Web Science

Data Visualisation Part 2

Today, I thought I’d have a look around to see what extra resources I could find to support the students doing the Data Visualisation Course at Southampton.

My favourite MOOC provider, FutureLearn, has a course that covers just this, so I went through it to see what I could learn.  Here’s the link to the course:  Big Data Visualisation.

Here is a list of the links I found to useful web sites,…

Just a link, nothing to see here, follow the URL…..

https://theconversation.com/even-the-most-beautiful-maps-can-be-misleading-126474

Tools for Data Analytics & Visualisation

I’ve been asked by one or two people to recommend websites and tools to help with analysing data and visualising the results.  Here we are.

First of all, the best set of environments to write and test code is provided by Anaconda.  This suite of tools is quite large in terms of the amount of hard disk space it occupies, although you can load the modules separately.  It’s built for Python, but it…

In my previous post, I finished with a very brief criticism of using AI to replace the traditional search using Google or similar.  The unreliability of AI is a popular topic at the moment – I read ‘Weapons of Math Destruction‘ by Cathy O’Neil not long after it was published, and there are now many more books and journal articles covering the subject.  The best way for me to explain my…

I’ve recently got involved in a very interesting project which is looking at ways in which research is recorded and stored, and how to build the academic profile of the author(s) for the benefit of them and the University in which they studies / researched / work.

All universities keep a repository of published work generated by students, researchers and staff.  On some university web sites, it’s…

Topic Modelling. It’s Hell.

Now I’m on the last chapter of my PhD (ok, so the other three still have some things I have to add, but hey-ho), it’s time to face up to the challenge of topic modelling.

The good thing about topic modelling is it’s a clustering problem: it assumes you know nothing about your data, and wants to find out what people have been writing about.  Actually, what topic modelling is, is the application of…

Houston, We May Have A Problem….

I’ve been writing up my PhD.  This has been a very slow process, mainly because I’ve had to spend quite a bit of time going back through all my references, and re-planning the whole thing.  I bought post-it notes, and a tabletop flip chart (which is also like one massive post-it), and I’ve re-appraised everything.  As I write, I’m constantly adding more post-its as prompts of things I need to…

Kicking Off The Actual Writing

For the last two days, I’ve been up NORTH at a writing retreat, organised by the DEN, and held here.  I’ll add a link to my photos, but I’ll put this one here because it sums up the place perfectly!

I got loads of work done, as you can see.  I love technology, but sometimes you have to get the stationery out and do it the old-fashioned way.  Besides, who doesn’t love stationery, amiright?

The…