Our Stories

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  Is love dead in pop music? We checked all 5,141 Top 10 hits since 1958.

  November 2024

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  Queues are everywhere we go—discover the hidden mechanics that keep them moving smoothly.

  October 2024

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  We took a look at the data behind the increasingly vibrant (and maybe a little confusing) landscape of NBA jerseys.

  October 2024

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  The United States of Abortion Mazes: a maze for each state where the difficulty is calculated by the state’s abortion policies.

  October 2024

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  Welcome to Crokinole, the greatest game you’ve never heard of.

  October 2024

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  Organize these K-pop groups by generation, and we'll make an article using the results.

  October 2024

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  We looked at a decade of fanfic couples. See who gets shipped and why.

  October 2024

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  See how modern stats are reshaping baseball’s batting lineups.

  September 2024

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  There are 59,507 outdoor basketball courts in the U.S.A. Explore satellite imagery of all of them.

  September 2024

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  We had an AI attempt to make a data-driven story like we do at The Pudding.

  July 2024

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  We examined the social media and medical discourse on infant sleep training.

  July 2024

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  Explore science fiction worlds from the last few decades – and what these fictional settings tell us about ourselves.

  July 2024

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  We analyzed 1,281 court documents of alleged child abuse in New Hampshire youth facilities. Here’s what they show.

  June 2024

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  Explore how your city will feel in the future.

  June 2024

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  Watch hundreds of teenagers grow up into adults – and see how their lives turn out.

  April 2024

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  The results from making a crowd-sourced flipbook animation.

  March 2024

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  We examined what shapes “greatness” in music, according to Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums of all time.

  March 2024

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  We listened to 138 National Anthem performances so you don't have to. Here are the biggest divas.

  February 2024

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  Spotify tracks over 6,000 genres—everything from "rock" to "stomp-and-holler." Here's why that's cool.

  October 2023

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  What does a happily ever after look like? We look at over 1,400 romance covers to find out what visuals are used.

  October 2023

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  Watch 24 hours of an American day, and the invisible crisis hiding in plain sight.

  September 2023

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  A series of experimental clocks that connect data to time.

  August 2023

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  We're tracking how the hottest year on Earth is affecting U.S. heat records.

  August 2023

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  This is how rare it is for a hit song to be credited to an all-women songwriting team.

  July 2023

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  This is not a story. We made a browser extension to visualize how much each person is talking in Google Meet.

  June 2023

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  Introducing CRUTCH, Our New Metric For Asterisking NBA Champions.

  June 2023

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  We break down J Dilla's signature off-beat timefeel.

  June 2023

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  Country music is powered by women like Carrie Underwood and Maren Morris, but even they are barely played back-to-back.

  May 2023

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  Alvin loved his grandmother's fresh kimchi. But as he aged, could he rediscover the defining flavor of his childhood?

  May 2023

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  We unsubscribed from 16 subscription services and documented the ways companies made it challenging.

  May 2023

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  We made a short daily photo location guessing game that is a mashup of GeoGuessr and Wordle.

  April 2023

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  Portland, Maine, or Oregon? We calculated what place someone is most likely referring to, depending on where they are.

  March 2023

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  We used statistics to find out which NBA players have had the greatest unexpected performances.

  February 2023

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  We explored university syllabi to identify the literary canon.

  January 2023

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  Why some mathematicians argue the economy is designed to create a few super rich people – unless we stop it.

  December 2022

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  A journey of emotional awareness, where we uncover the power of naming and visualizing your feelings.

  December 2022

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  How does where you grow up impact your economic opportunity? Our author returns to his roots.

  November 2022

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  Watch women's hoops signature sneakers morph from Swoopes to Stewie.

  October 2022

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  One random person a day gets the chance to play against the internet in a game of words. Can you beat them?

  September 2022

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  Take an audio tour of Mexico City, seen through its street vendors.

  September 2022

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  We watched 100 episodes of The Big Bang Theory to figure out what the government in China censors, and why.

  August 2022

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  Is TikTok helping artists become commercially successful, or does the medium present a new opportunity worth pursuing?

  July 2022

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  Ever wonder what happens when you press play on your favorite song? We look how artists get paid from streaming music.

