Junk Charts

A letter to high-school students

Imagine Magazine, a youth-focused journal by Johns Hopkins's Center of Talented Youth, invited me to contribute an article in celebration of statistics. I try to convey the fun and joy of working with numbers and charts.

You can read it here, starting on p. 22. While you're at it, the rest of the magazine is really great too, and I hope we're able to influence at least a few youngsters to take up math-stats as a career.

Please forward to kids and teachers!

Mark your calendar

I'll be speaking at the NYU Bookstore on Oct 8 (next Tuesday), 6-7:30 pm. See here.

On Oct 9 (Wed), I'll be speaking at the Princeton Tech Meetup. The meeting starts at 7; my talk starts at 8. Details here.

Lunch and talk Wednesday

I will be the luncheon speaker at INFORMS NYC on Wednesday in NYC. The talk will provide some context for my new book Numbersense (link), and discuss a few examples from the book. You can pre-register here.

INFORMS is the professional society for Operations Research and Management Science people. For some years, I have attended these regularly and learned a lot from other industry speakers.

If you decide at the last minute, you can pay the $5 extra fee on the day of the talk. Or register now.

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Junk Charts is featured in an article in Harvard Business Review about data visualization. A few new reviews have appeared: CFA Institute,  Flagstaff Business News.

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I maintain a list of events on my book blog. Look to the right column.

Chance to ask me a question this Friday

I will be at Book Expo this Friday signing books at the McGraw-Hill booth. If you're in NYC, drop by and say hi between 11 and 12.

Yes, it's a new book!  The title is Numbersense: How to Use Big Data to Your Advantage (link). If you read my blogs, you already know where I'm going with this. How can we be smart consumers of data analyses in a world overflowing with data? It will be in stores in July. Between now and then, you can come back here to learn more.

Also, at 12:30, I'll be interviewed at the Shindig event by Peggy Sanservieri, who blogs at Huffington Post on book marketing. This is an online live chat event. Go to their site to register, and you'd have the opportunity to ask me questions.

(This is cross-posted on both blogs.)

Come see this panel on data visualization in NYC

The New York Public Library is organizing a panel on "What makes a good data visualization?". This is happening on April 4 in New York City. I'll be on the panel. There are panelists from many different disciplines so I expect a lively dialogue.

The link to register for this free event is here.

My talk on Friday

Dona Wong and I are giving a joint talk at the NYU Stern School on Friday. Dona is the author of the recent book, Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics (reviewed at Junk Charts). My presentation will be titled "Five Years of Chart Reading."