3 ms·

Even for non-academic reporting: imagine if instead of 'dead' news articles or some tax reforms, or climate change, or whatever, you had an interactive model yo

Even for non-academic reporting: imagine if instead of 'dead' news articles or some tax reforms, or climate change, or whatever, you had an interactive model you could play with (and for example, plug in your own numbers if you disagree with some of the inputs).

tasogare 6y ago
Good news: the software you describe exists since 1985.
- mlyle 6y ago
  I think now we have a lot of things like this-- we have Jupyter, Matlab, etc, to create engineer-centric general purpose interactive documents. We have labor-heavy ways to make end-user focused ones in the browser. We have spreadsheets. But-- wouldn't it be cool if there was a way ordinary people could create interactive content to interact with data in a rich, intuitive way?
  - localhost 6y ago
    Why can’t ordinary people use Jupyter? Or put another way, what’s missing from Jupyter that would get ordinary people to use it?
    - BlueTemplar 6y ago
      How can I send a Jupyter page as a standalone, offline document ?
    - indigochill 6y ago
      My feelings about this aspect of Jupyter are two-fold: 1. On the creation side, it requires someone be comfortable with Python (or other Jupyter language) to some degree. Right now, programming is still considered a career skill rather than something "ordinary people" should be expected to know. Perhaps layering a graphical programming interface on top of this, which UE4 seems to have had some success with with their Blueprint system, would get "ordinary people" over the mental hurdle of being intimidated by code-as-text. Just look at the mental gymnastics people will engage with in Excel while thinking it's not programming. I see this as more of a social problem than a technical one, at any rate. 2. Once you build an interactive Jupyter document (especially if you use interactive widgets), it's not necessarily that easy to share in its original state without requiring the reader also have a Jupyter environment set up or access a server running Jupyter. I would like to be able to share the document in a way that can be accessed offline by someone without them needing to set up the whole environment. Maybe an "Adobe Reader"-like application for Jupyter notebooks that "ordinary people" can just install with a click?
      - mlyle 6y ago
        re #1: I think it's a technical problem too. I'm technically competent and enjoy programming, but I'd still like it if sometimes I could ask questions and get answers with less or no code. BI platforms are a pain in the ass for many reasons, but they often make it very easy to ask simple questions and organize the data in simple ways. A document that could do similar things without all the scaffolding would be cool. #2-- Or just use the browser. It's capable enough, even if large datasets are somewhat problematic. The hard thing is the UI and identifying what the correct subset of functionality to surface is.
    - cxr 6y ago
      > Why can’t ordinary people use Jupyter? Because it's not installed, and they don't want to and shouldn't have to learn something new when there's something not new already at hand which suffices. If you ever find yourself saying something like, "people can just do X" and wondering why they don't, turn it around and ask yourself, "why can't I just do Y?" In this case, that would be, "Why can't I just make my notebooks work in the viewers that everyone already has agreed upon using (i.e. the WHATWG/W3C hypertext system, i.e. the web browser) instead of asking them to futz around with installing and learning Jupyter?". When you start making excuses for why not, it's the moment you should be able understand another person's reasons for why not Jupyter.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Matlab doesn't even have proper text (Unicode) support… (And Octave even less so.)
- keyle 6y ago
  Ok I'll byte (pun intended), of which software are you referring to here?
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    Sounds like a spreadsheet.
smt88 6y ago
Tons of articles in NYT, WaPo, FiveThirtyEight, and ProPublica have these. ProPublica also open-sources all their data and code on GitHub.
pony_sheared 6y ago
Sorry to horrify anyone but we actually do this at work (mechanical engineering company) - JavaScript calculated component dimensions as form fields based on user input (e.g. pressure or load rating) overlaid on technical drawings. Reason it's done in pdf is a lot of our technical is spat out in PDF format (generated from CAD - SolidWorks). There are other options like Traceparts or setting up a variable input SolidWorks model to generate loads of static outputs, if you have the time and money.

tasogare 6y ago

Good news: the software you describe exists since 1985.

mlyle 6y ago
I think now we have a lot of things like this-- we have Jupyter, Matlab, etc, to create engineer-centric general purpose interactive documents. We have labor-heavy ways to make end-user focused ones in the browser. We have spreadsheets. But-- wouldn't it be cool if there was a way ordinary people could create interactive content to interact with data in a rich, intuitive way?
- localhost 6y ago
  Why can’t ordinary people use Jupyter? Or put another way, what’s missing from Jupyter that would get ordinary people to use it?
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    How can I send a Jupyter page as a standalone, offline document ?
  - indigochill 6y ago
    My feelings about this aspect of Jupyter are two-fold: 1. On the creation side, it requires someone be comfortable with Python (or other Jupyter language) to some degree. Right now, programming is still considered a career skill rather than something "ordinary people" should be expected to know. Perhaps layering a graphical programming interface on top of this, which UE4 seems to have had some success with with their Blueprint system, would get "ordinary people" over the mental hurdle of being intimidated by code-as-text. Just look at the mental gymnastics people will engage with in Excel while thinking it's not programming. I see this as more of a social problem than a technical one, at any rate. 2. Once you build an interactive Jupyter document (especially if you use interactive widgets), it's not necessarily that easy to share in its original state without requiring the reader also have a Jupyter environment set up or access a server running Jupyter. I would like to be able to share the document in a way that can be accessed offline by someone without them needing to set up the whole environment. Maybe an "Adobe Reader"-like application for Jupyter notebooks that "ordinary people" can just install with a click?
    - mlyle 6y ago
      re #1: I think it's a technical problem too. I'm technically competent and enjoy programming, but I'd still like it if sometimes I could ask questions and get answers with less or no code. BI platforms are a pain in the ass for many reasons, but they often make it very easy to ask simple questions and organize the data in simple ways. A document that could do similar things without all the scaffolding would be cool. #2-- Or just use the browser. It's capable enough, even if large datasets are somewhat problematic. The hard thing is the UI and identifying what the correct subset of functionality to surface is.
  - cxr 6y ago
    > Why can’t ordinary people use Jupyter? Because it's not installed, and they don't want to and shouldn't have to learn something new when there's something not new already at hand which suffices. If you ever find yourself saying something like, "people can just do X" and wondering why they don't, turn it around and ask yourself, "why can't I just do Y?" In this case, that would be, "Why can't I just make my notebooks work in the viewers that everyone already has agreed upon using (i.e. the WHATWG/W3C hypertext system, i.e. the web browser) instead of asking them to futz around with installing and learning Jupyter?". When you start making excuses for why not, it's the moment you should be able understand another person's reasons for why not Jupyter.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Matlab doesn't even have proper text (Unicode) support… (And Octave even less so.)
keyle 6y ago
Ok I'll byte (pun intended), of which software are you referring to here?
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Sounds like a spreadsheet.

smt88 6y ago

Tons of articles in NYT, WaPo, FiveThirtyEight, and ProPublica have these. ProPublica also open-sources all their data and code on GitHub.

pony_sheared 6y ago

Sorry to horrify anyone but we actually do this at work (mechanical engineering company) - JavaScript calculated component dimensions as form fields based on user input (e.g. pressure or load rating) overlaid on technical drawings. Reason it's done in pdf is a lot of our technical is spat out in PDF format (generated from CAD - SolidWorks). There are other options like Traceparts or setting up a variable input SolidWorks model to generate loads of static outputs, if you have the time and money.