To recap the analysis from our previous article, we have now shown that the advantage to Player 1 in snakes and ladders is minimal (amounting to less than 6 extra wins out of every 1,000 games). In this post we look at visualising some results, focusing in particular on the distribution of game lengths and the […]
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Dealing with many dimensions in historical data: Tracking cooperation & conflict patterns over space and time in R
For this post, I’ve managed to find some extremely interesting historical event data offered by the Cline Center on this page. As you will see, this dataset can be quite challenging because of the sheer number of dimensions you could look at. With so many options, it becomes tricky to create visualisations with the ‘right’ level of granularity: […]
Matt Higgs, Data Scientist at The Data Lab
First in a new series of Interviews with Data Scientists, we speak to Matt Higgs of The Data Lab.
Snakes and Ladders (Part 2 of 3): Analysing the classic children’s game
In the previous post in this series, we set out the basic Python code required to simulate a single game of snakes and ladders. In order to analyse the game in more detail we will be required to simulate multiple random games so that we can look at certain properties, such as expected game lengths, […]
Snakes and Ladders (Part 1 of 3): Analysing the classic children’s game
In this short series of three blog posts we show how easy it can be to take an everyday activity and analyse it using Python, gaining insights that might illuminate or in some cases even surprise… Anyone who has ever played games against young children knows that they absolutely must go first, and my daughter Eva is […]
Data guidelines: A set of recommendations for clean and usable data
The extent to which a dataset follows a set of commonly expected guidelines will often determine how much time you have left to spend thinking about your analysis. Ideally, you might intend to spend 20% of your time cleaning the data for a project, and 80% planning and carrying out your actual analysis. But often, […]
The Data Lab launches CPD & Training Programme
The Data Lab has launched its CPD and Training Programme for 2017 this week. Building on the success of previous modules, The Data Lab will be offering courses ranging from data visualisation to statistics. Andy Kirk from Visualising Data will return to Edinburgh in November to deliver a one day course as part of the […]
LA maps of crime: Using R to map criminal activity in LA since 2010
I’ve recently come across data.gov — a huge resource for open data. At the time of writing, there are close to 17,000 freely available datasets stored there. Interestingly, this dataset includes almost 1.6M records of criminal activity occurring in LA since 2010 — all of them described according to a variety of measures. Using information like the date and time […]
Scotland Can Do SCALE 2017: World Class Business Growth Training
Are you an ambitious, innovative entrepreneur who wants to grow your business in the UK and internationally? Or are you a business founder who has seen your growth stall and need to be re-energised? Perhaps you are a corporate innovator leading a product development team and need a structured approach to achieve scale on a […]
Winning Pub Quizzes with pandas
I was in my local pub quiz recently when as usual we were faced with the anagram speed round. The quiz-master Dr Paul reads out a collection of words with a clue to a mystery person’s identity, and the first team to correctly shout out the answer wins a spot prize. It’s often a box […]