Telling stories with data
Have you been using ChatGPT or Claude and wondered: “Why isn't this making my job easier?” You’re not alone. I’m running two online workshops in May focused on using AI tools more effectively in real day-to-day work. Thursday, May 7: Working Smarter with AI Chatbots Thursday, May 14: Beyond Chatbots Both workshops will run from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Pacific (1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern). The first…
I've been playing around lately with using OpenAI's Codex for non-coding tasks and have been finding it a lot better, in many ways, than ChatGPT. Codex allows you to work with a lot more files at once (because it runs on your own computer) and, if set up properly, keeps much better persistent memory over longer projects than ChatGPT does. No more explaining yourself over and over again! I made a…
Curious about ChatGPT but don't know where to start? I'm running a two-hour workshop on how you can use AI tools in your day-to-day work on Sept. 25. For more information and to purchase tickets, click this link: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/ai-workshop-boost-your-productivity-with-chatgpt-tickets-1493288138019?aff=website There are only 20 spots available so act fast!
I've just posted a detailed, hour-long YouTube video about how you can use ChatGPT to create custom 'quiz bots' and 'tutor bots' to help students in your class. The advice is geared towards instructors creating bots for their students. But if you're a keen student, you could use the advice yourself to create bots to help you with your studies. As mentioned in the video, I wanted to share the…
I've just posted a detailed, hour-long YouTube video about how you can use ChatGPT to create custom 'quiz bots' and 'tutor bots' to help students in your class. The advice is geared towards instructors creating bots for their students. But if you're a keen student, you could use the advice yourself to create bots to help you with your studies. As mentioned in the video, I wanted to share the…
Well it looks like almost all of the ballots have been counted now and the BC NDP has squeaked out a narrow 27-vote win in Surrey-Guildford and, with it, a bare 47-seat majority. As of 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 28, here's how things stand on my Google Spreadsheet tracker : These results could change slightly in the hours to come but are probably pretty close to the final result now.…
I took a bit of a break from number crunching today (Sunday), since while there was a lot of counting of mail-in ballots taking place, the mail-in ballots in the closest ridings were completed Saturday afternoon. Still, there were a couple of quick things I wanted to take a look at before the weekend was over: Just how well did the BC NDP do in late mail-in ballots this year compared to previous…
The NDP is still on track to flip Surrey-Guildford from Tory blue to NDP orange. But the NDP now seems unlikely to overtake the Conservatives in Kelowna Centre. That would give the NDP a technical majority of 47 seats (up from 46) but not the 48 seats they'd need to appoint a speaker and confidently govern without the two Greens. As of Election BC's 4pm update on Oct. 26, the Conservative margin…
Surrey-Guildford looks on track to flip from Conservative to NDP based on Election BC's first batch of final count results . And the NDP is doing so well in the late-counted ballots that Kelowna Centre might be in play, too — which would give the NDP just enough seats for a majority and speaker (48) without the support of the Greens. In contrast, the Conservatives look unlikely to take any seats…
My blog post earlier this week on whether it was likely B.C.'s election results could change after the final count got a fair bit of traction on Twitter and I did interviews about it this week with CKNW, Global TV and The Globe and Mail. The analysis I did in that blog post was was based on a rough estimate that there were only about 500-700 votes left to count in each riding. This was based on…
If you don't know me , I was a journalist at The Vancouver Sun for 17 years, including many years as a data journalist. I now teach journalism and data visualization at KPU. I've got a lot of experience number crunching election data. But one thing I don't have any more is an editor. So if you notice a mistake in what I've written here, or something isn't clear, please reach out at…
Inspired by @DataRemixed & @Elijah_Meeks , I decided to give the @noteable_io plugin on ChatGPT a try. With a single prompt — "Create a notebook and do some basic data analysis and data visualizations on the data in the biketheftdata.csv file" — it produced all these charts pic.twitter.com/cDx3M3P7Dt — Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) May 17, 2023 I've been a bit obsessed with ChatGPT ever since it…
My next two-day public Tableau training workshop will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 18th and Wednesday, Feb. 19th at SFU Harbour Centre. You can buy tickets here or by clicking the button below: Here are some testimonials from people who've attended my earlier training sessions. If you can't make this workshop but would like to be alerted when the next one is scheduled, just add your name here . If you…
I had the pleasure of speaking at VisInPractice , part of the IEEE VIS 2019 conference in Vancouver this fall on the topic of how to teach data visualization to students who aren't that interested in data visualization. The video of my talk is below. You can check out all the great VisInPractice talks here . VIS in Practice 2019: How to Teach Data Viz to Skeptics from VGTCommunity on Vimeo .
