Tag: Data bias

• UFOs, big cats and Nessie: what explains where people see them?

  

  1,905 UK UFO reports, 1,145 Loch Ness sightings and 44 police forces’ replies about big cats, tested against people, skies, air bases, seasons and the news. The ordinary explanations win.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Britain, Data bias, folklore, Present day, Scotland, Twentieth century, UK

• Where Romans wrote

  

  I mapped 203,466 Latin inscriptions through time. Under the Severans the empire carved 2.2 times as many a year as in AD 250 to 300; ages on tombstones were rounded to fives; and soldiers’ stated homes were a median 674 km from their stones.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  archaeology, Britain, Data bias, Europe, Languages, Military history, Roman, Romans

• Could your town fit in its stadium?

  

  Beaver Stadium could seat its township 9.9 times over and Clones could fit in St Tiernach’s Park 15.4 times. I found every sports ground in the world bigger than its town, and checked each one by hand.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  cities, Data bias, Ireland, Place search, Present day, sport, Towns and cities, Wikidata, World, world maps

• Not where it says on the ticket: the airports and stations far from their namesake

  

  Frankfurt-Hahn is 103 km from Frankfurt and Paris Vatry 136 km from Paris. I measured how far every airport and every UK railway station stands from the place in its name, and checked every long case by hand.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Britain, Data bias, OpenStreetMap, place names, Present day, railways, Transport, UK, Wikidata, World

• Signature species: what makes your county’s wildlife special?

  

  I sorted 60.9 million open wildlife records into 118 vice counties to find the species each one records far more often than the rest of Britain and Northern Ireland.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Britain, Data bias, Ireland, Location quotient, Present day, UK, wildlife