Amber Thomas | The Pudding

The Pudding explains ideas debated in culture with visual essays.

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Amber Thomas

Amber Thomas is a Journalist-Engineer at The Pudding. She spends time away from her keyboard exploring the outdoors around Seattle and hanging upside down in aerial silks.

Stories on The Pudding:

Women's Pockets are Inferior
If you wear women's clothes, you already know this. But now we've got the data to show it.
Making Data Viz Without SVG Using D3 and Flexbox
Bye bye tricky alignments.
Let’s Talk About Birth Control
There’s no TMI here, just 20,759 people describing their experiences with contraception.
The Diversity of Makeup Shades
Rihanna's Fenty Beauty is a champion for makeup inclusivity. But how do other brands across the US and the world compare?
Baking the Most Average Chocolate Chip Cookie
Cookie recipes written by computers. What could go wrong?
A Tale of Two Cities
Using data and our own experiences to write love letters to the cities we call home.
Greetings from Mars
Exploring today's weather on Mars and in your area with the Curiosity Rover.
10 Things Everyone Hates About You
Exploring over 30 million feelings towards 3,000+ topics.
The Pudding Awards
Our favorite projects on the internet in 2017.
Newspapers: A Black & White Issue
Measuring racial diversity in journalism.
How far is too far? An analysis of driving times to abortion clinics in the US.
Mapping the cities and places with the worst access.
She Giggles, He Gallops
Analyzing gender tropes in film with screen direction from 2,000 scripts.
Table for One
An exploration of the dining habits and companions of Americans.
Free Willy and Flipper by the Numbers
The past, present, and future of captive whales and dolphins according to data and pop culture.
The Timing of Baby Making
Births, broken down by geography and month.

What’s New

The Celebrity Billboard Project

Russell Goldenberg, Ilia Blinderman, Caitlyn Ralph

The Most Emo Lyrics: Emo Rap vs. Dashboard Confessional

Film or Digital?

Damar Aji Pramudita

Greatest Hits

The Largest Analysis of Film Dialogue by Gender, Ever

Matt Daniels, Hanah Anderson 2.1M views

The Largest Vocabulary in Hip Hop

Matt Daniels 1.7M views

How Music Taste Evolved

Matt Daniels 1.4M views

Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive?

Colin Morris 1.0M views

The Cultural Borders of Songs

Matt Daniels 620k views

What City is the Microbrew Capital of the US?

Russell Goldenberg 390k views

An Interactive Visualization of Every Line in Hamilton

Shirley Wu 190k views

The Words That Are “Most Hip Hop”

Matt Daniels, The Data Face 190k views

Hollywood's Gender Divide and its Effect on Films

Matt Daniels, Ilia Blinderman 150k views

Collections

Media Diversity

Explore gender and racial diversity in a number of domains, from comic books to newsrooms.

We mapped out the road to gender parity in the House of Representatives

Durand D’souza

Newspapers: A Black & White Issue

Matt Daniels, Amber Thomas

Listen to Her: Gender on This American Life

Analyzing the Gender Representation of 34,476 Comic Book Characters

Amanda Shendruk

The Largest Analysis of Film Dialogue by Gender, Ever

Matt Daniels, Hanah Anderson

Basketball

Hot takes and cool viz that will light the fire for endless NBA debates.

The Most-Viewed NBA Plays in 2017-18

Russell Goldenberg

One-Hit Wonders in Sports

Russell Goldenberg, Jan Diehm

What is a Superteam in the NBA?

Russell Goldenberg, Matt Daniels

The Most Timeless NBA Plays

Matt Daniels, Russell Goldenberg

NBA Last Two Minute Report

Russell Goldenberg

Twenty Years of the NBA Redrafted

Russell Goldenberg

Using Historical NBA Data To Rank the Most Unlikely Comebacks

Explainers

Learn about complex topics with these accessible and visual explainers.

The Birthday Paradox Experiment

Russell Goldenberg

Let's Learn About Waveforms

Greetings from Mars

Seeing Earth from Outer Space

Why Does the US Lead the World in Incarceration?

Breaking It Down

Take a deep-dive into what makes pop-culture and media awesome.

The Structure of Stand-Up Comedy

Russell Goldenberg, Matt Daniels

An Interactive Visualization of Every Line in Hamilton

How Robert Glasper sampled Miles Davis on “Ghetto Walkin”

The 2,452 Wikipedia Pages on which Miles Davis is Mentioned

Language

How deconstructing language reveals new perspectives on familiar topics.

The Differences in How CNN, MSNBC, and FOX Cover the News

The Words That Are “Most Hip Hop”

Matt Daniels, The Data Face

She Giggles, He Gallops

Julia Silge, Russell Goldenberg, Amber Thomas

Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive?

The Emergence Of Slang, Using Search Data

The Largest Vocabulary in Hip Hop

All Essays

The Celebrity Billboard Project

Russell Goldenberg, Ilia Blinderman, Caitlyn Ralph

The Most Emo Lyrics: Emo Rap vs. Dashboard Confessional

Film or Digital?

