The Jolly Data Blog

A photograph of an empty lecture hall. Multiple rows of bright, wooden chairs. The background, a white wall with doors and a clock is blurred.

SPACE AHEAD: Setting and Audience

At the beginn of “SPACE AHEAD” you should actively consider how, where and to whom you present your data. Let’s take a look at why this matters and why slapping your figure from a paper onto a presentation slide might not be the best approach.
dataviz
space ahead
workshop
Nov 15, 2023
5 min

AI generated image using Midjourney with the prompt: 'An adventurous astronaut in a space suit, seen from the back with a light angle. He is pointing his finger, as if he was pointing to a distant aim, where he aspires to go. In the background there are stars, planets and a few distant galaxies. The style should be a retrowave, synthwave album cover.'

Mind your SPACE AHEAD

Visualizing scientific data in a clear and compelling way can be hard, as the underlying matter is complex and time often is short. The “SPACE AHEAD” acronym helps conceptualise the desired chart and gives pointers on where/how to optimise the design and accessibility. This first part of the series can be used as a go-to checklist, when you’re not happy with the default settings of your software and don’t know where to start. I’ll dive into more details in the following posts.
dataviz
space ahead
workshop
Nov 14, 2023
6 min

Ten scrabble letters spelling the words 'Order' in the top and 'Chaos' in the lowe part. The letters forming 'Order' are nicely arranged, while the letter spelling 'Chaos' are arranged in a chaotic way.

Cleaning Babynames

In this post I download, clean and tidy open data from the City of Munich regarding baby names. The available datasets have different filename patterns, column names, delimiters, typos and implicitly missing data. I’ll use the cleaned data for future posts.
data cleaning
EDA
R
Jun 21, 2023
6 min

The hex sticker of the webpea package.

Export plots in WebP format

Since there’s no “built in” way to export R graphs to WebP images, {webpea} offers a function to save single plots or to automate WebP export in quarto / Rmd documents.
ggplot2
experimental
R
Feb 25, 2023
3 min

An image of a small wooden table with a flower on it. To the left and right are empty chairs. The scene is set in front of a white painted brick wall, which fills the whole background.

Integrating tables in plots

Including a table in a graph can be very informative. Unfortunatley that wasn’t very straight forward in {ggplot2} - until now. I revisit one of my plots for #30DayChartChallenge to showcase how to include a {flextable} into a plot using {patchwork}.
maps
tables
R
Sep 9, 2022
10 min

Switching to quarto

I recently ported my blog to quarto. In this post I highlight the key features, that I like about quarto and that I implemented for this website.
meta
Aug 6, 2022
16 min

A photograph of seating rows in an ancient amphitheater. The stone rows and steps take up the whole frame leading from the lower right to the upper left in a curve.

When Not in Rome…

…still do as the Romans do. The Roman Empire built many amphitheaters outside of its capital. This post explores 268 of these historic sites and includes a dashboard for interactive exploration.
R
EDA
tables
maps
interactive
Jul 8, 2022
24 min

A screenshot from a part of the final table of the plot.

NY Times Bestsellers

Building an interactive and informative table with {reactablefmtr} and {crosstalk} using data on the top selling fiction books between 1931 and 2020.
tidy tuesday
R
tables
interactive
Jun 5, 2022
7 min

30 Day Chart Challenge - interactive plots

This post hosts the interactive plots from the #30DayChartChallenge. This will be updated throughout the 2022 challenge.
30DayChartChallenge
R
Apr 18, 2022
8 min

A drawing of a christmas gift.

Santa. Secret Santa.

With “Spooky Season” coming to an end, Holiday Season is up next. If you have done Secret Santa rounds before, you might have wondered, what the odds are that someone draws his or her own name from the lots.
python
simulation
Nov 4, 2021
12 min

Tea, Earl Grey, Hot

My submission for #TidyTuesday 2021 week 34. A look at StarTrek TNG voice interactions with the Enterprise’s computer. In this submission I focus on the ‘locate’ command to find someone on the ship.
tidy tuesday
R
RegEx
Aug 26, 2021
8 min

TidyTuesday 2021 week 24: Great Lakes Commercial Fishing

An analysis of the commercial fish production in the Great Lakes 1867 - 2015. Using beeswarm plots to produce schools of fish. My very first submission for #TidyTuesday!
R
tidy tuesday
experimental
environment
Jun 14, 2021
6 min

Bundestag Part III: Voting on the edge

Leveraging network analysis tools, the voting behaviour of the deputies in the Bundestag shows similarity-clusters across three legislative periods. A visual analysis.
R
network analysis
germany
bundestag
politics
May 6, 2021
22 min

A photograph of a folded metal gate. The folded parts form a repetitive blue and red pattern.

Bundestag Part II.1 - Go back to start…

After further research I found a way to get more data and with better quality.
R
germany
politics
bundestag
RegEx
record linkage
Mar 21, 2021
13 min

Three words on a dark background: with flying colours. Each word is differently coloured: orange, blue, red.

With flying colours

After three months of sailing, it is time to adjust the rigging. A refreshed look with a custom color palette, a custom ggplot2 theme and an updated logo and new typography.
meta
typography
ggplot2
superseded
Mar 9, 2021
7 min

A chart representing the composition of seats in a prliament. The 'seats' are represented by points arranged in several rows in a half circle. The points ar colored according to different party memberships.

German Bundestag - Part I: members of the parliament

An analysis of the german national parliament (“Bundestag”). This first part focuses on biographical data of the elected representatives and the composition of the parliament over time.
R
politics
germany
bundestag
Mar 7, 2021
34 min

Recycling Logo with three green arrows creating a triangle.

World Of Waste

The amount of waste produced every year across the globe is frightening. But there’s a glimmer of hope on the horizon.
R
environment
international
Feb 7, 2021
41 min

A plot from the post showing a positive correlation between the number of participating athletes and medals won per caountry.

Olympic history

Participating athletes and medal count in the Modern Olympic Games over 120 years. Analysis of athletes and national teams from 1896 until 2016 and the influence of population and GDP per capita on the medal count of the nations in 2016.
R
sports
international
tidy tuesday
Jan 1, 2021
38 min

The logo of the blog: A stylized sailing boat, made up of a few white strokes in front of a bright blue background. The background has the shape of a squircle.

Setting Sail

Make ready for departure, I’m going on a journey.
meta
Dec 27, 2020
5 min
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