Livejournal Memories: Del Cotter's Carpet
I see the silvery trailer, part of the sculpture "Airstream Interplanetary Explorer," is in front of The Highrise right now, and a crew is maneuvering it into place to prepare for the 10-week exhibition of Edward Tufte's metal sculpture here at Fermilab's art gallery. All part of what my colleague Mike Vincent has called a Triple Nerd Alert.
Preparing "Airstream Interplanetary Explorer" outside Wilson Hall.
What the AIE looks like when it's at home, at Hogpen Hill Farm in Connecticut.
In honor of Prof. Tufte, the celebrated champion of data visualization, and his excellent books on the subject, allow me to resurrect a moment from this blog.
In 2007, we were discussing Worldcon professional Guests of Honor, their ages, and the duration of their science fiction/fantasy careers at the time of the Worldcons where they were honored. Some were saying that the latest guest seemed rather young, or rather less experienced, than they expected a World Science Fiction Convention GoH to be. Turns out that this guest was not very unusual, compared to the set of previous honorees. I published some graphs to visualize the data.
Birth year of Worldcon Guests of Honor vs. year of the Worldcon
Number of years eleapsed between a Worldcon Guest of Honor's first science fiction sale and the year of the Worldcon, versus year of the Worldcon, for professional guests where I have been able to ascertain their first-sale year
Age at first sale of Worldcon Guests of Honor vs. year of the Worldcon, for professional GoHs
Over in the UK, Del Cotter, bless him, considered the principles of presenting numerical data in a clear fashion, and set out to improve upon my graphs.
Del wrote: "Thanks for gathering the data on this. I took the liberty of ripping it out and making my own graph, from which it seems clear to me that in age or career he's not even a freak for the modern Worldcon era, just a little unusual. " Indeed, his graph was nicer.
Age and career length of Worldcon professional Guests of Honor
My reply:
A lovely improvement. I like the way the data stick out, like little fibers protruding from a carpet. They're... tufty.
Preparing "Airstream Interplanetary Explorer" outside Wilson Hall.
What the AIE looks like when it's at home, at Hogpen Hill Farm in Connecticut.
In honor of Prof. Tufte, the celebrated champion of data visualization, and his excellent books on the subject, allow me to resurrect a moment from this blog.
In 2007, we were discussing Worldcon professional Guests of Honor, their ages, and the duration of their science fiction/fantasy careers at the time of the Worldcons where they were honored. Some were saying that the latest guest seemed rather young, or rather less experienced, than they expected a World Science Fiction Convention GoH to be. Turns out that this guest was not very unusual, compared to the set of previous honorees. I published some graphs to visualize the data.
Birth year of Worldcon Guests of Honor vs. year of the Worldcon
Number of years eleapsed between a Worldcon Guest of Honor's first science fiction sale and the year of the Worldcon, versus year of the Worldcon, for professional guests where I have been able to ascertain their first-sale year
Age at first sale of Worldcon Guests of Honor vs. year of the Worldcon, for professional GoHs
Over in the UK, Del Cotter, bless him, considered the principles of presenting numerical data in a clear fashion, and set out to improve upon my graphs.
Del wrote: "Thanks for gathering the data on this. I took the liberty of ripping it out and making my own graph, from which it seems clear to me that in age or career he's not even a freak for the modern Worldcon era, just a little unusual. " Indeed, his graph was nicer.
Age and career length of Worldcon professional Guests of Honor
My reply:
A lovely improvement. I like the way the data stick out, like little fibers protruding from a carpet. They're... tufty.