Hence my first sentence, "It seems like you are complaining about graphics in the article, but I'm not sure."
First you said, "I can't count the number of times I've looked at a data visualization and wished I could sit down with the person who made it and read an Edward Tufte book to them."
I was and am 100% on board with this comment. I think the same thing often.
Then you said "There's just so few good examples out there of data visualizations that respect basic principles of visual communication, like the ones outlined in this article."
I agree, the article does a pretty good job.
Then, "They generally seem to aim more for visual impact (like the useless 3D display in the article, which you've gotta admit is striking) than for clarity, which I guess is understandable but is still too bad."
I was uncertain about this statement. The previous sentence you start by stating "There's just so few good examples..." and end with "...like the ones outline in this article", which made it a little unclear if the one's in the article were good or not, but as I was reading it I was leaning to the good side. Then this sentence started with "They generally seem...", and since the end of the previous sentence ended talking about the "ones outlined in the article", I associated "They" with "the ones in the article". And this sentence that started with "They generally" was negative.
Then I contributed some miscommunication. When I used "you" in the sentence I was thinking in general terms (including myself) and not you personally. I think that might have been better stated as "If one reads the article...".
Anyway, I was initially confused by your statement. Now I see what you were going for.
It seems like you are complaining about graphics in the article, but I'm not sure. If you read the article, it specifically talks about why those are not good visualizations and gives pointers on developing good ones.
For the 3D one specifically, right under the graphic, the article says:
"3D has a time and a place. It can be a really useful way to encode thematic data on the z-axis and make something useful. But extruding Hubei compared to the rest of the areas just doesn’t work. It’s gratuitous and adds nothing. It’s really hard to make any sense of relative amounts and that’s before we even deal with foreshortening and occlusion."
The end result reminds me of Julia. Enough to make me wonder if there's something like it underneath Julia somewhere, or if that's how it started (unfortunately I don't have time to really dig in to it right now).
Yeah. Depending on the spectrum, the telescope might need to be really big. Not to mention at the moment a telescope in orbit would hard, if not impossible, to service.
It seems possible to launch multiple small telescopes and operate them as one large scope using aperture synthesis. I don't know if there are any existing designs or plans for this.
Also: somewhat ninja'd, see other replies as well.
I've been learning and using Julia the last few weeks (coming from an OOP background). I highly recommend it. I mainly write highly mathematical programs and utilities to process some data or another. So far I've knocked out some smaller programs and started translating a larger library to learn about the type system. I haven't dug in to UI bindings yet.
This reminds me of a saying I picked up from some (very much) older engineer:
Segal's Law: A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.
I feel like information overload is like this sometimes. Which is probably why I try to reduce information that shows up automatically on my phone...
Take a cue from what my friends and I do: we generally agree to do whatever in general terms, say, visit a place Saturday after lunch. That's it. We might coordinate on a start time, but after that, it's whatever we feel like, no set schedule. We occasionally do this for longer trips, where we rent a cabin somewhere for a few days and then just do whatever we feel like. There's some planning involved in order to get to the correct area with the correct equipment (whatever is needed for the activity), but there's no strict timeline.
By the way, my wife is a "planner", so this drivers her crazy, not that she is going with us anyway. So a conversation might be like this: Wife:"What time are you going to the brewery?" Me:"Eh, after lunch" Wife:"So what time?" Me:"Maybe 1300?" Wife:"After that?" Me:"We'll get dinner somewhere" Wife:"Where? When?" Me:"Somewhere, whenever we get hungry. We'll decide on-the-fly." Wife:"Arrrggghhh!!" I have to confess I get a lot of amusement out of her reactions.
Two replies mention licensing, with two different answers (It's easy, people just don't understand! It's hard, people just don't understand!). Personally, I've tried a couple of times to read the license information on the Qt site and sort out how the licensing really works. I still only have a rough understanding. It seems like information on the Qt site is intentionally vague so you'll be more inclined to buy a commercial license just to feel "safe" using it. Unfortunately, any commercial projects I work on can't justify the commercial license price.
Anyway, the point is, people may not want to use Qt without being absolutely certain about how the licensing works and they (like me) probably don't have the time to try to understand the poorly organized information on the Qt site.
Slight typo there: "thousands of km per second", you probably meant "thousands of meters per second". Low orbit is on the order of 7-8 km/s. I did find the typo humorous.
I don't think your statement is intended to be dismissive, but it is a bit... sparse.
