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jwolondon.bsky.social
Jo Wood
@jwolondon.bsky.social
3.2K followers 370 following 620 posts
Professor of Visual Analytics who does datavis, visualization storytelling and natural travel. Did I mention visualization?
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Jo Wood
jonburkeuk.bsky.social
"Not TV or illegal drugs but the automobile has been the chief destroyer of...communities." ― Jane Jacobs
November 7, 2025 at 11:59 AM
Reposted by Jo Wood
jsndyks.bsky.social
#IEEEVIS - we’re hiring @ City St George’s, University of London.

Does this sound like you?
bit.ly/3WEYlmm

It's a permanent (tenured) position:
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPC906/l...

Join us @ giCentre & be part of our amazing new ...
Data Visualization Doctoral Training Centre:
bit.ly/diverseCDT25...
November 7, 2025 at 8:58 AM
jwolondon.bsky.social
While I have questions about some of the #datavis design choices here, this is a nice example of evidence-based investigative journalism on an important topic. Good use of engaging visual support to create a rich documentary-like impression.

news.sky.com/story/the-x-...
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
news.sky.com
November 6, 2025 at 8:37 AM
jwolondon.bsky.social
Such a disappointing start to #ieeevis 2025 for us remote attendees. No live streaming so best we get is a vicarious experience of a discord channel discussing details we cannot see.

This is a major step backward in an era where travel options are constrained both environmentally and politically.
November 2, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Reposted by Jo Wood
daraprojectcity.bsky.social
We are raising awareness of #aphasia by:

1. Talking about our research. The Dara project looks at everyday information - like maps, pie charts, and physical data to see how easy-to-use people with #aphasia or #DLD find it.

#DevLangDis
@sayaphasia.bsky.social
@thestrokeassoc.bsky.social
A map of a street system showing roads, a park and two landmarks: "Botanic Gardens" and "Dara Bridge" A Pie chart labelled "Popularity of ice-cream flavours at a seaside town". Flavours shown include chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and rum & raisin. A photograph of four chunky knit scarves - each showing different sized blocks of colour.
October 20, 2025 at 7:04 AM
jwolondon.bsky.social
Do you want a bit more sketchiness in your #datavis?

Here's my @observablehq.com Plot plugin that turns an Plot specification into a sketchy version with minimal extra work:

observablehq.com/@jwolondon/m...

Builds on the work of Gordon Tu and rough.js
A grid of 24 data visualizations all rendered in a sketchy style. From left to right, top to bottom: An area chart in red and black; a vector arrow in red; a grid with axis labels; three red dots; an empty frame; a world map; a bar chart; a Bollinger chart; three box plots; a grid; a hex bin density plot in red and blue; a red line with one maximum and one minimum point of inflexion; a contour plat in rainbow colours; three elliptical regions in yellow, blue and red; a dodge plot showing two peaks; a scatterplot of blue points with red linear regression line; 4 lines intersecting at a central point; a normally distributed histogram; a normally distributed histogram represented as red vertical lines; vertical tick marks in red looking like a bar code; a tree diagram with 8 nodes; a vector arrow; a voronoi diagram with yellow, blue and red regions; a waffle chart showing 3 categories as vertical stacked squares in blue, orange and red.
October 19, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Reposted by Jo Wood
albertocairo.com
Salesforce owns Tableau. Time to drop all mentions from classes and trainings #dataViz
nytimes.com The New York Times @nytimes.com · 25d
Salesforce told ICE that its A.I. software could help the agency nearly triple its staff, according to internal documents, as President Trump expands immigration raids and deportations around the U.S. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/u...
Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, wearing a black suit, speaks to an audience. A headline reads: "Salesforce Pitched ICE on Services to Recruit More Staff, Documents Show." Photo by Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle, via Associated Press
October 17, 2025 at 3:02 AM
Reposted by Jo Wood
daraprojectcity.bsky.social
Friday is Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) awareness day.
Why not join in?
Here's how:
- You will find lots of information about DLD via the hashtag #DLDday.
- Watch our account for updates from the Dara project.
- Follow @radld.bsky.social and @wordaware.bsky.social
- Visit radld.org
October 15, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Reposted by Jo Wood
Interested in accessibility and data vis? Just 2 days left to apply for this one year researcher role on the Dara project www.dara.org.uk
October 6, 2025 at 6:24 PM
jwolondon.bsky.social
Balm for the soul.
folklorewales.com Dr Delyth Badder @folklorewales.com · Oct 5
Six weeks ago, I picked up a year-old tawny owl with a broken leg off the main road near our home and dropped him off at our nearest vet.

