6 May 2010

Poll Dancing: How accurate are the polls?

Media_httpfarm5static_ggvjf

Brilliant visualisation of poll accuracy by informationisbeautiful. They've been getting better but surprisingly large differences between the main polling companies.

4 May 2010

The Straight Choice takes party election leaflets and turns them into online 'quilts'

The Straight Choice does an amazing job in aggregating election leaflets online and this is a brilliant way of visualising their work (via www.twitter.com/ruskin147)

30 Apr 2010

Jon Stewart Mocks the Laughable Tameness of British Political Scandals

Very funny and gets better as it goes on

30 Apr 2010

Facebook calls if for Clegg after third of #leadersdebates

Media_httpblogschanne_riona

I like the way Facebook has done this but still wonder why no-one has aggregated viewer responses for each question as a whole i.e. like the awarding of points within the rounds of a boxing bout.

29 Apr 2010

Last week's election debate in 15 seconds (via @catturner)

Even better than the first Prime Ministerial Debate in 15 seconds.

22 Apr 2010

Betting shows Cameron saves himself on immigration, according to online betting during #leadersdebate

Media_httpwwwelection_dcdov

There's another battle going on in this election -- that between different prediction techniques. Should you just ask a sample of people (opinion polls), track what they say (Tweetminster's sentiment analysis) or watch what those who back their views with their own money are doing (betting odds)?

20 Apr 2010

Left vs Right -- all of world politics in a single poster (via @epolitix)

Media_httpinfobeautif_idbjt

Ambitious -- sum up the entire political spectrum in a single infographic -- but it sort of works

18 Apr 2010

Victoria Coren on Nick Clegg's Cactusgate and a new #leadersdebates format

Media_httpstaticguimc_ahypc

Easily the most amusing thing I've read this week: Clegg as a surrealist Vic Reeves vs Mr Bean and Lord Percy from Blackadder

17 Apr 2010

The first TV election debate in 15 seconds… – Telegraph Blogs

Grossly unfair of course but also very close to the mark

26 Feb 2010

News Topics as Social Network | FlowingData

Media_httpflowingdata_txyhc

Slate use Open Calais (Thomson Reuters) to extract tags from stories and anaylse the relationships between news topics. The infographic uses size of circle to indicate importance and distance between circles as strength of relationship. Conceivably this could be useful for newsrooms determining whether to treat stories as self-contained single topic entities or to go for 'wraps' pulling together new developments in closely related topics. Better still, if it were applied to social media content it might give them early warning of emerging topics or relationships.

Mark Jones's Space

I'm a journalist based in London working for Reuters News. Any opinions expressed here are my own.