#I miss our meta ethics book club

[lakeeffectbitch]

God I do not have the time to write a full argumentative essay about it but in my latest bout of insomnia I crafted this full argument in my head about how the internalist perspective on meaningfulness (as in meaning of life) must be correct because the closest analogue to meaningfulness as a human experience is sexual attractiveness and sexual attractiveness can only be coherently defined as that which induces the internal experience of sexual attraction. Like if you’re looking population-wide then sure the overall set of things commonly thought of as sexually attractive might be things that are related to survival of the species (physical fitness, social prowess, whatever) but obviously that’s gonna be extraordinarily reductive and all the things that are considered sexually attractive by all people cannot coherently be linked to that initial reference point. It’s a messy human phenomenon that extends far beyond the bounds of an evolutionary origin. Same goes with meaningfulness—the set of general population-wide things that are thought of as Meaningful—such as raising a family, having a successful career, improving the wellbeing of others—can be tied back to survival of the species but they are never going to encompass all activities which confer meaning to life if you’re using “survival” as a logical starting point. And frankly that’s the only starting point that makes sense because otherwise you have to argue that there is some external set of rules written into the universe (which, unfortunately, is the prevailing view in meaning of life as a subfield of philosophy). It’s just a human phenomenon that extends way beyond the bounds of its initial origin and impetus.

And it would be incorrect to say that someone is Not experiencing sexual attraction just because it does not fit what the average human would predict as being attractive. The same has to go for meaning—there cannot be an external guideline which claims that someone is actually mistaken about their own experience of meaningfulness because that experience is reflexively defined. If they gained a sense of meaningfulness from it, it was Meaningful. And like yeah people can gain a sense of meaningfulness from doing things that cause immense harm. Does that mean they were mistaken about it being meaningful though?? I don’t think so, I just think it’s silly to move the goal posts of meaningfulness so it doesn’t include actions which are morally reprehensible (WHICH IS ANOTHER ARENA FOR A 40+ PAGE ARGUMENT ON THE SAME GROUNDS)

Anyways. I know that this could be published if I put 15+ pages of argumentation into it but I have No extra time or energy so I just gotta text my old philosophy prof about it and make an incoherent rant in a tumblr text post

[warninggraphiccontent]

4 June 2021

Not feeling 100%?

This is more anecdote than data, but I feel like I've been seeing a lot of clustered bar charts (where you have a number of bars, for different series, bunched together in each category) with quite a lot of bars per category recently.

This sort of thing:

Lest I risk being stripped of my Peston Geek of the Week badges, there isn't anything particularly wrong with this - it just happened to be one example I noticed this week! But personally, I find four bars per category a bit much - I don't think the key stories are as easy to read as they might be. (I should confess my own sins at this point.)

In instances like this one - where the results for a single age group will add up to 100% - I think there's an obvious alternative: a 100% bar chart.

I think this makes the same point - that attitudes to lifting lockdown divide along age lines - more clearly. The thing you might lose is being able to easily compare should/should not for a particular age group, but that's not the main point being made and (personally) I think that takes some time with the original anyway.

Again, there's nothing particularly wrong with the original in this instance. But I've definitely seen more egregious examples, where the number of clustered columns becomes a bar to understanding the data.

Some initial thoughts on other subjects:

DB I thoroughly enjoyed last night's Data Bites geo-special, which you can watch as-live here (and will appear in slightly edited form here). I even included a chart-based quiz - question here (it does get there eventually), answer here. We'll be back on Wednesday 7 July with the next one, and then back on 8 September after a short summer break.

VPs Reports (Meta data, below) suggest the government has backtracked on many of its 'vaccine passport' plans for domestic use. (Rumours government will leave much to the free market are still a concern - government needs to provide clarity and be wary of harms, whoever is developing such systems.) Here's the Ada Lovelace Institute report on vaccine passports I was involved with.

GPDPR Also below are many links about the planned General Practice Data for Planning and Research, a new NHS Digital initiative to use patient data, which is now starting to become A Thing in the press.

LN If you're interested in data sonification, a new podcast - Loud Numbers - is launching with a whole festival on the topic this Saturday. Here are my collected sonifications for the Institute for Government podcast (which I've been saying I'll write up for about a year and a half now...)

