alex.mullr.net/blog

I’m somewhat compulsive when it comes to hoarding and keeping things. Here’s all my Starbucks receipts from 2008 (which I can safely say are now where they belong, in the bin).

Taking cues from sites like Information is Beautiful, I’m also trying to improve my ability to display data, and really just make things that look pretty. There’s definite progress being made on that front.

I’m a big fan of making pretty maps, so when I thought up an idea yesterday morning, I had to see it through. For those who weren’t aware, last Thursday was exam results day for loads of kids all over the country, the day they found out where they’d be going to university. More than a few announced this via Twitter (as you do these days, I guess); and as they were copying and pasting from “the results site”, they were fairly easy to find.

So I stitched together a Google map of the UK, and set to work putting the points on a map; it made sense to do it by hand seeing as the sample size wasn’t massive. And here’s the result (click through for a massive version if you really feel like breaking your browser and my Amazon S3 account):

For reference, the blue dots map number of undergraduates against location. Both maps should be scaled sort of properly (there’s the same amount of red as there is blue, if my Maths hasn’t failed me). It was interesting to see how the many more results came from the universities in the middle the country when compared to their size.

And as though that wasn’t enough, I went and made you a Wordle of what subjects people are studying:

Oh, and I don’t claim that any of this is 100% certified guaranteed scientifically accurate™. It was just a fun little project for the day. My messy data’s available as a .csv should you wish to inspect it.

I’m really into my Google Maps at the moment. With the amount I’m using it, it’s easily my favourite Google service, except maybe Gmail. Or Reader. Or Analytics. Screw it, they’re all brilliant.

The latest creation comes from a service called map a list, which Lifehacker played with a month ago. I couldn’t think of a decent use for it myself, but someone pointed out that it would be fantastic for mapping customers who have signed up their details with a company. A massive advantage is that a business owner can immediately see whether handing out leaflets or flyers has had the intended effect. It works really nicely: link it to your Google account, select a spreadsheet to pull data from, link columns in the spreadsheet to address fields and… boom!

Here’s the service containing a bit of post code data (and with hindsight, I could have used it for my earlier post on mapping friends). Love it.

I’m not doing much to counter the theory that there is too much free time in the world. Spent half an hour this evening going through my address book to create a Google Map of people I know, so without saying any more:

To be honest I am a little disappointed in how concentrated the pointers are around the UK. To clarify this map, it’s populated by people who I know well enough to know where their permanent address is. Not that I’m inviting myself to stay or anything…

How data changes over time is starting to really interest me – things like, for example, how listening habits can be graphed year by year to see changes, or the fantastic TweetStats, which gives a whole bunch of numbers and pretty bar charts. I would be very interested in recreating this map in four years time, or maybe even ten years time, and seeing what has changed.

Hope I haven’t forgotten anyone this time round.