blog-mining hilary_mason_data knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
the latest blogs:
1 hilary mason data-2014-04-09-Come speak at DataGotham 2014!
Introduction: Come speak at DataGotham 2014! Posted: April 9, 2014 | Author: Hilary Mason | Filed under: blog | Leave a comment » Please join us for DataGotham 2014! We’ll be hosting the conference Friday, Sep 26th at the Broad Street Ballroom in the financial district in New York City. We look forward to getting New York’s data community together and having a great time. The Call for Proposals is now open, and we want you to speak . Our speakers come from every industry and type of background where people use data, and the best talks are ones where you tell us your real experience with a data project. What problem were you trying to solve? What went wrong? What went right? How does the story end? Or did it? If you think you might have a story to tell but aren’t sure, drop me a note . I’m happy to help you frame a successful talk, and we welcome speakers at all levels of experience. Some of our most popular talks have been from first-time speakers!
2 hilary mason data-2014-02-14-Play with your food!
Introduction: Play with your food! Posted: February 14, 2014 | Author: Hilary Mason | Filed under: blog | Tags: data , food | Leave a comment » I spent a few minutes this week putting together a quick script to pull data from the Locu API . Locu has done the hard work of gathering and parsing menus from around the US and has a lot of interesting data (and a good data team ). The API is easy to query by menu item (like “cheeseburger”, my favorite ) and by running my little script I quickly had data for the prices of cheeseburgers in my set of zip codes (the 100 most populated metro areas in the US). I’m a big fan of Pete Warden’s OpenHeatMap tool for making quick map visualizations, and was able to come up with the following: The blue map is the average price of a cheeseburger by zip, with the red one showing the average price of pizza. The most expensive average cheeseburger can be found in Santa Clara, CA, ironically the city currently hosting the Str
3 hilary mason data-2013-12-18-Using Twitter’s Lead-Gen Card to Recruit Beta Testers
Introduction: Using Twitter’s Lead-Gen Card to Recruit Beta Testers Posted: December 18, 2013 | Author: Hilary Mason | Filed under: blog | Tags: email , hack , twitter | 12 Comments » It turns out that it’s pretty easy to co-opt Twitter’s Lead Generation card for anything where you want to gather a bunch of e-mail addresses from your Twitter community. I was looking for people willing to alpha test a little side project of mine, and it worked great and didn’t cost anything. The tweet itself: Love tech discussion but looking for a better community? Help me beta test a side project! https://t.co/H3DYjbCy19 — Hilary Mason (@hmason) December 12, 2013 I created it pretty easily: First, go to ads.twitter.com , log in, and go to “creatives”, then “cards”. Click “Create Lead Generation Card”. It’s a big blue button. You can include a title and a short description. Curiously, you can also include a 600px by 150px image. This seems like an opportunity to
4 hilary mason data-2013-11-22-Speaking: Two Questions to Ask Before You Give a Talk
Introduction: Speaking: Two Questions to Ask Before You Give a Talk Posted: November 22, 2013 | Author: Hilary Mason | Filed under: speaking | Tags: questions , speaking | 6 Comments » If you’ve had a talk proposal accepted or been invited to speak at an event, you’ll usually get a chance to chat with the organizers before you show up to give your talk. While you probably have a good idea of the topic of your talk (if you don’t, that’s a post for another day!), event organizers can be invaluable in helping you frame a talk that will succeed with their audience. They are on your side and they want you to do great, or they wouldn’t be hosting you at their event. These are two questions that I always ask the organizers before I speak. Question 1: Who will be in the audience? Knowing the basic demographics of the audience is necessary to make sure you’re speaking at the right level and tuning the cultural references and humor for the room. I often speak to audiences o
5 hilary mason data-2013-11-01-Books Recommendations for Programming Excellence
Introduction: Books Recommendations for Programming Excellence Posted: November 1, 2013 | Author: Hilary Mason | Filed under: blog | 15 Comments » Yesterday I asked people on twitter for recommendations for things to read to improve as a programmer. I’m looking mainly for things on the philosophy side of software engineering. I do realize that practice is the most important thing, but sometimes you run into a design question and it’s always helpful to realize that very smart people have, indeed, thought about these things before. I assembled the book recommendations into a bitly bundle . I’ve only read a few of these (generally the older books) and so I can’t recommend specifics, but if you’d care to take a look here they are ! If you see something that you think should be included, please do let me know in the comments and I’ll add it to the list.
