Vox
284 posts
Standardized ratings are a challenge, because they often try to encapsulate many variables into a single variable. On the upside, a single score is quick and easy to see, but on the downside, variance goes into hiding and people/things that don’t fit a defined standard get dinged. Vox looks at these challenges in the context of online school ratings. Tags: ratings, school, Vox
Vox and Matt Daniels delved into falsetto in pop music over the years. Is falsetto a big trend now compared to the rest of the history? The process of finding the answer, noisy data and all, was just as interesting as the answer itself. Tags: falsetto, Matt Daniels, music, Vox
Vox delves into why Ls and Rs often get replaced by Asian speakers using English as a second language. Some sounds aren’t prevalent in other languages, and it’s not the same across all Asian languages. Tags: Asian, language, Vox
Based on commuting data from the Census Bureau, researchers Matthew Hall, John Iceland, and Youngmin Yi tracked segregation during the day and night. Alvin Chang for Vox mapped their results: They found that when white people go to work, they are around only slightly more people of color than when they’re in their home neighborhoods. But for everyone else, going to work means being exposed to many more white people...
Pinball feels like a game of chance that is uncontrollable from any angle. In typical Vox fashion, the video explains the game and its predictability. Tags: pinball, Vox
The 2020 Census is coming up quick, but there’s still a lot up in the air. There’s no director, the bureau has to adjust to budget cuts, and a new digital system that promises to save money hasn’t been fully tested (because of lower funding). Exciting. Alvin Chang for Vox explains in more detail — with cartoons. Tags: census, counting, Vox
As the final episode of Game of Thrones nears, Kavya Sukumar for Vox looked at the colors used in each episode. More relevant if you’ve seen the show, the wideout view makes it easy to pick out themes and events so that you can reminisce about all the characters who died. Tags: color, Game of Thrones, Vox
This explainer video by Vox on the oil patterns on bowling lanes was oddly fascinating. The varying degrees of oil can change a professional bowler’s strategy as a tournament progresses. I kind of want to be a professional bowler now. This whole data thing is probably a fad anyways. Tags: bowling, sports, Vox
We’ve seen many one-off projects that show the distortions you get when you project a map. There’s just no avoiding them, when you convert a 3-D object onto a two-dimensional plane. Vox demonstrates and explains with an inflatable globe. Tags: projections, Vox
American immigration history is chock full of policies and restrictions, and you can see the effects in the distribution of immigrants into this country over the years. Alvin Chang for Vox steps you through the major policy shifts since 1820. The graphic above shows how these policies affect who enters the country. It shows 200 years of legal immigration into the United States — and how different policies and international...