ODI There are some great jobs - including researcher and senior researcher roles - going at the Open Data Institute, where I'm a special adviser (but don't let that put you off).

OGP NAP If you'd like to get involved in shaping the UK's next national action plan for open government, remember you can sign up here.

CogX And last but not least, I'm delighted to announce I'll be chairing a session on 'AI Governance: the role of the nation in a transnational world' at this year's CogX at 1pm on Wednesday 16 June.

W:GC will be taking a break next week, and perhaps the week after if I'm feeling really decadent. Remember there are 100+ other data newsletters, podcasts or event series you can sign up to here.

Have a great weekend/week/fortnight

Gavin

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Today's links:

Graphic content

Viral content

Peru has world’s worst per capita Covid toll after death data revised (The Guardian)

Pretty big validation... (John Burn-Murdoch)

Covid-19 deaths in Wuhan seem far higher than the official count (The Economist)

This is an analysis of the rate of growth of the "delta variant" (Alex Selby)

COVID-19: Indian variant now dominant in a fifth of areas in England - do you live in one? (Sky News)

How the Indian Covid variant has surged in England* (New Statesman)

Side effects

Covid catch-up plan for England pupils ‘pitiful compared with other countries’ (The Guardian)

How England’s school catch-up funding falls £13.6bn short* (New Statesman)

Concerns about missing work may be a barrier to coronavirus vaccination* (Washington Post)

COVID-19 passports: Britons are still in favour even as government scraps plans (YouGov)

Most people in UK did not work from home in 2020, says ONS (The Guardian)

UK

UK's culture war divisions exaggerated but real, say public – as shown by views on equal rights, cultural change and class, and online bubbles (The Policy Institute at King's College London, Ipsos MORI)

Lewis Baston: London voting patterns 2021. Not so much a doughnut as a swirl (On London)

Labour, not the Conservatives, was the largest party among low-income workers in 2019* (New Statesman)

The Greens are on the march. Who should be afraid?* (New Statesman)

Gender in public life (IfG)

Is this the beginning of the end of marriage? (Tortoise)

US

Small share of US police draw third of complaints in big cities* (FT)

Biden Targets Racial, Social Inequities With Vast Spending Push* (Bloomberg)

Hunger has declined dramatically across America in the past year* (The Economist)

NYC’s School Algorithms Cement Segregation. This Data Shows How (The Markup)

The Persistent Grip of Social Class on College Admissions* (The Upshot)

Building a Home in the U.S. Has Never Been More Expensive* (Bloomberg)

Nature, environment, energy

Cicadas, insecticides and children* (The Economist)

Corporate-led $1bn forests scheme is ‘just the beginning’* (FT)

European Banks’ Next Big Problem? The CO2 in Their Loan Books (Bloomberg)

How an Insurgency Threatens Mozambique’s Gas Bonanza* (Bloomberg)

Everything else

English clubs are dominating European football once again* (The Economist)

Unpacking the 2021 Digital Government Survey (FWD50)

#dataviz

A collection of visualization techniques for geospatial network data (GEOSPATIAL NETWORK VISUALIZATION)

Reconstructing the Neighborhood Destroyed in the Tulsa Race Massacre* (New York Times)

Meta data

Viral content

NHS Covid app signs £10m six-month contract extension with developer Zühlke (Public Technology)

The UK’s response to new variants: a story of obfuscation and chaos (BMJ)

Exclusive: UK vaccine passport plans to be scrapped* (Telegraph)

Introducing Covid certificates is a ‘finely balanced’ decision, says Gove (The Guardian)

SCOTTISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT DURING COVID-19: DATA NEEDS, CAPABILITIES, AND USES (Urban Big Data Centre)

Sharing data to help with the Covid-19 vaccination programme (DWP Digital)

How Modi’s fraught relationship with pandemic data has harmed India* (FT)

All those pub apps you’ve downloaded are a privacy nightmare* (Wired)

Losing patients?