Related to CLU: It introduced a lot of concepts together in one language. "Key contributions include abstract data types,[6] call-by-sharing, iterators, multiple return values (a form of parallel assignment), type-safe parameterized types, and type-safe variant types." [1]
Liskov also has other contributions[2]. Per the article, she says herself in the early days there were a lot of big problems to solve, so it was somewhat easier to make a "big" contribution.
It's interesting to look at where many modern concepts came from. It would be interesting to dig in to these a little more. Time is the one resource that's hard to come by though.
Pretty good article. Can't wait to read other, less sensational articles recommended here.
One particular error in the article stood out to me: the Trinity test site is in White Sands, New Mexico, not Nevada. This was immediately noticeable because I've been to the Trinity site.
You could add inertia by including a flywheel (or multiple) connected to the wheels of the coaster. Not sure how easy that would be at small scales though.
Interesting. I always think of it as the Universal Time Coordinate. Probably because I've done a lot of work in inertial coordinate systems (where the earth rotates in the coordinate system versus the coordinate systems rotating with the earth). Inertial coordinate systems have four dimensions, time and three spatial coordinates.
Just flipping through 1994 issue 11 was pretty amazing: There's a short article about how network interconnect policy changes might affect end users, an blurb on Tektronix getting a patent on rasterizing images, and a large article on Chrysler's "Patriot" hybrid race car, which they were planning on racing at Le Mans (the didn't due to issues with the flywheel energy storage device).
I guess I'll chime in on being closer to strikes. In case you don't know how a strike occurs, as the charges build up and the field starts having enough potential to exceed the breakdown voltage of the air, little "feelers" develop, extending both from the cloud and objects on the ground. When two connect, if you are close enough, you can here what sounds like a very loud click, immediately followed by the "explosion" of thunder. More like a blast/explosion that what you would hear from farther away.
Also, look in to "ground potential rise", which I learned all about after a lightning strike in my yard (while I was standing on the second floor of my house). Basically, the charge dissipates in the ground around a strike. This means that radially from the strike outward there is a voltage potential. And of course if you connect two points across the potential with less resistance than the ground, you get current flow. Incidentally, this is why you keep your feet as close together as possible if caught outside in a storm. And of course crouch so you aren't the tallest thing around.
I don't think everyone's getting one just because they are afraid. However, even very low probability events with very severe consequences may warrant having some kind of automatic emergency beacon... although in retrospect I guess this is exactly what you are saying. Eh, maybe this will be useful to someone anyway.
Think of it in terms of a risk assessment[1]. If you are engaging in an activity, you should look at the probability of injury and then the consequences if that occurs.
For example, I'm going mountain biking by myself. The area I'm riding in has a loose surface, but no extreme hills or other features. So it's somewhat likely I'll fall, but the consequence of that won't be extreme. Conversely, I'm riding in a hilly area with a rough but grippy surface. Relatively, the probability of a fall may be lower, but the consequence could be much higher.
Using this type of not-exactly-quantitative reasoning, depending on what you are doing (and the consequences of something going wrong), it may be very reasonable to buy a smart watch or something similar just for this purpose.
The 50% claim probably comes from the fact that heat loss through your head has a greater affect on core body temperature than other exposed areas. In [1], they did some submersion tests with head in or out for both insulated and exposed bodies (test subjects). Head-in accounted for a fairly large increase in core body temperature loss (39-45% depending on the configuration). While this study was in water, it seems reasonable to expect the same thing in air, in particular since you tend to spend longer in the cold outside than you might in water.
Edited to add this effect is likely due to the amount of blood flow to the brain and the short path (relatively) between the brain and the heart.
First you said, "I can't count the number of times I've looked at a data visualization and wished I could sit down with the person who made it and read an Edward Tufte book to them."
I was and am 100% on board with this comment. I think the same thing often.
Then you said "There's just so few good examples out there of data visualizations that respect basic principles of visual communication, like the ones outlined in this article."
I agree, the article does a pretty good job.
Then, "They generally seem to aim more for visual impact (like the useless 3D display in the article, which you've gotta admit is striking) than for clarity, which I guess is understandable but is still too bad."
I was uncertain about this statement. The previous sentence you start by stating "There's just so few good examples..." and end with "...like the ones outline in this article", which made it a little unclear if the one's in the article were good or not, but as I was reading it I was leaning to the good side. Then this sentence started with "They generally seem...", and since the end of the previous sentence ended talking about the "ones outlined in the article", I associated "They" with "the ones in the article". And this sentence that started with "They generally" was negative.
Then I contributed some miscommunication. When I used "you" in the sentence I was thinking in general terms (including myself) and not you personally. I think that might have been better stated as "If one reads the article...".
Anyway, I was initially confused by your statement. Now I see what you were going for.
Edits: grammar, missing words