The Data Team @ The Data Lab
Unlocking value from data
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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 no exception. . . .
Posted in: richard cartersnakes_and_ladders
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, it might turn out to be the . . .
Posted in: caterina constantinescu
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, including this one offered by the LAPD. Interestingly, this dataset includes almost 1.6M records of criminal activity occurring in LA since 2010—all of them described according to a . . .
Posted in: caterina constantinescu
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 of Tunnock's Teacakes - so well worth the effort! . . .
Posted in: richard carter
