I can't believe you haven't seen this GIF!
I love you guys to death, but I am going to start this class without computers because you just hone in for the links to get work done (which I LOVE) but it means that it is hard to communicate information, and a big part of today is talking as a group.
What I do for work and our Car Comparison Spreadsheet
I work on a website that automates the spreadsheet we did to compare cars, and makes it cooler. I will give you a tour and you tell me what you think!
The Feltron Project
- Do you know what it is?
- If not, I will explain it, and you can look back about 40 posts to "Feltron Intro", and always, www.feltron.com
- We need data... so we will do a "quantified self" project and collect information about ourselves.
- What type of data? ANYTHING!
- Number of steps per day
- Number of poops per day
- time on screens
- what you ate
- what you listened to
- books read
- tweets tweeted
- instagram pictures liked
- cups of tea drank
- websites you visited
- take a picture of everyone you meet
- your location
- (if possible) track every flight that goes over you (or your house)
- ...so much more!
- You will pick five variables to track: four personal ones, and one that the whole class agrees on.
- I want this to be EASY.
- I have been doing this project too, so that I am not giving a project without appreciating how hard it is to do.
- My advice: automate
- make a google sheet that you fill out once a day, when a reminder tells you to. Or even better, have a link to the sheet get sent to you everyday in a calendar notification.
- Use your phone, if you have one, to keep track of all the things, or at least remind you to record info
- you can sleep track on your phone
- Not that it is at all necessary, but you can buy an activity/sleep tracker for like $20 and it will measure steps and sleep patterns
- Pick ~7 variables that might be interesting to track (don't be boxed in by my suggestions)
- Decide on a variable that everyone will track
- Pick the 4 or more variables that you will track
- Make a system for keeping track of these variables. Maybe it's google sheets with a calendar alert every day. Maybe you set up an automated email with Wunderlist, if you have an iPhone, or Google Calendar, and then you just reply to that email with the info you are tracking. Talk to me about what kind of things work and don't work for you and we will figure something out.
For homework
- Make a copy of this google doc and make sure the share settings are "Anyone with link can view"
- Fill it in with 3 charts you like and answer all questions
- Get a link to your doc and copy it as a comment to this blog post
Where does one look for charts?
- The Pew Research Center is a source for information that will make you smarter and better able to make convincing arguments (try the interactives!)
- The Dadaviz site has some gems
- Information is Beautiful has the prettiest graphs
- Flowing Data has lots of interactive visualizations
- Dear Data has amazing, hand-drawn charts, and is a really cool project
Extra GIF because you are great:
Comments
This is my worksheet:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oegc5Y21cnI6rvib8v-JBq0hPMJMtFw-R1pGe_49sBc/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vfz5Q520Dolb9gKQx4mkFnnihqbzBR0GJtGcOOw3uD4/edit