How the New York Times uses R for Data Visualization

The New York Times introduced R to the world with a feature article in 2009, and has been using R for many years to support its pioneering presentation data analysis and visualization, under the direction of graphics editor Amanda Cox.

The New York Times introduced R to the world with a feature article in 2009, and has been using R for many years to support its pioneering presentation data analysis and visualization, under the direction of graphics editor Amanda Cox.

Last week, the New York R User Group‘s featured speaker was Amanda Cox, where she presented

… how R is used in the news cycle at the The New York Times to crunch data and prepare graphics before they go to print or online. She will also discuss some of the problems facing the New York Times ongoing basis, including how to represent uncertainty in an accessible way, and how to move beyond “Here is some data:” toward something closer to inference.”

Video from Amanda’s talk on R at the New York Times is now available, which you can see at Drew Conway’s blog — it’s great to hear how R is put to practical use to such great ends.

By the way, if you haven’t seen it yet, the Times has a incredible (in the literal sense) and sobering visualization of before-and-after effects of the Japan tsunami disaster.

Zero Intelligence Agents: Amanda Cox on How The New York Times Graphics Department Uses R