MetaFilter posts tagged with chart

You want to do WHAT with your sparkline?

shothotbot — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:31:41 -0800

Chartporn is a blog devoted to good graphics. Here are a few that stand out to me: environmental indicators, a beautiful graph of the time takes people to get to a good sized town, 2010 ski resort guide, who owns the US national debt, how to crack a master lock and - of course - a poster to hang in your time machine. The link to the time machine was was borked, so I took the liberty.

... I go out at night and paint the stars.

Mitheral — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 10:30:32 -0800

Preserved in the cave excavations of Mogao and listing 1,339 stars the Dunhuang Star Chart is the oldest graphical star atlas known to exist. Dated to between 649 and 684 AD, it features two sections. The first consists of 26 diagrams of asterisms (including a recognizable Big Dipper and Orion) and the second contains 12 star maps each showing a 30 degree east-west section of sky in cylindrical projection plus an azimuthal projection circumpolar map. Star positions are accurate to within 1.5 degrees and it includes some stars in the southern sky. Previously 1,2,3. Via APOD.

"I notice the 'wank' has remained fairly constant."

Artw — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:18:04 -0800

"The editor's guidelines are as follows: First, remember the reader, and respect demands that we should not casually use words that are likely to offend. Second, use such words only when absolutely necessary to the facts of a piece, or to portray a character in an article; there is almost never a case in which we need to use a swearword outside direct quotes. Third, the stronger the swearword, the harder we ought to think about using it.Finally, never use asterisks, which are just a cop-out." - Swearing in The Guardian: A chart

A Series of Pop-Cultural Charts

blue_beetle — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:25:34 -0800

Sitcom Maps from DanMeth.com

The Big Chart

blasdelf — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:44:01 -0800

We need a way to have, buy, and sit on fewer and better things. — from the CICINA, a 20 minute video presentation on their effort to compare all things in a massive bracketed set of 2¹⁴ binary judgements. Which is better: Apples or Oranges?

BBC Sound Index

feelinglistless — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:13:51 -0800

BBC Sound Index -- an excellent way to confirm your worst fears about the music Internet users are listening to.

Volvelles

aeschenkarnos — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:15:38 -0800

What are those circular disc things that you rotate to look up information? Volvelles. The definitive book on the subject is Jessica Helfland's Reinventing the Wheel. The first volvelle was created by Benedictine monk Matthew Paris in 1250, to save rotating an entire book around. Most volvelles, historically, were designed for astronomical purposes. Recently we had an FPP about Ramon Lull, who seems to have been one of the earliest users of volvelles for purposes other than astronomy. Nowadays volvelles (or wheel charts) are rarely seen, but they were very popular between the 30's and 60's, the heyday of slide rules, before the invention of electronic calculators. The addition of multiple circles makes the volvelle capable of greater complexity, and they are ideal for codes and ciphers (Thomas Jefferson's cipher wheel, which is isomorphic to a 26-layer volvelle). Here is a description of the volvelle that came with the game Bard's Tale III in 1987 including a zip file with scans of it. For comparison, here is the complex table it equates to. More recently, the game HeroClix makes use of volvelles, as the combat dial base of the character miniatures. So, how to make your own volvelles? Here's an example of one (PDF). Here's a program for making simple two-layer volvelles, which I have tested and works, although it's probably better just to print out the example volvelle, work out how it works, and stick it to a paper plate. Or make this one. (More paper plate volvelles.)

1,000 Albums to Hear Before You Die

rongorongo — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:25:17 -0800

1,000 Albums to hear before you die compiled from The Guardian's assorted music reviewers (assisted by readers who then told them which ones they missed). You won't want to be planning to expire any time too soon with these to get through.

Google Chart API

scottreynen — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:53:25 -0800

Google's new Chart API makes images of various charts based entirely on URLs. There's no key required, so it's very easy to start adding charts to the 86% of statistics we're making up. As a starting point for chart play, MetaFilter as a chart.

Recursive Pacman.

|n$eCur3 — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 16:18:09 -0800

Death and Taxes

tellurian — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 17:12:20 -0800

US federal income taxes at work. A 2007 version is now available. [previously]

Wisdom, charted and graphed

hydrophonic — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 12:03:25 -0800

Indexed: life lessons in chart and graph form.