My next online Tableau training workshop will be held this April over three Thursdays: April 11, 18 and 25 . You can buy tickets here or by clicking the button below: Here are some testimonials from people who've attended my earlier training sessions. If you can't make this workshop but would like to be alerted when the next one is scheduled, just add your name here . If you have several people at…
U.S. Department of Agriculture / Flickr TL;DR : Over the years I've stumbled across a number of techniques for improving student participation in my classes that have worked really well. Here are the five key ones (you can click on each one to be taken to a more detailed description): Explain why participation is important. Make sure students are prepared for weekly discussions. Have students…
My next online Tableau training workshop will be held this September over three Thursdays: Sept. 13, 20 and 27 . You can buy tickets here or by clicking the button below: Here are some testimonials from people who've attended my earlier training sessions. If you can't make this workshop but would like to be alerted when the next one is scheduled, just add your name here . If you have several…
In a separate post , I laid out some of my arguments for why I think most line charts should start at zero. I posted some of my initial thoughts on that topic on Twitter, which generated some really thoughtful replies. One of them, from Steve Haroz, noted that he knew of know evidence that people read non-zero-baseline bar charts any differently than non-zero-baseline line charts. And,…
If there's one thing almost everyone agrees on in data visualization, it's that bar charts should start at zero . Starting them anywhere else — truncating the y-axis — risks misleading your audience by making a small difference look like a big one. Yet many experts agree that while the baseline zero rule is pretty much ironclad for bar charts, it doesn't necessarily apply to other chart types.…
My next two-day public Tableau training workshop will be held on Wednesday, Apr. 18th and Thursday, Apr. 19th at SFU Harbour Centre. You can buy tickets here or by clicking the button below: Here are some testimonials from people who've attended my earlier training sessions. If you can't make this workshop but would like to be alerted when the next one is scheduled, just add your name here . If…
NOTE : Data from the 2021 Census is now out, showing a further drop to 10,555 journalists. Christopher Cheung of The Tyee wrote a good summary of the new data. There are fewer journalists in Canada today than 15 years ago — but not as few as you might think, according to data from the 2016 census. Indeed, between 2001 and 2016 — a time of mass layoffs at daily newspapers across the country — the…
Photo by MyEyeSees I'm trying to follow my own advice to jot down ideas on my blog and not just in tweetstorms. Below is the full text of a tweet thread of mine on Vancouver's housing debate. As with so many debates, I think it would be helpful if those arguing over the impact of foreign buyers on Vancouver’s housing market asked themselves a simple question: “What if I’m wrong?” I’ll start. I…
Photo by Adrian Farcas I'm trying to follow my own advice to jot down ideas on my blog and not just in tweetstorms. Below is the full text of a tweet thread of mine on Vancouver's housing crisis. I think one reason people can’t agree on what to do about Vancouver’s housing crisis is because they can’t agree on what the crisis actually *is*. In particular, for many, the crisis is: “Upper middle…
On Monday afternoon, I noticed a tweet from CBC reporter Justin McElroy that the BC Liberals had released riding-by-riding vote totals for their leadership race. The detailed results, riding by riding and ballot by ballot of the B.C. Liberal leadership race are out: https://t.co/KMEdeosSLr — Justin McElroy (@j_mcelroy) February 5, 2018 While the Liberals deserve kudos for releasing this data (the…
I've been doing Tableau training workshops for a few years now and the feedback I get from the people who take it is often the same: They loved it , but wished there was even more of it. Many have expressed interest in a second, "Intermediate", training workshop that would cover more advanced Tableau skills. I hope to offer such a workshop at some point in the future. But in the meantime, I…