Here’s another nice collection of free e-books on a wide range of topics.
http://www.e-booksdirectory.com/
The site has over 5,000 free e-books in subjects from Art, Computer Science, and Engineering. And the selections currently include about one thousand math e-books!
This is a cool collection of data analysis from Slate.com that uses scores from the movie review site RottenTomatoes.com to chart the careers of actors and directors.
http://www.slate.com/id/2296070/
In addition to comparing the average career trajectories of actors and directors (a curious result!) and provoking interesting questions like “Why does the average rating seem to be falling over time?”, Slate provides a great little toy to play with: the Hollywood Career-o-Matic.
Type the name of any actor or director into the Career-o-Matic and see a quantitative overview of that person’s film history graphed out in front of you! You can even type multiple names and compare graphs! Scrolls over the highs (and lows) to get film details.
A nice little data tool, and it’s easy to see some fun, informal data projects coming from this. And it looks like it all started with this brilliant critique of M. Night Shyamalan.
Here’s a nice feature from NewScientist magazine: Eight secret codes we still can’t crack.
http://www.newscientist.com/special/unbreakable-codes
Each code–like the Kryptos monument outside CIA headquarters , or the MIT Time-Lock Puzzle–is profiled in a short article.
This is a nice chart from the Chronicle of Higher Education that compares average salaries by college major.
http://chronicle.com/article/Median-Earnings-by-Major-and/127604/
Each vertical bar represents a high-level category (like Social Science or Engineering) and by scrolling over each bar you see a detailed breakdown of salary by specific major (like Poly Sci or Architecture).
Not surprisingly, math majors do pretty well, and the more applied, the better!
This is cool video showing how to make fractal images with a video camera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj9pbs-jjis
By using the old point-the-camera-at-the-TV trick, and multiple displays, you can really get some beautiful fractal images! There’s some really great stuff beyond the Sierpinski-like triangle seen at the right.
I must say that I enjoyed the video more with the volume off, though.