Gone learnin’

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash I'm taking a quick break from blogging. I know I said I'd post monthly, but I have a good excuse to skip a couple months: learning. I'm taking an online course called UX Data Analysis from HEC Montréal on edX. It runs about 6 weeks and requires 6-9 hours…

5 psychological principles from The Undoing Project

Last month, I wrote about the phenomenon of Decision weighting after reading the book Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Some friends then recommended another book featuring the work of Kahneman and Amos Tversky: The Undoing Project. The Undoing Project covers much of the same material as Thinking, Fast and Slow, but in an…

Decision weighting according to Kahneman

Let's play a game called "Would you Rather?" Would you rather have... A) a 90% chance at winning $1000; orB) $900 guaranteed? Most people choose option B with little hesitation. It has the same expected value (= probability × prize) as option A, but more certainty. There's no FOMO (fear of missing out); there's no…

The ten graph challenge

I took the #10GraphChallenge, exploring data in sports, crime, money, and travel. You should, too.

Visualizing fantasy hockey schedules

I'm coming out as a #FantasyHockey mega nerd. Starting with my league's quarterfinals (March 4-10), I made a chart that breaks down every NHL team's schedule into off nights and busy nights. I also created charts for other playoff weeks.

Visualizing vesting schedules

I recently wrote about the book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte. That book inspired me to explore ways of visualizing the vesting of savings and awards. Background Skip this section if you know equity! Vesting Vesting is when stock or cash becomes available. This allows companies to reward their employees for…

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte- Book review

"A little light reading, hey?" the doctor from Pennsylvania asked me on a recent flight. "Do you have to read that for a course or something?" "No," I said as I showed him a fascinating chart of Napoleon’s army’s advance to and retreat from Russia, "I'm actually just reading it for fun." And despite the…

Using Airtable to store research nuggets

I started at Solium in January. They did a full day of usability testing for World Usability Day in the previous November but hadn't yet got through analyzing all of the videos. It's a small team and other priorities got in the way. Around that time, I listened to a Tomer Sharon interview on Mixed…