Data Is Plural Jeremy Singer-Vine

This episode’s guests are Jan Diehm and Amber Thomas, whose investigation into the sizes of jeans pockets was featured in the August 22, 2018 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. Amber and Jan explain how they collected the data, how much smaller they found women’s jean pockets were than men’s, and what else they learned along the way.Relevant and mentioned links:Jan and Amber’s pockets-investigation at The PuddingData on all the measurements they tookTheir data collection sheetTheme mus...

This episode’s guest is Illenin Kondo, one of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis economists behind the Income Distributions and Dynamics in America (IDDA) dataset and resource, featured in the October 11, 2023 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. (IDDA is a collaboration between the Census Bureau and the Minneapolis Fed.) Illenin explains how the researchers distilled two decades of confidential Census and IRS records into public statistics, what they mean by “income dynamics,” what...

This episode’s guest is Julia Black, coordinator of the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, featured in the January 15, 2020 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. The project “records incidents in which migrants, including refugees and asylum-seekers, have died at state borders or in the process of migrating to an international destination.” Julia describes how her team gathers that information, the obstacles they face, how they deal with uncertainty and v...

This episode’s guest is Bruce Macnab, head of Canada's Wildland Fire Information System, featured in the June 14, 2023 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. Bruce describes how his team gathers that information, the obstacles they face, how they deal with uncertainty and varying source quality, and how their approach has changed in the decade since the project launched.Relevant and mentioned links:Canadian Wildland Fire Information SystemThe agency’s datamartFire hotspot mapsFire weather ...

This episode’s guests are George Ho and Saul Pwanson, whose crossword datasets were featured in the Data Is Plural newsletter in 2021 and 2016, respectively. Saul and George explain the difference between American-style and cryptic crosswords, how they collected their datasets, and what they learned along the way.Relevant and mentioned links:Saul’s xd archive, grid comparison, and .xd file formatFiveThirtyEight’s coverage of the plagiarism scandal Saul’s analysis unearthed and Saul’s csv,conf...

This is a bonus(!), crossover(!) episode, produced by Miriam Quick and Duncan Geere's wonderful Loud Numbers podcast, which turns data into sound. Remember the Canadian wildfire data featured a couple of episodes ago? Duncan and Miriam have woven it into a sonic tapestry, threaded with descriptions of the 2023 fire season by Fern Yip, who spent much of it fighting to save her home and school from burning. You can also listen to the episode in Loud Numbers' own podcast feed, and read Miriam an...