Our perspective on the new system for GP data (Understanding Patient Data)

Helen Salisbury: Should patients worry about their data? (BMJ)

Your NHS data will be quietly shared with third parties, with just weeks to opt out – GPs like me are worried (i)

Dear #research, People are opting out in droves – Matt Hancock’s data grab, facilitated by NHSX, is damaging your work (medConfidential)

Matt Hancock has quietly told your GP to hand over your health data. Why? (openDemocracy)

Plans to share NHS data must be reconsidered* (FT)

GPs warn over plans to share patient data with third parties in England (The Guardian)

The Guardian view on medical records: NHS data grab needs explaining (The Guardian)

Your medical records are about to be given away. As GPs, we’re fighting back (The Guardian)

UK government

Government Digital Service: Our strategy for 2021-2024 (Strategic Reading)

Geospatial Commission sets its 2021/22 priorities (Geospatial Commission)

Office for Statistics Regulation Annual Business Plan 2021/22 (OSR)

Office for National Statistics: the number-crunching whizzes keeping Britain afloat are the unsung heroes of the pandemic (Reaction)

Digital Strategy for Defence: Delivering the Digital Backbone and unleashing the power of Defence’s data (MoD)

Introducing a Head of Digital role to DfE (DfE Digital and Technology)

Why we’ve created an accessibility manual – and how you can help shape it (DWP Digital)

Working in data, insight and user research roles at GOV.UK (Inside GOV.UK)

How to make hybrid or ‘blended’ meetings work for your team (MoJ Digital and Technology)

AI got 'rithm

How soft law is used in AI governance (Brookings)

The race to understand the exhilarating, dangerous world of language AI* (MIT Technology Review)

Can AI be independent from big tech?* (Tortoise)

Sentenced by Algorithm* (New York Review of Books)

Google says it’s committed to ethical AI research. Its ethical AI team isn’t so sure. (Recode)

Facebook’s AI treats Palestinian activists like it treats American Black activists. It blocks them.* (Washington Post)

Privacy, people, personal data

Privacy group targets website 'cookie terror' (BBC News)

EU to step up digital push with digital identity wallet (Reuters)

ICO call for views: Anonymisation, pseudonymisation and privacy enhancing technologies guidance (ICO)

Data isn’t oil, whatever tech commentators tell you: it’s people’s lives (The Observer)

Everything else

In big tech’s dystopia, cat videos earn millions while real artists beg for tips (The Guardian)

Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies (BBC News)

Gadgets have stopped working together, and it’s becoming an issue (The Observer)

German Bundestag adopts autonomous driving law (The Robot Report)

Code is cheap; ignorance is costly (Matt Edgar)

The internet is flat. (Galaxy Brain)

Opportunities

EVENT: AI Governance: the role of the nation in a transnational world (CogX)

Full programme

EVENT: Special Topic Meeting on R/local R/transmission of Covid19 (Royal Statistical Society)

EVENT: Deploying algorithms in government (Global Government Forum)

EVENT: Emerging approaches to the regulation of biometrics: The EU, the US and the challenge to the UK (Ada Lovelace Institute)

SURVEY: Help to shape the National AI Strategy (AI Council, supported by The Alan Turing Institute)

JOB: CEO (Advanced Research and Invention Agency)

BEIS seeks chief for research agency championed by Cummings (Civil Service World)

JOB: Chief Digital Officer for Health and Care for Wales (Health Education and Improvement Wales, via Jukesie)

JOB: Head of Data Strategy (Companies House)

JOB: Head of Data Policy Analysis Team (DCMS)

JOB: Data Architect (GDS)

JOBS: Open Data Institute

JOBS: Open Data Manchester

JOB: Manager, Data and Digital Team (Social Finance, via Jukesie)

And finally...

