garner a swipe-right) for U.S. men and women in 2018?

Men: a) data scientist, b) software engineer, c) interior designer, d) pilot

Women: a) data scientist, b) registered nurse, c) graphic designer, d) dentist

See next month’s issue for the answers!

In the Wild

Gareth Wild’s dedication to real-world data collection is inspirational! https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/world/europe/gareth-wild-parking-bromley-sainsbury.html

In need of chart inspiration? Check out last month’s submissions to the 30 Day Chart Challenge: https://twitter.com/30DayChartChall

Curious about “infrasound” elephant communication? Check out the Elephant Listening Project: https://elephantlisteningproject.org/infrasound/

In Case You Missed It

Rising or Falling? Leveraging Bivariate Glyphs to Visualize Trend Changes

Over the past year, we’ve seen a number of methods for visualizing COVID-19 data, but case numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. Learn from Lucy McLaughlin how to add acceleration, which shows whether daily case numbers are stable, rising or falling, and at what rate.

In the London area, the case load is the highest in the country, but has decreased over the last week. Meanwhile the North West area, with a relatively moderate case load, is still seeing an increase in cases.

How Perceptions Can Skew Reality: A Data Visualisation Approach

Fredrick Boshe was curious about the mechanics of echo chambers. He wondered about the relationship between perception and reality. See what he found out in his analysis of the dynamics between perceptions, demographics, and observations related to NYC public schools.