S2E5: Crosswords

This is a bonus(!), crossover(!) episode, produced by Miriam Quick and Duncan Geere's wonderful Loud Numbers podcast, which turns data into sound. Remember the Canadian wildfire data featured a couple of episodes ago? Duncan and Miriam have woven it into a sonic tapestry, threaded with descriptions of the 2023 fire season by Fern Yip, who spent much of it fighting to save her home and school from burning. You can also listen to the episode in Loud Numbers' own podcast feed, and read Miriam and Duncan's show notes for more details. Data Is Plural theme music by Nikhil Sonnad.

This episode’s guests are George Ho and Saul Pwanson, whose crossword datasets were featured in the Data Is Plural newsletter in 2021 and 2016, respectively. Saul and George explain the difference between American-style and cryptic crosswords, how they collected their datasets, and what they learned along the way.Relevant and mentioned links:Saul’s xd archive, grid comparison, and .xd file formatFiveThirtyEight’s coverage of the plagiarism scandal Saul’s analysis unearthed and Saul’s csv,conf talk, “How a File Format Led to a Crossword Scandal”George’s dataset of cryptic crossword cluesGeorge’s datasheet for the datasetTimnit Gebru et al.’s “Datasheets for Datasets”XWord Info, from which Saul gathered New York Times crossword dataDavid Steinberg’s Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project, with “litzing” contributions from Barry Haldiman and othersTheme music by Nikhil Sonnad.

This episode’s guest is Bruce Macnab, head of Canada's Wildland Fire Information System, featured in the June 14, 2023 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. Bruce describes how his team gathers that information, the obstacles they face, how they deal with uncertainty and varying source quality, and how their approach has changed in the decade since the project launched.Relevant and mentioned links:Canadian Wildland Fire Information SystemThe agency’s datamartFire hotspot mapsFire weather mapsFire Weather Index SystemHistorical data from the Canadian National Fire DatabaseWildFireSat: Enhancing Canada's ability to manage wildfiresTheme music by Nikhil Sonnad.

This episode’s guest is Julia Black, coordinator of the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, featured in the January 15, 2020 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. The project “records incidents in which migrants, including refugees and asylum-seekers, have died at state borders or in the process of migrating to an international destination.” Julia describes how her team gathers that information, the obstacles they face, how they deal with uncertainty and varying source quality, and how their approach has changed in the decade since the project launched.Relevant and mentioned links:Missing Migrants ProjectThe teamMMP’s data landing pageMMP’s data downloadsMMP’s methodologyMMP’s other publicationsStories of families of missing migrantsThe 2013 Lampedusa shipwrecksThe Human Rights Watch report mentioned, on violence against Ethiopian migrants at the Yemen-Saudi borderTheme music by Nikhil Sonnad.

This episode’s guest is Illenin Kondo, one of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis economists behind the Income Distributions and Dynamics in America (IDDA) dataset and resource, featured in the October 11, 2023 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. (IDDA is a collaboration between the Census Bureau and the Minneapolis Fed.) Illenin explains how the researchers distilled two decades of confidential Census and IRS records into public statistics, what they mean by “income dynamics,” what makes the dataset special, and what they’ve learned from it so far.Relevant and mentioned links:The project's landing pageThe project’s downloadable dataThe project’s data visualization toolAn introduction to the statisticsArticles with findings from the team’s research:“The prosperity of high-earning foreign-born workers”“The geographic divide in Native incomes and earnings”“Inclusive recessions, inclusive recoveries?”Federal Statistical Research Data Centers Theme music by Nikhil Sonnad.

This episode’s guests are Jan Diehm and Amber Thomas, whose investigation into the sizes of jeans pockets was featured in the August 22, 2018 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. Amber and Jan explain how they collected the data, how much smaller they found women’s jean pockets were than men’s, and what else they learned along the way.Relevant and mentioned links:Jan and Amber’s pockets-investigation at The PuddingData on all the measurements they tookTheir data collection sheetTheme music by Nikhil Sonnad.

