Ever since the Moneyball book & movie came out, athletes have been scrambling to use data and analytics to gain a competitive advantage. One of my favorite sports is boat racing – the ones you paddle. Follow along as I lead you through some maps an…
Cremation rates in the US, by state
I recently read an interesting article that claims “a single cremation emits as much carbon dioxide as a 1,000-mile car trip.” This got me wondering about cremation data, and I ended up on the Wikipedia page about cremation rates. They had a map of the…
Seven Interesting Data Storytelling Examples
When I am trying to learn a new skill or develop thinking around a subject, such as data storytelling, I find examples of others work helpful. The trick to reviewing work is thinking about what is effective, not what is good or bad. Sometimes I learn m…
SAS throwing RPC error
If you are doing code in C# and get this error when creating a LanguageService:The RPC server is unavailable. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800706BA)The likely culprit is that SAS is not, in fact, running as an exe. Check your workspace instantiatio…
Where is that volcano in Guatemala?
You’ve probably seen in the news that a volcano erupted in Guatemala recently. But do you really know much about this volcano, or even where it’s located? Hopefully this blog post will get you up to speed on your volcanology! Pictures of a recent volca…
Using Texas as a unit of measure
Everything’s big in Texas – at least that’s what they say! Therefore let’s have a bit of graphical fun, and use Texas as a unit of measure (let’s call it a ‘tex’). More on that later – but first, here’s a picture of my friend Jennifer posing beside a r…