Damar Aji Pramudita

Women's Pockets are Inferior

Jan Diehm, Amber Thomas

Life After Death on Wikipedia

Russell Goldenberg

Why the tech sector may not solve America’s looming automation crisis

Jordan Dworkin, Ilia Blinderman

What Airport Traffic Tells Us About the World's Megacities

Let’s Talk About Birth Control

We mapped out the road to gender parity in the House of Representatives

Durand D’souza

What 1.2 million parliamentary speeches can teach us about gender representation.

Durand D’souza

Men are from Chelsea, Women are from Park Slope

The Diversity of Makeup Shades

Jason Li, Amber Thomas, Divya Manian

The Good, the Rad, and the Gnarly

The Cultural Borders of Songs

The Most-Viewed NBA Plays in 2017-18

Russell Goldenberg

Are Hit Songs Becoming Less Musically Diverse?

Matt Daniels, Andrew Thompson

Baking the Most Average Chocolate Chip Cookie

Elle O’Brien, Amber Thomas

One-Hit Wonders in Sports

Russell Goldenberg, Jan Diehm

The Birthday Paradox Experiment

Russell Goldenberg

A Tale of Two Cities

Amber Thomas, Ilia Blinderman

The Structure of Stand-Up Comedy

Russell Goldenberg, Matt Daniels

Let's Learn About Waveforms

Limbo Lines: Dead Here, Alive There

Mapping Gastronomic Borders in the US

Greetings from Mars

The Differences in How CNN, MSNBC, and FOX Cover the News

10 Things Everyone Hates About You

Russell Goldenberg, Amber Thomas

Seeing Earth from Outer Space

What is a Superteam in the NBA?

Russell Goldenberg, Matt Daniels

Newspapers: A Black & White Issue

Matt Daniels, Amber Thomas

The Words That Are “Most Hip Hop”

Matt Daniels, The Data Face

Listen to Her: Gender on This American Life

How far is too far? An analysis of driving times to abortion clinics in the US.

Russell Goldenberg, Amber Thomas, Caitlyn Ralph

She Giggles, He Gallops

Julia Silge, Russell Goldenberg, Amber Thomas

‘The Office’ Dialogue in Five Charts

Table for One

Henrik Lindberg, Amber Thomas

Analyzing the Gender Representation of 34,476 Comic Book Characters

Amanda Shendruk

Why the Republican Party Wins When Robots Take Your Job

Ilia Blinderman

Free Willy and Flipper by the Numbers

Amber Thomas, Russell Goldenberg

Analyzing Plot Trends for Every Top-Grossing Film from the Past 50 Years

Matt Daniels, Russell Goldenberg

Bias, She Wrote

The Timing of Baby Making

Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive?

The Most Timeless NBA Plays

Matt Daniels, Russell Goldenberg

What City is the Microbrew Capital of the US?

Russell Goldenberg

Why Does the US Lead the World in Incarceration?

How Russell Westbrook Can Average a Triple-Double

Russell Goldenberg

Do NBA Refs Favor the Home Team?

Oliver Roeder, Matt Daniels

The Geographic Divide of Oscars Films

Matt Daniels, Russell Goldenberg, Ilia Blinderman

NBA Last Two Minute Report

Russell Goldenberg

The Emergence Of Slang, Using Search Data

Mapping Slavery Against US Incarceration

The Unlikely Odds of Making it Big

Russell Goldenberg, Dan Kopf

An Interactive Visualization of Every Line in Hamilton

How News Media Covers Trump & Clinton

Russell Goldenberg

Twenty Years of the NBA Redrafted

Russell Goldenberg

How Robert Glasper sampled Miles Davis on “Ghetto Walkin”

The 2,452 Wikipedia Pages on which Miles Davis is Mentioned

How Music Taste Evolved

Using Historical NBA Data To Rank the Most Unlikely Comebacks

The Largest Analysis of Film Dialogue by Gender, Ever

Matt Daniels, Hanah Anderson

Crowdsourcing the Definition of “Punk”

Hollywood's Gender Divide and its Effect on Films

Matt Daniels, Ilia Blinderman

The Most Succesful Labels in Hip Hop

The Most Timeless Songs of All-Time

The Largest Vocabulary in Hip Hop

Outkast, in Charts

How-to

Making Data Viz Without SVG Using D3 and Flexbox

Easier scrollytelling with position sticky

Russell Goldenberg, Elaina Natario

The Pudding Awards

Russell Goldenberg, Ilia Blinderman, Amber Thomas, Matt Daniels

An Introduction to Scrollama.js

Russell Goldenberg

How to Make Dope Shit Part 2: Design

Ilia Blinderman

How to Make Dope Shit Part 1: Working with Data

Ilia Blinderman

How Many Users Resize Their Browser?

Russell Goldenberg

The Making of the Weighted Pivot Scatter Plot

Russell Goldenberg

Regional Smoothing in R

Ilia Blinderman

Responsive Scrollytelling Best Practices

Russell Goldenberg

How to Implement Scrollytelling with Six Different Libraries

Russell Goldenberg