I posted recently about the NICAR journalism conference, held this year in Chicago — and it turns out news nerds like to tweet.
To keep track of all the conference chatter, I dumped each mention of the #NICAR18 hashtag using Python, eventually collecting some 4,100 tweets.
Next, I created a histogram with average #nicar18 tweet counts by hour for the three full days: Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It shows when people sent the most tweets — and that they apparently took more breaks during lunch and just before the first afternoon sessions began.
This tweet volume, which only captures people tweeting with the hashtag, was posted by attendees from across the globe. This year's conference, as I mentioned in the previous post, had record-breaking attendance: more than 1,200.
These types of maps are imperfect, of course, especially on mobile. For one, it's tough to decipher attendance from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.
See you next year, NICARians!
Visualizing World Alcohol Consumption: What Beverages Do Countries Prefer?
I posted recently about how countries consume different amounts of alcohol — and how some have wider gender gaps when it comes to booze.
The previous posts relied on two data sets from the World Health Organization, which calculates consumption (in liters and grams) based on surveys and actual import, exports and sales data. The organization, a reader noted recently, also breaks down the consumption totals proportionally by beverage.
This chart shows each country and its relative tastes for beer, wine, spirits and "other," which, in South Korea at least, is mostly soju, a fermented rice beverage that's not easily categorized.