The following message greeted Scott Gillard, constituency assistant to Halifax Chebucto NDP MLA Howard Epstein, when he logged onto his Facebook account Tuesday: [Maybe you should "like"] Michael Ignatieff. Many who like Jack Layton like him. Well, Scott, for the sake of the country, maybe you should....

04 August, 2010

Contrarian reader Wallace McLean noticed something else about those maps: [T]he US Census Bureau seems to generate unemployment data for the 3,140 counties and "county-equivalent" units of geography below state level, with an average population of under 100,000. Statistics Canada only provides (roughly) comparable data for 73 "economic regions" within Canada, with no sub-provincial/territorial data for PEI or the territories. The 73 regions have an average population of over 450,000. Even if you could get free and up-to-date data out of Statscan, it's not nearly as fine-grained as what they seem to have in the States. There would seem to be some fundamental...

04 August, 2010

Before a reader draws me up short on Monday's link to an interactive map showing explosive growth of unemployment in the US, I should acknowledge the choropleth problem. James Fallows introduced the issue, and the word, in a blog post about the same map Tuesday. The problem is that geography does not equal population. A choropleth map depicting social trends (unemployment or election results) can mislead if its geographical units (states or provinces) vary widely in population. (The word derives from Greek terms for "area/region" + "multiply.") Fallows gives the example of the razor thin 2004 US presidential election, in which the...

04 August, 2010

How a video goes viral: Sometime on Wednesday, Halifax filmmaker Andrea Dorfman uploaded her lovely video, featuring Tanya Davis's poem about solitude, to YouTube. At 6:38 a.m., Friday, when Halifax artist Shelagh Duffett reposted the video to her website, it had been viewed 40 times. Kimberley Mosher, an account manager for a Halifax Advertising agency, saw it on Shelagh's site and put it on her Facebook page, where, in turn, fashion blogger Allison Garber saw it and reposted the link to her FB page. All this happened in less than three hours. Allison's and my mutual friend (and brilliant, Baddeck-based communications strategist) Stacey Pineau sent me the link...

03 August, 2010

A simple interactive graphic brings home the recession's impact on US jobs. Youtube version here. Who wants to make a Canadian version? Oh, right, you have to have a government that makes data readily available in machine readable formats. And if it's survey data, you need a random sample. Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan...

02 August, 2010