6 hilary mason data-2013-10-22-The DataGotham 2013 Videos are up!
Introduction: The DataGotham 2013 Videos are up! Posted: October 22, 2013 | Author: Hilary Mason | Filed under: blog | Tags: datagotham , youtube | Leave a comment » I’m happy to be able to share that the full set of videos from DataGotham 2013 are now on youtube . The talks are a wide perspective on the interesting work happening around data in New York, and I believe you’ll enjoy all of them!
7 hilary mason data-2013-10-06-What Mugshots Mean For Public Data
Introduction: What Mugshots Mean For Public Data Posted: October 6, 2013 | Author: Hilary Mason | Filed under: blog | Tags: data , mugshots , privacy | 20 Comments » The New York Times has a story this morning on the growing use of mugshot data for, essentially, extortion . These sites scrape mugshots off of public records databases, use SEO techniques to rank highly in Google searches for people’s names, and then charge those featured in the image to have the pages removed. Many of the people featured were never even convicted of a crime. What the mugshot story demonstrates but never says explicitly is that data is no longer just private or public, but often exists in an in-between state, where the public-ness of the data is a function of how much work is required to find it. Let’s say you’re actually doing a background check on someone you are going on a date with (one of the use cases the operators of these sites claim is common). Before online systems, you c
8 hilary mason data-2013-09-30-Need actual random numbers? Meet the NIST randomness beacon.
Introduction: Need actual random numbers? Meet the NIST randomness beacon. Posted: September 30, 2013 | Author: Hilary Mason | Filed under: projects | Tags: beacon , python , random , randomness , randomnumbers | 5 Comments » I wrote a python module that wraps that NIST Randomness Beacon , making it simple to get truly random numbers in python. It’s easy to use: b = Beacon() print b.last_record() print b.previous_record() #and so on There’s also a handy generator for getting a set of n random numbers. (One of the best gifts I ever got was a copy of 1,000,000 Random Numbers , and I’ve been intrigued ever since.) Please note that this the randomness beacon is not intended to be a source of cryptographic keys — indeed, it’s a public set of numbers, so I wouldn’t recommend doing anything that could be compromised by someone else having the access to the exact same set of numbers . Rather, this is interesting precisely for the scientific opportunities that
9 hilary mason data-2013-09-26-Learn to Code, Learn to Think
Introduction: Learn to Code, Learn to Think Posted: September 26, 2013 | Author: Hilary Mason | Filed under: blog | Tags: code , philosophy , teaching , thinking | 11 Comments » I recently had a tweet that’s caused a bit of comment , and I wanted to expand on the point. Everyone does realize that it's not about teaching people to CODE as much as it is about teaching people to THINK … right? — Hilary Mason (@hmason) September 17, 2013 I’m a huge fan of the movement to teach people, especially kids, to code. When you learn to code, you’re learning to think precisely and analytically about a quirky world. It doesn’t really matter which particular technology you learn, as long as you are learning to solve the underlying logical problems. If a student becomes a professional engineer, their programming ability will rise above the details of the language, anyway. And if they don’t, they will have learned to reason logically, a skill that’s invaluable no matt
10 hilary mason data-2013-08-31-In Search of the Optimal … Cheeseburger
Introduction: In Search of the Optimal … Cheeseburger Posted: August 31, 2013 | Author: Hilary Mason | Filed under: Presentations | Tags: cheeseburgers , ignite , talks | 8 Comments » My ignite talk from last year’s data-centric Ignite spectacular is finally up! This was about a fun, personal project, where I was playing with NYC menu data.