After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵
Tawny owl
October 5, 2025 at 9:44 AM
jwolondon.bsky.social
A great post from @djnavarro.net, providing an accessible explanation of why statistics that can appear to reveal our ignorance may actually do the opposite. Makes excellent use of #datavis to provide visual support for the argument.

blog.djnavarro.net/posts/2025-0...
Some notes on probability judgement – Notes from a data witch
For the love of fuck, literally nobody thinks that 20% of the population is transgender. Please stop sharing that ridiculous YouGov statistic
blog.djnavarro.net
September 28, 2025 at 7:04 AM
jwolondon.bsky.social
And another thing...
A complex knotted path of curved red lines that show a grid-like structure. Produced by a tessellation of hex Truchet tiles with arcs and bezier curves that intersect with each hex edge's midpoint. Rendered in Observable Plot with a custom Truchet mark.
September 27, 2025 at 5:41 AM
jwolondon.bsky.social
🚨#datavis Job alert 🚨

Fancy working with us in London as a researcher using @observablehq.com Plot for accessible #datavis?

To support people with language disability in the use of data visualization for everyday decision making.

www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/about/jobs/a...
Details | City St George's, University of London
Details of job vacancy at City St George's,, University of London
www.citystgeorges.ac.uk
September 17, 2025 at 12:38 PM
jwolondon.bsky.social
Today's Hard #pips puzzle had 86 possible solutions (and 353,009,663,914 incorrect ones)
September 4, 2025 at 4:31 PM
jwolondon.bsky.social
Filed under 'I wish I'd thought of that'.

Elegant example of a 2d layout for 4-way comparison from @firthstat.bsky.social
firthstat.bsky.social David Firth @firthstat.bsky.social · Aug 26
At next week's RSS conference I'll be presenting a poster (a first for me...it's about time!)

"Tetraplot displays of UK General Election results" shows how to graph GE 2024 vote shares across 4 parties in a useful way.

Full PDF poster at:
github.com/DavidFirth/t...
Image of a poster to be presented at the Royal Statistical Society conference in Edinburgh, September 2025. The main point is to generalize the idea of a ternary plot to handle 4-part compositions, by showing views through the triangular faces of a tetrahedron. The data shown are vote counts from England, Scotland and Wales in the UK General Election of July 2024.
August 26, 2025 at 6:02 PM
jwolondon.bsky.social
I think this is the real problem for Computer Science education. It's not students 'cheating' with AI, it's the need to focus CS education on those aspects only people can deal with. And that's not the stuff we've been largely teaching in CS for the last 50 years.
robbowley.net Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · Aug 9
Most code is crap. Most developers are mediocre.

In the age of AI-assisted coding, that’s a problem – for them and for the industry.

1/6
Is AI about to expose just how mediocre most developers are? | Rob Bowley
blog.robbowley.net
August 9, 2025 at 6:56 PM
jwolondon.bsky.social
* Where shall we go for a walking holiday this year?
- How about the Alps?
* No, way too scary. I don't have a head for heights.
- OK, what about the gentle grassy domes of the Auvergne?
* Sounds great.

Day two of our walking holiday...
A black-and-white photograph of a dramatic mountain landscape around Puy De Sancy, Auvergne. Jagged peaks rise steeply, their dark, textured surfaces contrasting with the low-hanging clouds that partially obscure the summit. Near the center top, a solitary building (cable car lift) sits above a steep cliff.
July 29, 2025 at 2:58 PM
jwolondon.bsky.social
Currently in Lyon for some #eurogames and in preparation for some Auvergne walking next week. And Lyon is certainly good preparation, being a city of many many steps.

Here's just the first set from the 400+ up to our apartment.
A photo of a long, steep outdoor staircase between buildings, in Lyon. Each step painted with vibrant, coluorful abstract patterns forming a cohesive mural when viewed from below. The stairs are flanked by railings and lush green foliage on either side.
July 26, 2025 at 4:41 PM
jwolondon.bsky.social
Fast interactive spatial querying with @observablehq.com Plot and a k-d tree. #datavis

observablehq.com/@jwolondon/e...
Extending mark interaction with Plot
When working with Observable Plot, providing interaction in response to pointer position is possible with the Pointer transform. This works well for many use-cases, but has one limitation: the values ...
observablehq.com
July 20, 2025 at 2:20 PM
jwolondon.bsky.social
On a train heading south from the Lake District.

