Festival of the Spoken Nerd: I Chart the Library

thank you so much for joining us tonight we are absolutely delighted to be here in the British Library can you give them a cheer for letting us do a show so to your extreme left as you can see she's in the set of people who are the geeks songstress she also has a physics degree put your hands together for Helen re and in the center of our group here's our experiment guru he's the one who loves to push that envelope it is mr. Steve Holt and finally it's our stand up mathematician and Australian Matt Berger these are edits that are happening on Wikipedia so greens are circles of deletes white circles are edits the larger the circle the greater the Edit and as new people join Wikipedia you see a blue bar across the top and they've used strings and bells depending on which type of thing it is so you can actually hear what's happening that's Wikipedia being edited it's not fantastic Venn diagrams of what people are familiar with sometimes people think Oyler diagrams are Venn diagrams so I'm going to show you the difference I'm going to use a group of three things I'm going to use people who are in festival of the spoken nerd that's us three things so people who are Australians yeah and things that have an effect named after them now when you draw a Venn diagram every single area has to be considered every single possible combination of things has to be considered so things that have an effect named after them that aren't in spoken nerds or Australian obviously the links effect the butterfly effect things are that things that are Australian that have an effect that's Doppler the Doppler effect he's actually Austrian but I couldn't find the Australians I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure there are sir I know I saw there as though I wasn't do you want to see a seven-way multiple nerdgasm on the way there it is yeah I love you guys we've seen some phenomenal bits of data visualization I mean data that has changed the course of history and I'm going to show you this this was recently declared to be the worst bit of data visualization ever the guardian crowned this the absolute worst it's in the guide of how to contact a start-up to get a job this is the section on how to choose a start-up and this is the infographic that was distributed if you're wondering what the chickens represent nobody knows this is from a government presentation I came across that hey well I just there's their software designed to making charts this complicated easy for you what was that that's reasonable you've seen what I wonder if right they've taken into account the literally just that I thought I thought well I can check right if I come out of this if I copy that diagram and put it into Photoshop right I could then go in I could select right I could use this as a reference point because for a billion I can get the number of pixels for that right and I could calculate the actual number of pixels that make up this particular and then I suddenly realized what I was doing with my life but it is a common problem you do get this is up the front cover of magazine from the US there is no rhyme or reason behind the various so this is quite a famous one that was picked up a couple years ago no rhyme and reason between these and also what point are they trying to get across right so none those don't match either of the two optional maybe there's a third one we're unaware of right so these are called bubble plots I am personally offended by bubble plots but it gets worse so here we go this was a infographic about ways to promote your local business on a website there are the classic errors like who needs a scale just and just the word percentage just hanging out no actual percentage is involved we need a math C word to put on the app better label your axes but doesn't matter what we're going up on the left is the notes the frequency from low to high so that's low notes all the way up to the highest notes that you can hear and then along the horizontal axis is time yeah and the different colors are they're just a code for the intensity of the sound at any one point and red is more intense than blue so the most intensive the loudest the most intense is red and the least intense is kind of that dark blue all right okay so it's 11 so if I play it you've listened to the sound while watching the screen I think you'll be able to match the two together so that is a wolf whistling bird you've actually got a microphone we I can actually have a go at this and this is what we're doing in the breakout room in the interval we'll do it in ten minute chunks so we'll do three 10 minute chunks during the break of rooms you can actually come and have a go at this yourself but because I'm on stage I get the first go um okay then I've got a suggestion of what you'd like me to try and reproduce hello hello festival of the spoken nerds or as mass is it feasible of the study needs that's Australian all colors to it I think your aura is very green Matt I don't like yo Darth Vader sort of I am your father Mikey do some white noise like a Shh so noise hopefully as geeky people you might know who Alan Turing is don't need to go there okay good and so his centenary and then Jonathan Swinton who's sitting right at the back had this fantastic idea why don't we in the year of his Santino his birth replicate an experiment little known to the public that Alan Turing was investigating which was number pattern's in some flowers so we in 2012 got the public to grow sunflowers and look at the spirals that you see inside sunflowers amazing what they sent me the pictures they sent you the numbers what happened they say so they did oh okay what was really lovely what did you add these lines no they sent you these pieces corinthis what what was really lovely is that there when you involve the public in doing science wonderful other things happen that we wouldn't do a scientist so I thought I would share a few of those things so this is Isabel 10 years old she showed us how she was counting spirals in her sunflowers so to finish this half before we head out into the breakout rooms where there are I think one one two three four different rooms for you to actually get your hands on all these bits of science and exhibitions Bonnie it's all wedding anniversary next week my gift for you is carefully chosen it's perfect with a couple who have everything I'm getting us both cryogenically frozen beer prevents you from getting cholera did you what did you do in the integral are all of you gonna go and see the British Library beautiful science exhibition definitely I'll work here we're allowed back what's the thing you care about more than Venn diagrams how many Twitter followers I have okay it's the only thing you care about more than that Steve I care about having more Twitter followers than those guys well let's have a look yes Emily so this is Callum and Steve's Twitter follower account oh yeah but you've done a smaller circle there but that's disingenuous isn't it that is so close together I've got a smaller circle by area oh it is bargain but me and had enough to get me me and Hannah doing better than Matt Julie oh okay to me afterwards right we all noticed at the bottom they all everyone converges right so when people's hands are down we're all together all right and so if you find someone a different height if you've got a high five you'd be horribly mismatched but low fiving your bang on and so the conclusion is maybe we've evolved to hold hands that ladies and gentlemen is your data thank you very much I think the audience will happily agree with me that an OHA equals Oh M all right so this is why we're not bothering to do a PowerPoint slides right because if you go oh hang on it's frozen no it hasn't why do that what are you doing Steve what you doing oh sorry I was feeling left out Wow so you've brought notepad to the party hey upgrade Hey live-action maths is hard to be for it's one from the ridiculous humor will go up too kind of mathematical stuff tourists even wave my head brilliant we could

Channel: The British Library

Views: 80,472

Rating: 4.8722739 out of 5

Keywords: British Library, beautiful science, events, Matt Parker, Helen Arney, Steve Mould, science, data visualisation, Erinma Ochu, Jonanthan Swinton, geeks, experiments, exhibition

Id: Ah1sgsCHl3g

Length: 10min 47sec (647 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 22 2014