The data say planting trees has a measurable impact on a city, in human health and economic benefit. We want to tell this story because planting trees relies on people going outside and volunteering, and the first step to increasing public participation is education. I pulled most of my data from NYC’s MillionTreesNYC initiative, using the 1995 and 2015 tree datasets. I compared the population of trees, dividing the data by which streets the trees were located on. I chose streets in particular because they would be immediately recognizable to locals, and also because of the pervasiveness that New York’s geography has in popular culture. Originally, I had hoped to create more intricate graphs, detailing the exact tree makeups of each street. Unfortunately, the datasets were very different in terms of structure—CSV keys were different, data formats were different—and ultimately I was only able to compare raw numbers of trees.
For this assignment, I wanted to focus on putting together a flyer of sorts for the public. My goal was to quickly educate a reader about the MillionTreesNYC initiative, informing them of the success of the effort and telling them of the benefits. I wanted to help them feel a personal connection, so I included the facts and figures I thought were most compelling. Finally, I included a call to action at the bottom. The entire goal of the story was to get the reader to step up and take action, so I included a link to the MillionTrees webpage where they could find different ways to help.
Since I don’t know anything about graphic design, I would want to work with a graphic designer who could make my argument even more compelling. Right now, I feel that the graphic has too much whitespace, and by improving the graphic design, I could make my story even more compelling.
Author: zhuw
Willie Zhu Data Log
iPhone
My iPhone is constantly on, and it’s probably both a) the device I use the most, and b) the device I have on my person the most. It tracks:
- My sleep—when I sleep (based on when I stop using it)
- Location—even though I’ve turned as many permissions off as I can, it’s still tracking my location. Good when I need Find My iPhone, but otherwise…
- My contacts—who I call/text/message, and when
- App usage—it knows all the time I’ve wasted on Reddit
- Cell network—every cell tower I connect to
- Apps—the apps I use definitely track my actions. My most used: Inbox, Spotify, Reddit, Messenger
- Wifi—my phone is a walking data beacon that spews probe requests, uniquely identifying myself to anyone willing to listen
Computers
My Macbook, Windows desktop, Athena workstations, and so on
- Operating systems—Windows 10 collects all kinds of data without my permission, and macOS probably does too
- Intel ME—pretty much all of my computers have Intel processors
- SSH logs—connecting to remote computers leaves logs behind
- Athena—MIT probably tracks just about everything I do on Athena
General
- Browsing history—this goes without saying. I’m pretty unique, according to https://panopticlick.eff.org/
- Security cameras—MIT has cameras everywhere
- Card taps—Similarly, there’s all kinds of places I need to tap to get in. It goes without saying that MIT records all of them
- Purchase history—every time I buy something with a credit card or TechCash
Income Inequality Data Visualization
Source: https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM
I (re)watched this video on income inequality recently, and found it to be both compelling and informative. Its narrative is clear: that income inequality is an issue is common knowledge, but the magnitude of income inequality is far greater than the public believes.
The video displays three charts: one demonstrating what people want the income distribution in the US to be, one showing what people actually think it is, and one of what it actually is. Personally, I was taken aback at the true magnitude of the income gap, and how staggering the difference between the poorest and wealthiest Americans actually was. The video’s strategy of reducing the US population to 100 people made it a lot more relatable—for many, it’s a lot easier to picture a room of 100 people than to talk about generic percentiles.
However, I feel that the video could do more than merely presenting the information in a provocative manner (which it does well, both visually and psychologically). Instead, the video should end with a call to action, perhaps by providing links to organizations dedicated to fighting the income gap. Even though I had just watched the video, I felt no more empowered to actually do something about the problem.