  June 2022

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  Curious what your teachers never taught you about the Aztec Gods? Here's an illustrated introduction.

  June 2022

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  In a collaboration with Vox, we tracked what happens after TikTok songs go viral.

  June 2022

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  We’re tracking heat records in 400 U.S. cities, and you can look up your city.

  May 2022

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  We found this cool study about age and randomness, but we think it is flawed. Can you help us reproduce it?

  April 2022

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  We looked at more than 200 banknotes to see who’s represented on today’s currencies around the world.

  April 2022

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  Do movies with more coughs win Best Picture? A near flawless expulsion-based model that predicts a win for Dune.

  March 2022

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  How many days since a record temperature high? Check the always-updating scoreboard.

  March 2022

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  What could have been for your favorite NBA team? A data-driven revisionist history of the NBA draft.

  February 2022

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  Want to make your writing more accessible? Algorithms might not be the answer.

  February 2022

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  Analyzing more than 382,000 headlines to see how women are represented (or misrepresented) in the news.

  February 2022

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  We tried to win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest by making AI-generated captions.

  January 2022

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  Learn how to hack your digital DNA to achieve the mid-level corporate career of your dreams.

  January 2022

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  We investigated 200 crackers to learn about food allergies and labelling. Warning: may contain troubling results.

  December 2021

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  We scraped the web to track one of the internet’s oldest images — one that lives on without the subject’s consent.

  October 2021

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  Through data and interviews, learn why the card game Spades is the perfect metaphor for the African-American community.

  August 2021

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  For groups to succeed, sometimes one person will shoulder more than their fair share of the work. Just ask LeBron James.

  August 2021

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  A visual history of Rickrolling — millions of comments, posts, and links — that’s never gonna let you down.

  July 2021

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  A story about hearing yourself in same-gender pop lyrics for the first time and tracking it with data ever since.

  June 2021

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  How many artists overshadow their band after going solo? We crunched the numbers.

  April 2021

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  To help you get out of your geographic music bubble, we found the songs that are most popular far away from you.

  April 2021

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  Science stepped up: on average there were ~11 new coronavirus articles coming out each hour, every hour throughout 2020.

  March 2021

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  Not all nudes are the same. We looked at how names for 6,816 makeup foundations can reveal bias in the beauty industry.

  March 2021

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  This model attempts to predict a wine’s quality. We detect a note of math, with a hint of 0s and 1s.

  March 2021

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  What do you do when your friends are sick of hearing about your breakup? Use a supercomputer to find a happier ending.

  March 2021

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  Our auditory analyst compares 770 artists’ live recordings with their and studio counterparts. Music snobs rejoice!

  February 2021

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  We tracked every time someone says "cool" in community. Cool. Cool. Cool.

  January 2021

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  Clue: We crunched the data on this controversial cookie and condiment crossword clue. Answer: Oreo.

  January 2021

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  How bad is your Spotify or Apple music? Our sophisticated A.I. judges your awful taste.

  December 2020

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  Candles and LEDs don’t pay for themselves. We’ll demonstrate just exactly how much work goes into warding off the dark.

  December 2020

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  These playable mini crosswords let you get a feel for who gets included (and excluded) as clues and answers in puzzles.

  November 2020

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  Crosswords are known for being too old, too white, and too male. We backed that up with data.

  November 2020

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  Need a cute animal fix? Here’s a menagerie of live-streams from your favorite zoos and aquariums all in one place.

  November 2020

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  Philly openly reports about complaints against police officers. But we found that public doesn’t equal transparent.

  October 2020

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  Take the quiz: Can you identify when these photos were taken? It may not be as easy as it sounds.

  October 2020

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  A data comic to help you understand how the dance floor is generationally divided.

  September 2020

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  Using 50 years of data, we explored economic mobility and determined just how rigid the middle class really is.

  August 2020

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  We examined 271 presidential candidate branding designs from 1968–2020. Here’s who goes beyond the red, WHITE, and blue.

  August 2020

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  To help you clear out your inbox, we’ve compiled a data-driven newsletter of popular links in other newsletters.

  July 2020

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  We quizzed people on how well they recognized ’90s songs by their birth year. Britney and Whitney have staying power.

