Boston Bruins $156K bar bill data visualization

The Stanley Cup was up on the Martha's Vineyard over the weekend. There was much drinking and celebration to mark its arrival on the small summer party island in Mass., but all that partying palled in comparison to what the Bruins team itself did to a bar at Foxwoods after their victory parade. They ran up a $156K bar bill which included a $100K bottle of champagne! Now that is one high brow drunk feast.

There has been much talk about this crazy bill. Some have even denied that it was really that much. However, there is a picture of the actual bill online. So I think that can put the doubters to rest. Now to get your head around what goes into a $156K bar bill there is nothing better than a visualization. Sixteenwins.com  did just that, and it is a great look at what goes into such a massive bill.



The awesomeness that is the Stanley Cup Champion Bruins bar tab.

I believe this even dwarfs the booze consumed at R/Finance 2011 or the Second Continental Convention. Party on Boston! Sober up Bruins!

Crime Data Visualizations

Two years ago I was at a party with some friends of mine. Most of the people at the party worked for the FBI. As I am wondering around I strike up a conversation with a couple who both work for the Agency. The guys is an agent, but the girl is an epidemiologist. What? I did not know epidemiologist work for the FBI. Turns out she worked for the CDC before being recruited by the FBI to apply epidemiological methods to crime. Basically looking at crime hotspots and the spread of crime. She was using mostly SPSS at the time, but had also played with some models in R.

In the last few months I have seen a number of different sources play with crime data in visualizations.

At the most basic the state of Connecticut does a nice maps of the locations of sex offenders. It is basic with drop pins for each persons location, but it is a good interactive platform. I would include an image, but it has a disclaimer first so I will provide a link here. Trulia recently did an interactive heat map of crime map. This is a great simple visualization that allows you to drill down to street level from a high level of a USA map. It is still in beta and only covers a few major cities right now. The New York Times also did a cool scatter plot overlayed on a map of the city of murders.

Drew Conway just great time series heat map of a year of Chicago crime that is fun to watch. Drew also did a predictive murder map of Philadelphia. This takes me back to the epidemiologist at the FBI. I wonder to what level of detail can we predict crime. Could it be to the level that we could prevent some crimes by altering police patrols and enforcement or would those shifts simply shift the areas where crime is committed?