Baked in

We collected data on 1,500 politicians' favourite biscuit. Here's what we found. (Democracy Club)

NYC Mayor Race: Ranked-Choice Ballot Explained, With Bagels* (Wall Street Journal)

Maps

Countries coloured by the number of other countries they border (Helen McKenzie)

An orange or an egg? Determining the shape of the world* (The Spectator)

I'm planning to cycle around London looking at bits of internet infrastructure and general sites of interest in computer history (Reuben Binns)

"How much of Scotland is further south than the most northerly part of England?" (Alasdair Rae)

Cartoons

'It's just counting!' (Scott Murray)

Help a Computer Win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest (The Pudding)

Everything else

Can you make AI fairer than a judge? Play our courtroom algorithm game (MIT Technology Review)

Behind the painstaking process of creating Chinese computer fonts* (MIT Technology Review)

[warninggraphiccontent]

15 November 2019

I'm into summit good

To King's Place this Tuesday and this year's #ODISummit. Lots of excellent discussion - including a keynote from Caroline Criado Perez (illustrative book extract here) - and (as with #odcamp a couple of weeks ago) a real sense of a community growing up, asking more challenging and fundamental questions of itself and what we think we can achieve through open data than ever before.

Thanks to the ODI for asking me to take part in the closing conversation, with Jeni and Ollie from Telefonica Alpha Health. Three points I think I made:

Ironically, for a data community, I think we're still grappling with a couple of big data-related problems - difficulties in quantifying the value of better use of (open) data, and memory (or, to be techy, knowledge and information management) problems - are we really making the best of all the experience and expertise at our disposal, or are we just talking about Citymapper, again?

Flowing from that... We still need to get better at talking about data. That includes knowing what it is we talk about when we talk about data (for me, that's the whole gamut from official statistics to evidence in policy-making to personal data in public services to information that isn't numbers to institutional memory, and shameless repetition of this useful thought from Tim Gordon). But it's also - well, all the things in this tweet.

Any excuse to repeat the seven big points that various civil society groups think the National Data Strategy should cover. They still seem to be holding up well, exactly the right set of points to convene a campaign around, say, but interested to hear if we've missed anything.

In other news:

This week saw the launch of the latest IfG/CIPFA Performance Tracker report, charting public service performance. Check out the launch here - and one of the best IfG data tweets ever, from Graham, here.

There'll be more from Graham on that subject (Performance Tracker, not looking longingly at charts) on the latest IfG podcast later. As threatened, my 'Speed Data' bit now has all the hallmarks of becoming a regular feature, so listen out for some more sonification.

If you can't wait that long, my excellent colleague Melissa has pulled all the IfG Data Bites events into a series of podcasts, here. Though the less said about this the better.

And finally...

The choir I'm a member of, the New Tottenham Singers, will be performing a Christmas concert on Saturday 14 December. Come! And help raise some money for Crisis this Christmas.

If you know someone aged 12-18 who's interested in writing about subjects that matter, please encourage them to enter this year's Orwell Youth Prize.

Have a great weekend

Gavin

Today's links:

Graphic content

#GE2019

MPs standing down (Ketaki for IfG)

Standard deviation of UK Westminster polling (G. Elliott Morris)

Election polls: latest UK general election 2019 polling tracked (The Guardian)

General election poll tracker: How do the parties compare? (BBC News)

Election 2019 in maps: Where are the seats that could turn the election? (BBC News)

UK election: which parties are winning the online war for ads, cash and votes? (The Guardian)

Odds favour Lib Dems in Cheltenham election race* (FT - thread)

Fiscal targets (IFS)

Constituency Data: #GE2019 (Christabel Cooper, via Tim)

POLLING: How do our towns intend to vote? (Centre for Towns)

Public services, etc

Performance Tracker 2019 (Institute for Government/CIPFA)

‘Perpetual winter’ tests Johnson’s promise to take care of NHS* (FT)

How top health websites are sharing sensitive data with advertisers* (FT)

Video

English local government funding: trends and challenges in 2019 and beyond (IFS)

DEPARTMENTAL OVERVIEW: DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & SOCIAL CARE 2018-19 (NAO, via Marcus)

House prices and Brexit (Ben W. Ansell, via Marcus)

Elections everywhere else

El mapa de resultados de las elecciones generales del 10-N de 2019, municipio a municipio (El Pais)

Who is hoping to challenge Trump for president in 2020?* (Washington Post)

Democrats are dominating state-level races* (Washington Post)

How news media are setting the 2020 election agenda: Chasing daily controversies, often burying policy (Storybench)

Climate

The climate chain reaction that threatens the heart of the Pacific* (Washington Post)

An attempt to illustrate the disproportionate heating of the Arctic (via r/dataisbeautiful)