  July 2020

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  What physical traits are most tied to gender in literature? Eye roll: Women are all soft thighs and red lips.

  July 2020

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  Using baby name data, we found the names that could be at risk of becomming future "Karens" in 10, 20, and 30 years.

  June 2020

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  Where do Tripadvisor reviewers go when they’re staying local? Our guide to 74,762 US attractions will tell you.

  May 2020

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  Do you smell what we’re cooking? It’s stories, facts, and pixel art drawings of over 200 masked wrestlers.

  May 2020

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  Take this quiz to see if you’re better than others your age at recognizing songs from history.

  April 2020

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  What happens when you combine music, a monkey, Joe Rogan, and probability? You get this experiment.

  April 2020

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  When it comes to sanitizing lyrics, where does Kidz Bop draw the line? (This was pre-WAP though; now all bets are off.)

  April 2020

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  To learn about the US’ evolving priorities, norms and biases, we collected every question to ever appear on a census.

  March 2020

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  Emojis are nice, but GIFs have range. We looked at how we use these looped clips of celebs to convey feelings.

  March 2020

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  These are the cities where you’ll need your umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh. Seattle may be less rainy than you think.

  February 2020

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  Find your new jam here. We mapped several month of #1 songs in 3,000 places.

  February 2020

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  Do authors write where they know? We calculated the distance between where authors lived and where their books were set.

  February 2020

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  America has often been called a nation of immigrants. We mapped where they settled.

  January 2020

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  Will saying sorry save your reputation? We quantified the lasting impact of a YouTube appology and controversy.

  January 2020

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  Ranking player performance against pay, we found the worst, highest-paid NBA player, ever. Sorry, Melo.

  December 2019

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  From beehives, to afros, to bumpits: we looked at 30,000 yearbook photos to officially crown the "Big Hair Era."

  November 2019

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  Do you "lol?" Or "haha?’ Or "hehe?" We charted the usage, evolution, and perception of digital laughter.

  October 2019

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  When an elected official promises to transform prosecution, do their actions live up to their words? We investigated.

  October 2019

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  Everything’s bigger in Texas, even the number of exported adoptable dogs. Here’s where the dogs in your state are from.

  October 2019

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  We’ve devised pub crawl routes between UK watering holes of the same name. One Red Lion down, 338 to go. Cheers!

  October 2019

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  Is “ass” the most complicated word in English? We tracked down 201 historic usages and compared it to other slang.

  October 2019

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  Headlines say millennials killed napkins, marriage, and Applebees. We say, "you’re welcome." What’s next for this group?

  September 2019

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  Are men singing higher in pop songs today? Biebs, the JoBros, the Weeknd, we’re coming for you... with data.

  August 2019

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  Are book covers starting to look the same? We organized over 5,000 top-seling book covers by visual similarity.

  July 2019

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  Our 2019 hipster summer reading list will introduce you to an artisanal selection of obscure books before they’re cool.

  June 2019

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  Using news coverage, we plotted how one highly unethical study on vaccines has caused outsized, irreparable harm.

  June 2019

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  Sit back and relax as we take you on an updated journey through every Billboard Top 5 hit to find music’s greatest era.

  June 2019

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  We made a map that replaces UK city names with their most Wikipedia’ed resident.

  June 2019

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  We made a map that replaces US city names with their most Wikipedia’ed resident.

  May 2019

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  Billie Jean is not my lover, but it’s one of the names we tracked for this project. Here’s how often names are in songs.

  May 2019

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  Want to access the raw data behind an academic paper? OK. Has it been a few years? Yeah... good luck with that.

  May 2019

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  Since the 1950s, hyphenated last names in pro-sports have been on the rise. The WNBA leads the way, as it so often does.

  May 2019

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  The NBA has a defensive three seconds problem. We tracked how often players are camped in the paint.

  May 2019

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  We looked at 19 years of covers to see if Vogue represents women of all shades. You can guess how this went.

  April 2019

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  Why are European regions shifting their borders? We follow the money.

  April 2019

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  Computers now have four different methods to determine what you’ll type now/next/nexis

  April 2019

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  We looked at every political party platform between 1840 and 2016 to find how often women’s issues appeared in the text.

