Tag: FiveThirtyEight

  • Spicing It Up (Or Not If You Like Caraway)

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Here is a post for all you cooks and bakers out there: spices. Over the weekend I came upon a piece FiveThirtyEight ran earlier this year about American spice consumption. They use spice availability as a proxy for consumption, because no such data exists—and unfortunately the standard for reporting changed in 2012 so data is…

  • Red Sox Hire Dave Dombrowski

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    Brendan Barry
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    The Boston Red Sox made big baseball news last night by announcing the hiring of former Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski to head Boston’s baseball operations. The second big piece of baseball news, Boston’s GM, Ben Cherington, has resigned as he does not want to work under Dombrowski. As you might figure, I enjoy data’s role…

  • Uber vs. Taxi (in New York)

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    Brendan Barry
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    I just spent the weekend back in my hometown of Philadelphia and while we walked most places, there were a few Uber rides. As someone who doesn’t use the app and normally will hail a taxi when necessary, I had been looking forward to posting this piece. FiveThirtyEight looked at data for New York comparing…

  • How Can a Bar Chart Explain an Epidemic?

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today’s piece really is not a flashy one. I mean you can see that from the bar chart below. But, FiveThirtyEight put together a piece around it explaining just how that one chart is incredibly useful. Credit for the graphic goes to the New York City Department of Health. For the analysis piece, that goes…

  • The Funding Sources for the 2016 Candidates

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    We are past the halfway point for summer in 2015 and that means the autumn 2016 presidential election is off and running. But running an election campaign, if even just for the primary phase, costs money. So where does each candidate receive its money? Well, FiveThirtyEight looked at the early reporting and identified four types.…

  • High Strikeout Games

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    Brendan Barry
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    Baseball has changed in the last twenty years or so. (And I’m old enough to recognise it.) Gone are the days of the high strikeout/high pitch count starts from the likes of Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, and Kerry Wood. In are high strikeout/low pitch count games… What does that mean? You can read…

  • Chase the Unlucky Utley

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    Brendan Barry
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    We all know that I am a Red Sox fan. But I grew up in Philadelphia, largely before the era where the internet made watching out-of-market games a reality. That means I am quite familiar with my hometown Philadelphia Phillies. And for a good chunk of my life that meant names like Rollins, and Utley…

  • Who Are the Red Sox?

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    As Massachusetts and Maine celebrate Patriots’ Day, the Boston Red Sox are set to play their earliest game of the year with an 11.00 start time. (Yes, there is also a marathon today.) So after two weeks or twelve games, the question people want answered is what Red Sox do we get this year? FiveThirtyEight…

  • Predicting the UK General Election Results

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    (To be fair, I forgot to schedule to publish this post before I left somehow.) Your humble author is still on holiday. So, today, you can enjoy a nice interactive piece from FiveThirtyEight that predicts the results of the 7 May general election. Of particular interest, the box part of the plot that shows the…

  • American Football Videogames

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    This week we have been looking at baseball (and Leonard Nimoy’s Star Trek). Today, we are going to turn to a sport I know nothing about: American football video games. Okay, so video games are not really a sport, but they are based on a sport. The reason I bring it up? FiveThirtyEIght has a…