Everything else

Child Abusers Run Rampant as Tech Companies Look the Other Way* (New York Times)

How the US stole thousands of Native American children (Vox)

Mercury transits the sun* (New York Times)

The History of Philosophy, Summarized & Visualized (Deniz Cem Önduygu)

Infant mortality in Africa (via Steve Stewart-Williams)

About charts

What does a chart sound like?* (FT)

'Enumeration Diagrams' (various threads via Alberto Cairo)

Responsible bar charting (Mark Pack)

Are Numbers Not Trusted in a “Post-Truth” Era? An Experiment on the Impact of Data on News Credibility* (Electronic News)

Why scientists need to be better at data visualization (Knowable)

Should the y-axis always go to 0? Is the answer different for line charts and bar charts? (via Steve Haroz)

Meta data

Events

Data Bites - podcasts (Institute for Government)

#ODISummit

Nearly 9 in 10 people think it’s important that organisations use personal data ethically (ODI)

Government 'less trusted than banks' on data handling (Civil Service World)

#GovTechSummit

Video: Power of Data 2019 (Swirrl)

#GE2019

Fact checking the 2019 election: what makes a well communicated fact check? (Full Fact)

It's on! Thurs 12 December is GE2019. (Democracy Club)

Election Tech Handbook (Newspeak House)

General election 2019: Labour pledges free broadband for all (BBC News - digital policy speech to come later)

A technology correspondent writes... (Rowland Manthorpe)

Voters ‘used as lab rats’ in political Facebook adverts, warn analysts (The Observer)

Parties should come clean about how they are using your data* (Elizabeth Denham in The Times)

Why are the polls telling such different stories? (CapX)

Communications in the age of digital elections (Jonathan Tanner for Global Dashboard)

Health data

Learning from building an electronic health record: a journey through data (Dr Mark Wardle)

Google's secret cache of medical data includes names and full details of millions – whistleblower (The Guardian)

The seismic NHS data goldmine being targeted by tech giants like Google* (Telegraph)

The measurement maze (Health Foundation, via Graham)

Analytical Capability Index (Health Foundation)

Apple launches research app in push to gather users’ health data* (FT)

AI and algorithms

Apple Card and algorithms (@dhh)

Zadie Smith on fighting the algorithm: ‘If you are under 30, and you are able to think for yourself right now, God bless you’ (Toronto Star)

The Global AI Index* (Tortoise)

We Teach A.I. Systems Everything, Including Our Biases* (New York Times)

UK government

77m Ltd v Ordnance Survey Ltd [2019], England and Wales High Court (BAILII)

The Ministry of Justice’s prisoner risk algorithm could program in racism* (New Statesman)

New DCMS perm sec Sarah Healey on making connections, government's data strategy, and driving diversity (Civil Service World)

Department of Education criticised for secretly sharing children's data (The Guardian)

Digital government and asymmetric justice (Jerry Fishenden)

Everything else

Google plan to lock down user data draws fire from advertisers* (FT)

Data Trusts: Why, What and How (Anouk Ruhaak)

Why Politicians Want Your Smart-TV Data (The Atlantic)

These new rules were meant to protect our privacy. They don’t work (The Guardian)

Although... and...

In Data Journalism, Tech Matters Less Than the People* (New York Times)

DATA VOIDS: WHERE MISSING DATA CAN EASILY BE EXPLOITED (Data&Society)

Opportunities

Fellowship - Graphics Editor (New York Times)

JOB: Research Assistant – Digital Team (Article 19)

We’re hiring an Office Assistant (Doteveryone)

JOBS (Public Digital)

Northern Ireland opens new open data competition (UKAuthority)

And finally...

Elections

LibDemBarChart

Crowd erupts into chants of 'PowerPoint' after Yang pledges to use PowerPoint at SOTU (The Hill)

Why Obama-Trump swing voters like heavy metal* (The Economist)

Voter fraud detected in Guardian's Australian bird of the year poll (The Guardian)

Everything else

TfL published some tables about Tube Capacity and they are amazing (CityMetric)

What in holy hell would compel you to think this critically and work this hard to make a pie chart worse (Alex Engler, via Alice)

Machine learning and cocaine (Reuben Binns)