The US Budget Deficit in Plain English

by Jewel Ward on 2011/12/13

How can you explain the US budget deficit in layman’s terms? Try a paper bag and an old style font, that displays some fairly simple math.

Does this help you to understand the entire budget process and problem better? Do you think it is too simplistic?

[Via Samantha Adams.]

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Shoutout/Halloween’s History

31 October 2011
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Before I get on to Halloween, I’d like to thank the readers of this blog for your time and attention to my nattering.
Have you ever wondered how Halloween began? What is truth? What is fiction? The video below from National Geographic provides a quick history of the holiday.
Some Halloween statistics are listed after the [...]

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The Value of Data Visualization

18 October 2011
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Have you ever wondered why data visualization matters? Do you prefer to look simply at numbers in a spreadsheet, or would you rather seen an image of that data?
Many people learn better visually. We all have to crawl through a great deal of data each and every day as well as process the meaning of [...]

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Back from Hiatus…

18 October 2011
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I’ve missed posting in this blog. I still must do my dissertation work, but I will plan to post a few times a month. I did make progress on my dissertation work the past few months.
I hope you all had a wonderful summer and that fall is going well. (Or, that you had a wonderful [...]

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Short Hiatus…

16 May 2011
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I will be taking a short hiatus from writing in this blog while I work on my literature reviews in preparation for my Comprehensive Exams later this year.
While I may still post occasionally, I will not be posting my usual two or more times a week.
I hope you have a wonderful summer.

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User Experience Design

5 May 2011
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Have you ever visited a web site and wondered who created such a great experience? Have you ever wondered who makes the invisible visible?
No? Why do you think that is? If it works well, you don’t notice it, and if the site is a mess, it is all you do notice.
Therefore, what element can help [...]

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Social Paranoia and Graduate School

3 May 2011

Are you paranoid about your social standing and what others’ think of you? Instead of Taming Data, are you Taming Fear?
Then you must be a graduate student, according to Don Troop’s recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Paranoid? You Must Be a Grad Student“.

Source: PhD Comics via The Chronicle.
Have I had my moments? [...]

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Language is Data, Too — Don’t Mind It Too Much

25 April 2011

RogersCreations has created this delightful animation of Stephen Fry’s essay, “Don’t Mind Your Language“, called “Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography“. Fry decries pedants in this essay.

I enjoyed this video. As an academic, I both wish my grammar were better, yet at the same time know that language is a fluid and living beast. Ah! the [...]

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What Religion Are You?

21 April 2011
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We are told that religion and politics are the two topics that one should avoid discussing. I’m going to ignore that advice today — sort of.
When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong – faster and faster and faster. They put [...]

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The Science Network – A Social Network Parody

18 April 2011

You don’t get to 11 million papers without a few dodgy results.

So, what do you think? Did he or didn’t he invent PubMed?
[Via Jane G.]

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