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#453: quantum of sollazzo – 18 January 2020
The data newsletter by @puntofisso.
Hello, regular readers and welcome new ones :) This is Quantum of Sollazzo, the newsletter about all things data. I am Giuseppe Sollazzo, or @puntofisso. I’ve been sending this newsletter since 2012 to be a summary of all the articles with or about data that captured my attention over the previous week. The newsletter is and will always (well, for as long as I can keep going!) be free, but you’re welcome to become a friend via the links below.
I’ve recently published a Medium blog post on the topic “Confessions of a data scientist”. This is the write-up of a panel at the Royal Statistical Society, where I and a few other public and private sector data leaders were asked to adjudicate a number of anonymous confessions of data science sins, coming from RSS practitioners. It was pretty fun.
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Every week I include a six-question interview with an inspiring data person. This week, I speak with Maurizio Napolitano of Bruno Kessler Foundation. I’ve often mentioned his work in maps and advocating for open data, and his interview was pretty fun.
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‘till next week,
Giuseppe @puntofisso
Six questions to...
Maurizio Napolitano
Maurizio is Head of the Digital Commons Lab unit at FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kessler – Bruno Kessler Foundation) in Trento, Italy.
My working days are similar to those of a pinball ball bouncing between meetings where we talk about data (on staff descriptions, on skills acquired by students, on mobility), where I have to turn these meetings into documents, where I have to organise lesson for my teaching activities, and - the most important moment. relaxing - when I can process data. Creating maps and processing data is a moment of fun for me. (I also have another activity: volleyball coaching ... but this is another story).
Tell me about a data project that you're proud of...
These moments of relaxation then lead me to share the results that then have their own small media effect such as the stress map for those who ride a bicycle on Italian roads, or that of the width of the sidewalks or the distances 30km traveled from the borders of the municipalities of the province where I live, the maps that allow you to see the evolution of my city over time and more.
An activity that is taking my time at the moment, but which at the same time loads me, is organizing the lessons of the geospatial analysis course for data science students at the University of Trento.
The course is here https://napo.github.io/geospatial_course_unitn/
It is a very "hands-on" course: I explain geospatial concepts, and immediately show in practice how they are applied using python notebooks. The lessons are every Friday, and ,at the end of each lesson I propose an exercise where, on the next lesson I present my solutions and I add new concepts.
It amuses me .. even if it takes away a lot of energy.
...and a data project that someone else did and you're jealous of.
An activity that is taking my time at the moment, but which at the same time loads me, is organizing the lessons of the geospatial analysis course for data science students at the University of Trento.
The course is here https://napo.github.io/geospatial_course_unitn/
It is a very "hands-on" course: I explain geospatial concepts, and immediately show in practice how they are applied using python notebooks. The lessons are every Friday, and ,at the end of each lesson I propose an exercise where, on the next lesson I present my solutions and I add new concepts.
It amuses me .. even if it takes away a lot of energy.
I admit that many of the projects I have built and mentioned above are inspired by the work of others.
I often observe, fall in love with the project, and reinterpret it using data closer to me and sometimes reinvent something new.
I observe with pleasure everything that passes around the OpenStreetMap world and I am fascinated by the projects of Stamen, Mapbox, Development Seed, GIScience Research Group of the University of Heidelberg ... spaces that I am passionate about and with which I would very much like to find a way to collaborate ...
Then there are the friends, those you collaborate with, whom you look at with admiration, the passion with which you compare yourself and with whom you collaborate occasionally.
Among these I mention the work of Sheldon Studio by Matteo Moretti and the Quantum of Sollazzo newsletter :)
If I say "dataset", you think of...
I often observe, fall in love with the project, and reinterpret it using data closer to me and sometimes reinvent something new.
I observe with pleasure everything that passes around the OpenStreetMap world and I am fascinated by the projects of Stamen, Mapbox, Development Seed, GIScience Research Group of the University of Heidelberg ... spaces that I am passionate about and with which I would very much like to find a way to collaborate ...
Then there are the friends, those you collaborate with, whom you look at with admiration, the passion with which you compare yourself and with whom you collaborate occasionally.
Among these I mention the work of Sheldon Studio by Matteo Moretti and the Quantum of Sollazzo newsletter :)
If you say "dataset", I start with three questions:
Give someone new to data a tip or lesson you wish you'd learned earlier.
- what does it contain?
- with what license is it distributed?
- can I start playing it?
The most fascinating part of the data is its representation, but to get there you must first learn how to collect it, clean it, sort it, integrate it ... all boring things ...
The advice therefore is to start from the most fascinating part: to understand how to represent them and then go deeper and deeper into the question.
By doing the path in reverse (= from representation to collection) you will only increase your motivation more and more and go very very far.
Data is or data are...
The advice therefore is to start from the most fascinating part: to understand how to represent them and then go deeper and deeper into the question.
By doing the path in reverse (= from representation to collection) you will only increase your motivation more and more and go very very far.
I don't know English well but I have been told that "data" is the plural of "datum" (Latin word). When I write in English I use "data is ...", when I speak instead I bounce between a "data is ..." to "data are ...". This is because in Italian we say "dati" which is the plural of "dato".
In conclusion: I make a big mess ... but ... I have a lot of good friends ready to help me. But I am sure of one thing: in Italian I always try to use the word "dati" otherwise someone might think that I am talking about calendars (in italian "data" means "date").
In conclusion: I make a big mess ... but ... I have a lot of good friends ready to help me. But I am sure of one thing: in Italian I always try to use the word "dati" otherwise someone might think that I am talking about calendars (in italian "data" means "date").
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