Published inTowards Data Science·PinnedMember-onlyComparing Coronavirus Economic and Health Impacts Across NationsA Simple Multivariate Analysis of the Covid Pandemic — Note from Towards Data Science’s editors: While we allow independent authors to publish articles in accordance with our rules and guidelines, we do not endorse each author’s contribution. You should not rely on an author’s works without seeking professional advice. See our Reader Terms for details. A few weeks ago…Data Science9 min readData Science9 min read
Published inThe Shadow·PinnedMember-onlyA Gawker Data Postmortem6 Tricks That Got This Website Millions of Clicks — It’s hard to remember, but there was a time when Gawker was one of the most popular properties on the web. This trailblazing blog captured the attention of millions, spawned a collection of hit sites, and forever changed the tone of journalism. Instead of a deferential posture towards public figures…Media11 min readMedia11 min read
PinnedMember-onlyHow to Name Your Bestseller (Hint, it involves “Girls”)Despite the old adage, we all know that everyone judges a book by its cover. So why do some books sell while others languish on store shelves or in Amazon fulfilment centers? …Publishing6 min readPublishing6 min read
PinnedMember-onlyMusic is Getting Shorter(and Drake is taking over the world) Like Rob Gordon, I think that if we can understand popular music, the soundtrack of our lives, then maybe we can understand ourselves a little better. With that goal, I’ve done an even longer analysis¹ of Billboards Hot-100 data, Spotify track info, and song lyrics to figure out what trends…Music5 min readMusic5 min read
PinnedMember-onlyMoore’s Law means Gaming moves to the CloudTen years ago, I worked on the System-on-Chip that would become the heart of the Xbox One game console. It was a dream job, but one I didn’t think would last long. Down the street in Mountain View a small company called OnLive¹ was developing revolutionary tech to enable game…Metaverse9 min readMetaverse9 min read
Published inTowards Data Science·Jul 17Member-onlyHow to use OpenAI’s Code Interpreter to Analyze DataExploring SaaS Revenue Multiples with the Help of AI — I’ve put off writing new data analysis posts for a while now. The return on investment seemed too low. Gathering data, cleaning it, and writing fine-tuned plotting code takes a long time and involves lots of tedious work. But times have changed! I saw that OpenAI finally releasing their Code…AI6 min readAI6 min read
Feb 19Member-onlyWhat Do Journalists Have in Common?A Data Analysis of the American News Bubble — Two years ago, I wrote What Makes a Billionaire, breaking down the most common traits of American billionaires. Today, I’m going to do the same for American journalists. What attributes are shared by this semi-elite group of people? To answer this question, I ranked the top 10,000 journalists on Twitter…News3 min readNews3 min read
Dec 19, 2022Member-onlyWhat Was the Current Thing in 2022?A Data Analysis of the Year’s top Memes — For those in a rush, here were the current things of 2022.News3 min readNews3 min read
Published inThe Shadow·Jul 20, 2022Member-onlySmall-World Networks and the Twitter Journalist GraphThe Small World of Western Journalism — It’s a Small World After All In 1967, famed psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to know how many links there were between any two people. He gave test subjects packages with the name of a target individual. The subjects were asked to forward the packages to anyone who might know the person named. Without phone books or…Data7 min readData7 min read
Published inThe Shadow·Apr 26, 2022Member-onlyThe Most Influential Journalists on TwitterA Ranking of the Most Powerful and Connected Media Personalities — Why Twitter? With news that Elon Musk is acquiring Twitter for a hefty premium, the obvious question many are asking is, why? From the man himself:News5 min readNews5 min read
