NHS England

I was commis­sioned (see what I did there?!) to do two infograph­ics for the launch of the ‘new’ NHS, one on NHS Commissioning and one on how the NHS is monitored or safe­guarded. While I’m not sure whether they were used, and regard­less of my polit­ical feel­ings on the matter, under­stand­ing the changes is going to […]

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Event: Datakind London

Over the year I’ve been to three so-called ‘hack days’, one of which me and my team acci­dent­ally won (Hack the Government). The last of which my team just as acci­dent­ally lost didn’t win (Girl Geek Hack Day). The one in between however was the most intriguing, perhaps because it wasn’t a compet­i­tion at all. Held in Whitehall […]

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Tell me the (relative) truth

Ever wondered why in news­pa­per articles about science break­throughs, and partic­u­larly in medical stor­ies, scient­ists seem to be so… well.… cagey about their results? All those ‘may’s and ‘if’s! Can’t they even tell us what’s true and what’s not? We’re used to the idea that most of the time, truth is black and white. But when […]

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Noted: The Science of Our Optimism Bias

Reading over this article The Science of Our Optimism Bias and the Life-Cycle of Happiness from Brain Pickings, I was struck by the often repeated idea that we are ‘hard­wired’ for optim­ism, and that this isn’t neces­sar­ily a bad thing. But as part of my disser­ta­tion I was look­ing at the differ­ent ways research­ers have tried to affect the way […]

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Noted: Beautiful Data Visualizations from the 19th Century

I wanted to make a note of a conver­sa­tion I keep having with people. Enough that I’m temp­ted to record my answer with a dicta­phone and just play it at them when asked. It goes some­thing like this: “This new infograph­ics trend is amaz­ing. Such a great way to present inform­a­tion. They’re so enga­ging and tell great stor­ies.” Me: “Yes, they’re lovely things, […]

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