The United States declared independence in 1776, and we celebrate it on July 4th every year. But the land areas that make up the United States today weren't necessarily the same as they were back then. So I thought it would be interesting to create a map showing when each
Over the New Year's weekend, I was listening to the re-broadcast of Dick Clark's Top 100 music countdown from the 1980s ... it was the music from my high school and college years, when synthesizers and fun-rap music popped onto the scene. Another thing that started in the 1980s was
Information Dashboards were the hot topic a few years ago, but the hype seems to have died down lately. A good dashboard is still a very useful way to summarize, analyze, and share data - so I thought I'd re-visit the topic, and try to improve an old dashboard. Did
A recent issue of Astronomy magazine mentioned Kepler's third law of planetary motion, which states "the square of a planet's orbital period is proportional to the cube of its average distance from the Sun" (Astronomy, Dec 2016, p. 17). The article included a graph (shown at the right) that shows
Although I currently work as a statistician, my original training was in mathematics. In many mathematical fields there is a result that is so profound that it earns the name "The Fundamental Theorem of [Topic Area]." A fundamental theorem is a deep (often surprising) result that connects two or more
Many people today just use their computer to play Angry Birds or post pictures of their most recent meal on Facebook ... but what would some of the great minds of the past have done with a computer?... For example, Charles Minard was creating impressive information graphics without a computer over 100 years ago,
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are all the rage today. Some people see free online courses as a convenient way to introduce statistical concepts to tens of thousands of students who would not otherwise have an opportunity to learn about data analysis. Whereas 2013 is the International Year of Statistics,
In this International Year of Statistics, I'd like to describe the major role of statistics in public health advances. In our modern society, it is sometimes difficult to recall the huge advances in health and medicine in the 20th century. To name a few: penicillin was discovered in 1928, risk
One purpose of this International Year of Statistics is to spread the word that the field of statistics benefits society. As part of the International Year, many organizations, including SAS and the American Statistical Association (ASA), are turning to history to illustrate how statistics is vital to the health and