There's something special about landscape of drumlin fields between Oxenholme and Lancaster.

(Don't worry, I am not going to live-post everything I see out of the window like an excited five year old.)
July 13, 2025 at 2:46 PM
Reposted by Jo Wood
chezvoila.com
The @datavizsociety.bsky.social Is going through a rough patch.

They have a USD 35k deficit, down from 115k after compressing and reorganizing.

Their Executive Director has resigned to make space for someone skilled in financial recovery.

There are 30k members. We can do this.

1/🧵
Strengthening DVS for the Future
mailchi.mp
July 12, 2025 at 11:57 AM
jwolondon.bsky.social
Putting aside questions of whether educational providers should be 'judged' at all, I think this is an interesting aspiration to consider.

In HE we seem to be fixated on module-level outcomes, short-term progression rates and graduate destinations. Why not teach to support a lifetime of fulfilment?
jonsevers.bsky.social Jon Severs @jonsevers.bsky.social · Jul 1
"Should we use a set of metrics to measure success long after our students leave us, and should schools be judged on what happens across a lifetime? What would those metrics be and how could they be assessed?"

Timely 'What if...' piece here.
www.tes.com/magazine/lea...
What if... schools were judged on pupil outcomes at 25 years old
As part of our thought experiment series, Julian Drinkall interrogates the practicality of judging schools on a student’s status at the age of 25
www.tes.com
July 1, 2025 at 7:36 AM
jwolondon.bsky.social
I think I got lost somewhere in the self-referential irony of Jarvis at #Glastonbury talking about living in the now after reminiscing about a song about reminiscing about looking forward to a time 25 years ago.
June 28, 2025 at 6:38 PM
jwolondon.bsky.social
Do you have an interest in the bridge between academic #datavis and industry/professional practice of visualization?

🚨We are recruiting for a Business Development Manager in London for our £10m centre for doctoral training in datavis. 🚨

Details here:

www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/about/jobs/a...
Details | City St George's, University of London
Details of job vacancy at City St George's,, University of London
www.citystgeorges.ac.uk
June 23, 2025 at 4:44 PM
jwolondon.bsky.social
Onomatopoeic programming you say?

Here's a Rivulet program that generates a Collatz sequence from any given start integer.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collatz...
A Rivulet program of meandering linear strands that has the appearance of the word COLLATZ and also generates a Collatz sequence when passed to the Rivulet interpreter. The source code is 1 ╵╭─────╯╵╵╭──────╮╵╵ ╭─ ╵╵╭─── ╵╵╰──╮ ╵╵╵╭───╮ ╵╰──╮╵╵ ╭─────────╮ 2 │ ╭──╶ │╷╰──╮ │ ╵╴╮╵╯ │╭─ ─╮│ │ │╭─│ │ ╷ ╮╰──╮ │ 3 │ │ ╭╯ │ │ │ │╰─╯╮ ╯╯ ╰─╯╷ ╴╮ ╰──╶││ │╴──╯ ╰╮│ ╰╶╭╶ ╭╯ 5 │ │ ╷ ─╮│ │ │ │ │╮ ╭╭ │ │ ╷│╯ │╭ ╷│ ╭╶ ╭╯ ╭╯ 7 │ │ │ ╰╯ │ │ │ ││ ││ │ ╭ ╭─╮ ╯ ╭╯╯╭ ╯│ │╷ ╯ ╯ ╯ │ ╰───╮ │ │ │ ╰───╯│ ││ ╰───╮ │ │ │ ╭ ╷ │ ╭╰─ ╭ ╭ ╭ ╭ ╰─────╯ ╰──────╯ ╰──────╯ ╰─────╯ ╰─ │ │ ╰─╮│ │ │ │ │ │ ╷ ╷ ╷ ╷ ╰─╯╷ ││ │ │ │ │╭─╯ ╭─╯ ╭│ │ ╰─╯ ││ │ ││ ╰╶ ╭──╯╰───╰───╮ │ │ ╰────── ────╯ ╰─╯ ╷ ╷
June 19, 2025 at 10:45 PM