  March 2019

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  Can you spell the hardest names in the NBA? Or will you miss and spell H-O-R-S-E?

  March 2019

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  How do you measure who’s the biggest pop star? We tackle that question a bunch of different ways.

  March 2019

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  Do high school basketball stars live up to the hype? Here’s how many find success in the NBA.

  March 2019

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  Think Gyllenhaal is a hard name to spell? It gets worse. Here are the many ways to misspell big names in pop culture.

  February 2019

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  School dress codes send the wrong messages about womens’ and girls’ bodies. An analysis of 481 policies shows why.

  February 2019

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  Who’s the most prolific rapper of all time? We try to answer that by measure vocabulary. Happy debating.

  January 2019

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  These are the countries that have most preoccupied Americans since 1900, according to New York Times headlines.

  December 2018

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  We created a brief history of the past 100 years from New York Times headlines. And yes, there are word clouds.

  December 2018

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  This is a story about how to perceive the population size of cities. Hint: perspective helps.

  December 2018

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  Because you just can’t get enough of them, we found every boy band to chart the Hot 100 since 1980.

  November 2018

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  Dear Abby, I’m looking for an analysis of 20,000 advice column letters. Sincerely, Curious. Hi Curious, click this link.

  November 2018

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  Welcome to Titletown! Discover the most successful cities across baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer.

  November 2018

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  We charted new terrain in these 3D maps of human population.

  October 2018

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  From Cardi B to Carson Wentz: we charted the path to fame from Wikipedia pageviews.

  October 2018

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  Watch as the design of the iconic Air Jordan morphs from its the first release in 1985 to the present.

  September 2018

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  Here’s who was the most popular person on Wikipedia ever day in 2018.

  September 2018

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  Who has more emotionally vulnerable lyrics, emo-rap or Dashboard Confessional? We measured each album’s sentiment.

  August 2018

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  Let’s get reel: who’s using film and who’s using digital in the movie industry?

  August 2018

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  We went there. A data investigation into the travesty that is women’s pockets.

  August 2018

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  What Wikipedia pageviews tell us about how famous people are remembered after they die. RIP.

  August 2018

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  The job automation crisis isn’t as simple as turning truck driver’s into developers. We break it down with data.

  August 2018

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  Instead of measuring a city by it’s GDP or population, what if we measure it by its airport traffic?

  July 2018

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  No TMI here, just 20,759 people describing their experiences with contraception... and us charting it.

  July 2018

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  We looked at 1.2 million parliamentary speeches to show how gender representation changes the conversation.

  July 2018

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  We looked at 500,000 congressional speeches to show how gender representation changes the conversation.

  July 2018

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  We mapped how "gayborhoods" are divided by gender. It’s true: men are from Chelsea, women are from Park Slope.

  June 2018

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  Fenty is a champion for makeup inclusivity, but how do other brands compare? We charted their foundation skin tones.

  June 2018

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  The good, the rad, and the gnarly. We took a look at what makes a skate soundtrack.

  June 2018

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  A supercut of the most-viewed NBA plays from 2017–18. Warning: this video contains a high dosage of LeBron footage.

  May 2018

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  Think you’ve heard that before? Turns out, hit songs are becoming less musically diverse.

  May 2018

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  We baked the most average chocolate chip cookie. Recipes written by computers — what could go wrong?

  May 2018

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  Which athletes qualify as one-hit wonders? We charted the greatest single-season anomalies in the last 30 years.

  April 2018

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  Your birthday twin is probably reading this right now. We take on the birthday paradox.

  April 2018

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  In a love letter to NYC and Seattle, we pinpoint the types of businesses that distinguish one neighborhood from another.

  March 2018

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  We watched Ali Wong’s Baby Cobra too many times and charted out how she built the routine around a laughter climax.

  February 2018

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  Here’s an interactive guide that introduces and explores waveforms. Volume most defintiely on.

  February 2018

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  We mapped which countries have laws and guidelines around declaring brain death.

  February 2018

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  What is the taco capital of the US? Where does BBQ reign supreme? These maps have you covered.

  February 2018

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  There are three sides to every cable news story: MSNBC’s, Fox News’, and CNN’s. The contrast in on-screen text is stark.