This episode’s guest is Andy Wolf, former president of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, an international organization that, among other things, coordinates the giant pumpkin contests featured in the Oct. 26, 2022 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. Andy explains what it takes to grow giant pumpkins, how they’re measured, how the community has evolved over the past century, and the pieces of data he tracks to keep his gourds growing strong.Relevant and mentioned links:Weigh-off results from BigPumpkins.comGreat Pumpkin CommonwealthAndy’s website, where you can buy his giant pumpkins Andy’s “Pumpkins 101” presentation“Little Valley man’s giant pumpkin is North American Champion,” an article about Andy’s top pumpkin in 2021 The family tree for Andy’s latest giant pumpkinA history of giant pumpkin growing, from the Southern New England Giant Pumpkin GrowersTheme music by Nikhil Sonnad.

This episode’s guest is Mattie Burkert, whose London Stage Database was featured in the Aug. 14, 2019 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. Mattie sets the scene for 17th- and 18th-century theater performances, describes those performances’ eventful journey into bits and bytes, how the digital records were almost lost to history, and how she and collaborators recovered them.Relevant and mentioned links:The London Stage Database“Recovering the London Stage Information Bank: Lessons from an Early Humanities Computing Project,” in which Mattie describes the data’s history in more detail“From Manual to Digital: Women's Hands and the Work of Eighteenth-Century Studies,” Mattie’s article about the outsourcing of the Information Bank’s digital transcription effortThe London Stage Information Bank’s data and other files, as uploaded by Mattie and Brianna Marshall, including scanned images of the code (as found in Will Daland’s attic)Scans of “The London Stage, 1660-1800” reference books hosted by Hathi TrustScan of “Index to the The London Stage, 1660-1800”, also hosted by Hathi TrustThe 1971 article in “Computers and the Humanities” about the London Stage Information BankLawrence University’s Institute for Paper Chemistry, home to the mainframe used by London Stage Information BankData visualizations using the London Stage Database, in response to Nightingale x Data Is Plural data data visualization challengeMattie sends a special thanks to the University of Oregon’s Cameron Seright, who fixed some late-breaking website bugs just in time for this podcast release.Theme music by Nikhil Sonnad.

This episode’s guest is Pablo Medrano-Vizcaíno, whose dataset of roadkill in the Ecuadorian Andes was featured in the July 7, 2021 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. Pablo describes why he studies roadkill, how he collected the data, the challenges of identifying species from their remains, and the future of road ecology research.Relevant and mentioned links:“Geography of roadkills within the Tropical Andes Biodiversity Hotspot: Poorly known vertebrates are part of the toll,” Pablo’s 2021 paper with Santiago Espinosa, and its accompanying dataset.“Roadkill patterns in Latin American birds and mammals,” a 2022 paper by Pablo and co-authors examining data from 85 roadkill surveys.Red Ecuatoriana para el Monitoreo de Fauna Atropellada, Pablo’s citizen science project project, collecting roadkill data in Ecuador.Uku Pacha Ground Snake (Atractus Ukupacha) and Klebba's Snail-Eater (Dipsas klebbai), two previously-undescribed snake species found in Pablo and Santiago’s research.“Roadkill provide a novel way to sample an area’s animals,” an article in the Economist (behind paywall) discussing Pablo and Santiago’s work.Theme music by Nikhil Sonnad.

This episode’s guest is Irena Hwang, whose analysis of salmonella genetic data was featured in the Nov. 17, 2021 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. Irena explains how she used the data to inform ProPublica’s investigation into a major salmonella outbreak, how the gene sequences are collected, how to access them, how to make sense of them, and what she learned along the way.Relevant and mentioned links:NCBI’s Pathogen Detection databaseProPublica’s investigationIrena’s behind-the-scenes explanatory articleA tool developed by ProPublica to help you when shopping for poultryWikipedia’s entry on next-generation DNA sequencing, also known as “massive parallel sequencing”A definition of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), from the National Library of MedicineTheme music by Nikhil Sonnad.