Given the abundance of candidates and claims, political and personal beliefs, not to mention the echo chamber of talking heads, it’s difficult to know what to think — or how to vote — in any political election.

Vote Compass, a Canada-based nonprofit organization, seeks to change that with the help of data visualization — and those changes might come to the U.S. for this year’s presidential election.

Vote Compass is an electoral literacy application guided by a group of non-partisan political scientists and academics. It compares data from candidates in a given election with the responses from potential voters regarding a given election’s issues, such as environmentalism, health care and government intervention in social issues. It also monitors their opinions of candidates and their voter demographics, correcting according to census data (in 2010, 10% of the voter-eligible population of Canada, a statistically significant percentage, replied to the... keep reading

Baseball and football, with their large sample sizes of repetitious and sometimes exhilarating events, are tailor-made for statistical analysis. Soccer? It has none of that. One ball, two goals, and 22 players on the field are the only things that are the same from match to match. Sometimes even the field sizes vary. It’s... keep reading

As Summer approaches, camping trips are picking up. They are a great way to get away from it all and forget about the hustle and bustle of ordinary life for a while. There’s something about living with a reduced set of possessions in a minimally protective shelter that makes camping magical. If you’re new... keep reading