Data Has Feelings

Fun fact: my partner did a version of this experiment for his Psychology A-level. Came into school with a large cardboard box and asked people at random, "Will you hold this box for me?" or "Will you hold this box for me *for a psychology experiment*?". The latter group held the box for longer!

08.09.2025 16:42 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The absence of fear: Martin Orne's strange experiments If you’re collecting data from people, how they feel at the time is likely to affect the data you get. This might seem obvious, but it gets overlooked all the time. And so in the 1950s, a psychologist...

My latest post is about FEAR, and TRUST, and also SNAKES.

How does "being in a research study" affect how your participants feel, and the data you get from them? Nobody thought much about this question until a 1950s psychologist set up some odd "experiments"...

datahasfeelings.blog/post/7931348...

04.09.2025 16:00 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 1

Calvin: I'M FILLING OUT A READER SURVEY FOR CHEWING MAGAZINE. SEE, THEY ASKED HOW MUCH MONEY I SPEND ON GUM EACH WEEK, SO I WROTE, '500.' FOR MY AGE, I PUT 43; AND WHEN THEY ASKED WHAT MY AVORITE FLAVOR IS, I WROTE GARLIC/ CURRY. Hobbes: THIS MAGAZINE SHOULD HAVE SOME AMUSING ADS SOON Calvin: I LOVE MESSING WITH DATA.

There’s a Calvin in every dataset.

29.08.2025 03:39 — 👍 28    🔁 10    💬 1    📌 0

Together and alone: Treating desire paths as data visualizations Accidental desire paths... I get a bit obsessed with the idea of desire paths as natural data visualizations. Thinking about them in that way taps into lots of the things I’m interested in, and that.....

I wrote another thing, longer than I intended, about desire paths as data visualizations and how they can foster feelings of connection and togetherness, or alienation, depending on how you look at them.

It's... fun, honest? It's fun!

📝 🤝 📊

datahasfeelings.blog/post/7927844...

24.08.2025 18:01 — 👍 0    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Together and alone: Treating desire paths as data visualizations Accidental desire paths... I get a bit obsessed with the idea of desire paths as natural data visualizations. Thinking about them in that way taps into lots of the things I’m interested in, and that.....

I wrote another thing, longer than I intended, about desire paths as data visualizations and how they can foster feelings of connection and togetherness, or alienation, depending on how you look at them.

It's... fun, honest? It's fun!

📝 🤝 📊

datahasfeelings.blog/post/7927844...

24.08.2025 18:01 — 👍 0    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Embarrassment: Why do I feel ashamed to be a Spotify outlier? Embarrassment, when you break it down, is about feeling singled-out and different from everyone else but not in a good way. In data terms, nobody wants to be an outlier. I think this is why I...

First post I'm promoting here. And it's about EMBARRASSMENT, because what's more embarrassing than attempting to blog in 2025?

It's about the strange discomfort I feel when Spotify tells me how my listening habits are different from other people's.

datahasfeelings.blog/post/7902447...

📝 😳 📊

28.07.2025 16:37 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

...but here we are. I'm aiming to be mildly interesting and entertaining at most; I don't think I have the definitive take on anything.

28.07.2025 16:35 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

This is, it goes without saying, a personal account about my personal thoughts and opinions. It's a bit scary, as a person who does Rigorous Numbers Stuff professionally, to write something unrigorous, that's basically "here's what I reckon I feel"...

28.07.2025 16:35 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

What's going on here? I’m writing about how numbers and data make people feel in a series of semi-regular short posts. The posts might be about data visualization, or design, or research methods, or stuff that’s...

I'm hoping to write more regularly. I'm interested in data visualisation, design and research methods and how our feelings get involved when we interact with all of these things. A better explanation of what I'm on about is here: datahasfeelings.blog/about

28.07.2025 16:35 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Hello. I'm here to write and post about data and statistics, and how these things relate to the messy world of human emotions.

Most writing happens in slightly-longer-than-Bluesky form here: datahasfeelings.blog

28.07.2025 16:35 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0