A chart of Excel charts, the misuse of statistics by politicians, the Data Journalism School edition IV in Italy, a new perspective on depression, a Spanish job board for data addicted around the world, Google data tools in case of natural disasters.

Patrick Hoesly – Pie Chart Art. Seamless Pattern

Tools, Events, Courses

If you need a quick guide on which should be the most appropriate chart to use in your everyday data analysis, then check the recently published Jorge Camoes’ Classification of chart types which presents all kind of graphs that can only be made in Excel.

Manipulating data for its own sake is, unfortunately, a common practice of our politicians. If you are curious about how do they do it you’d better not miss the Friday lunchtime lecture of the executive director of the Royal Statistical Society Hetan Shah on “How politicians lie with data”. The event is free and takes place at the Open Data Institute in London.

In Italy, the Foundation and ISTAT just announced the fourth edition of the Data Journalism School. It’s a three-day introduction to the concepts, methods and best practices of journalism done with statistics. It will be from 17 to 19 December but there are only 18 places available and if you want to be among the participants you’d better register now.

After New York, on Monday 11 the Strata Conference moves to London for its European chapter. “Open Data” is one of the eight topics of the event. Find out the program and the keynote speakers!

Data Stories

Mark Rice-Oxley published on the Guardian Data Blog an interesting point of view on depression. Maps and charts show depressive disorders sorted by country, sex and age group. If you are curious about the charateristics and distribution of the disease, have a look at “Where in the world are people most depressed?”.

In San Diego, California, they are testing the Tactical Identification System: a new way to identify individuals through a facial recognition mechanism based on photo-databases. See how it works in this nice infographic of the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Data Sources

The data revolution we are witnessing is increasingly expanding the number of jobs in this field. If you just graduated from university or you simply want to change your career path, we suggest you to monitor the Big Data Spain Job Board, available in English and Spanish. There are more than 2000 vacancies you may apply for!

Read about the power of geo-data and maps in situations of crisis and natural disaster in Adam Mann’s article “Mapping Disasters Like Typhoon Haiyan for First Responders” on Wired MapLab. Mann introduces some important tools Google.org developed to help people whose homes have been hit by hurricanes, earthquakes or floods.