Publications by Tony Hirst
Thinks Another: Using Spectrograms to Identify Stage Wiggliness?
Last night I started wondering about ways in which I might be able to use signal processing (Fourier analysis) or symbol dynamics (eg Thinks: Symbolic Dynamics for Categorising Rally Stage Wiggliness?) to help categorise the nature of rally stage twistiness. Over a morning coffee break, I reminded myself of spectrograms, graphical devices that c...
2626 sym R (1480 sym/3 pcs) 4 img
From Visual Impressions to Visual Opinions
In The Analytics Trap I scribbled some notes on how I like using data not as a source of “truth”, but as a lens, or a perspective, from a particular viewpoint. One idea I’ve increasingly noticed being talked about explcitly across various software projects I follow is the idea of opionated software and opionated design. According to the Bas...
4990 sym 12 img
When Less is More: Data Tables That Make a Difference
In the previous post, From Visual Impressions to Visual Opinions, I gave various examples of charts that express opinions. In this post, I’ll share a few examples of how we can take a simple data table and derive multiple views from it that each provide a different take on the same story (or does that mean, tells different stories from the same...
6253 sym 18 img
Fragment: Tools of Production – ggalt and encircling scatterplot points in R and Python
In passing, I note ggalt, an R package containing some handy off-the-shelf geoms for use with ggplot2. Using geom_encircle() you can trivially encircle a set of points which could be really handing when demonstrating / highlighting grouping various sets of points in a scatterplot: See the end of this post for a recipe for creating a similar effe...
2299 sym Python (586 sym/1 pcs) 14 img
Using R To Calculate A Simple Speed Model For Rally Stage Routes
A few months ago, I started hacking together an online e-book on Visualising WRC Rally Stages With rayshader and R. One of the sections (Estimating speeds) described the construction of a simple speed model based around the curvature of the stage route. As part of another sprint into some rally data tinkering, this time focusing on Visualising WR...
3717 sym R (4661 sym/4 pcs) 4 img
Running R and Debian Linux in the Browser Via WASM
A few weeks ago, I noted the appearance of georgestagg/webR, an R distribution compiled to WASM that runs completely in the browser. The environment is served from a simple webserver, and requires no installation of R onto a back-end server or onto your own desktop. Instead, the environment runs inside a virtual machine inside your browser (try i...
2466 sym 8 img