  January 2018

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  We can all agree that drain hair is gross. But it’s a thin line between love and hate for more than 3,000 other topics.

  December 2017

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  A visual walkthrough of how we see Earth from space through the eyes of satellites. Spoiler alert: it’s still not flat.

  October 2017

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  How would you define an NBA superteam? We couldn’t decide so we built this tool to give you the power.

  October 2017

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  What is black and white and red all over? The racial gap between a newspaper’s staff and the community it covers.

  October 2017

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  In a musial language that’s gone worldwide, we uncover the words that are "most hip-hop"

  September 2017

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  If you exclude Ira Glass’ voice, who gets the most airtime on This American Life: men or women? Stay tuned to hear more.

  September 2017

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  In 2017, we mapped the cities and places with the worst access to abortion based on driving times.

  September 2017

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  Men "gallop" and women "giggle," at least according to the gendered tropes found in 2,000 scripts.

  August 2017

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  We measured the dialogue from every episode of The Office and it sure is a mouthful. (“That’s what she said.")

  August 2017

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  I’m dining solo, I’m dining solo, solo (Jason Derulo voice). We looked at the dining habits and companions of Americans.

  July 2017

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  Female characters are largely absent from superhero comics — but when they are included, how are they depicted?

  July 2017

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  Everytime a job is automated, the Republican Party benefits.

  July 2017

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  What’s best for animals in aquariums? We look to the past & present to gauge the future of captive whales and dolphins.

  July 2017

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  A story about how film plots mirror (or shape) historical events.

  June 2017

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  Has American literature made progress toward gender equality, or is commercial success still linked to an author’s bio?

  June 2017

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  Hurricanes, bankruptcies, and the World Series are all said to spark baby booms.But is there any truth to these tales?

  May 2017

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  In the words of Ms. Spears, "Oops, I did it again." We show how pop lyrics are getting more repetitive.

  May 2017

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  What’s the most timeless NBA play? We turn to YouTube views to determine which have the most replay value.

  May 2017

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  Let’s raise a pint to the microbrew capitals of the U.S. Cheers!

  April 2017

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  Why does the U.S. lead the world in incarceration? We try to answer this question with data.

  March 2017

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  Here’s how Russell Westbrook made NBA history in 2017.

  March 2017

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  In the NBA, is home court advantage down to favorable home court officiating? We break down the stats.

  March 2017

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  Like teams in the Super Bowl, the popularity of Oscar contenders can also be regional. Here are the hotspots from 2017.

  February 2017

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  A lot can happen in the last 2:00 of an NBA game and the refs don’t always get it right. We tracked the calls in 2018.

  February 2017

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  We used Google search data to measure slang, and it has us shook.

  February 2017

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  Inspired by Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th, we mapped the change from "slave to criminal with one amendment."

  January 2017

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  What are the odds an artist will make it big? Three years and 75,000 concerts later, we finally have an answer.

  January 2017

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  This is the site where it happens. We visualized every line from Hamilton.

  December 2016

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  We analyzed 12,147 images to see how the media covers Trump and Clinton. It’s not a pretty picture.

  October 2016

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  An interactive story of what happens when a genius samples a genius: Robert Glasper, Miles Davis and “Ghetto Walkin.”

  September 2016

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  Hindsight is 20/20. We redraft decades of NBA picks using their career stats to find the breakouts and the busts.

  September 2016

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  Miles Davis is mentioned on 2,452 Wikipedia pages. We analyzed them all.

  June 2016

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  These are the most unlikely NBA comebacks from the 2015–16 season. Harden, Curry, James: the gang’s all here.

  April 2016

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  This is the largest analysis of film dialogue by gender. Yes, even Disney has films with fewer lines for women.

  April 2016

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  What counts as "punk" music? We turned to Spotify and YouTube playlists to answer this question.

  January 2016

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  Here are the writers, directors, and producers who make films that fail the Bechdel test.

  January 2016

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  Is it an east coast vs. west coast thing? Every hip hop record label, since 1989, sorted by Billboard chart performance.

  November 2015

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  We used Spotify plays to track the most timeless songs of all-time.

  September 2015

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  How Outkast brought their southern roots to hip hop, in charts.

  March 2014