Science Library Pad

Mastodon

Mastodon

[email protected]

Call for Proposals - Open Research Symposium: Building an open research community at McGill

As the title says.

Call for Proposals | Open Research Symposium: Building an open research community at McGill

Are you a McGill researcher, student, or staff member involved in a project to promote or incorporate open research practices? The Organizing Committee invites lightning talk proposals for the inaugural McGill Library open research symposium: The future is open: Building an open research community at McGill. Lightning talks consist of a 5-minute presentation highlighting open research, cutting-edge practice, or both. We are hoping to feature a range of presentations representing many disciplines.

The deadline for submissions is Friday, February 10, 2023, at midnight EST. To submit a proposal, [please contact Jessica Lange [email protected] with any questions].

The Symposium will take place

April 4, 2023, 1 to 4 PM
Eastern Rare Books and Special Collections, Colgate Room
4th floor, McLennan Library Building
3459 McTavish Street
Montreal

Digital Zoom in Camera app on Windows 10

You can zoom in and out (widen and narrow the field of view) in the Camera application for Windows 10 by holding down the CTRL key and rolling your mouse wheel up or down.  This is an undocumented feature.  This is a "sticky" setting; it will persist between Windows sessions, and will apply instantly to other applications using the camera such as MS Teams.

There are some applications that may reset it, for example you may find that running the (unfortunately-named) Zoom video conferencing application resets the digital zoom level.

In particular, any time you fully exit and relaunch Camera, it will reset the digital zoom level (this includes within the same Windows session).  That is, the setting is only sticky as long as you keep the Camera application closed once you've found the zoom level you like.

Microsoft says definitively that the Windows 10 application does not provide digital zoom:

In Windows 10 the Camera app doesn't include digital zoom

This is simply not true.

Similarly other support sites may refer to clicking on an icon in the Camera application in order to zoom in or out; this is also not true.

Others may suggest installing third-party applications or legacy Windows applications, which is usually not an option in a business setting where you don't have administrative control to install unauthorized applications.

MS Teams does offer access to camera settings including digital zoom, but that access is only available depending on the version of Teams, the version of your driver, and the brand and model of your camera.  In any case, the camera settings available in Teams are not sticky (it won't remember the settings), so you have to go back in to settings again in order to set the level you want, every time you start Windows and Teams.

The camera settings are not available during a video conference session; the devices menu is different depending whether you are in a video conference or not.

When not in a conference, select the three dots menu ⋯ at the very top right of the Teams window, in the menu bar next to your profile icon.  Select Settings, then in the popup window select Devices in the list on the left, then scroll down to Camera.  If camera settings control is available, there will be a clickable "Open camera settings" link.  As a reminder, these settings are not sticky; Teams will reset all the camera settings back to the defaults every time you open it and/or restart Windows.

Also, if you want to view the Camera adjustments live while using Teams, you'll have to start Teams first.  If you start the Camera application first, it will grab exclusive access to the image/video stream from your webcam.

Versions used:

• Windows 10 Enterprise 21H2
• Camera 2021.105.10.0
• MS Teams 1.5.00.33362 (64-bit)

For many video conferences you may want a tighter zoom in on your face rather than a wide view of your entire room background, so being able to set and keep a level of zoom using the Camera application first ensures that you have the right settings for Teams and other videoconference software.

Note for older versions of Camera

Older version of Camera (e.g. 2018.826.98.0) also have digital zoom, but you don't need to hold down the control key, just roll the middle mouse scroll wheel up and down.  You may experience unexpected behaviour, in particular, the Camera app may be able to set a much higher level of digital zoom than it actually displays.  That is, if you keep rolling the wheel for greater and greater zoom, the image on screen may stay the same, but when you switch to MS Teams you may find you are super zoomed in.  Just do a single step at a time (a single scroll wheel step) and then check in MS Teams if it is the level you want.

Older versions of Camera may also not be able to share the camera with Teams, so you will have to run Camera first, and then Teams, without being able to see live changes.

Crossposted from my tech blog.

ChatGPT natural language AI query and response

ChatGPT is an AI powered by a very deeply trained model.

https://chat.openai.com/

It is currently free for limited use, you have to sign up with a verified email and verified phone number.

The results people were posting online were so good I had to check it out myself and yes, it is very good in its areas of expertise (most notably, it doesn't know anything about events after 2021).

SIDEBAR: Since it's just text output, it is trivial to fake ChatGPT responses; you should ask the question directly to ChatGPT yourself if you want to be sure it is a real response.  END SIDEBAR

You get detailed natural language responses, it likes responding with lists or first-second-third-conclusion styles.

I expect it will rapidly get overloaded by demand.  In fact it was unavailable for a while during the writing of this blog post.

I was able to ask it to create plans, and about popular culture, and to ask it "Why is chatgpt disturbing to use?"

All responses were basically instantaneous except for the last one, where it thought for quite a while before producing a response.

NOTE that your questions and the responses don't appear to be saved, so you will need to copy/paste or screenshot them if you want to keep them (most modern operating systems will let you extract the text from a screenshot).

It's rare that something from technology surprises me, but this surprises me.  I didn't think we were anywhere clear to this level of natural language response.

Two months ago there was a discussion in the SciFoo mailing list about students using AI to write their school papers and I was incredibly sceptical, but I can see that ChatGPT (and the underlying technology, which is available through APIs) could quite easily write papers on common topics.

It can also write computer code, or help you debug your code.

Q: write a short blog post about the capabilities of chatgpt

ChatGPT Answer:

ChatGPT is a state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) model developed by OpenAI. It is capable of generating human-like text based on a given prompt, making it a powerful tool for tasks such as language translation, text summarization, and conversation modeling.

One of the unique features of ChatGPT is its ability to incorporate context from previous interactions into its responses, allowing it to maintain coherence and consistency in longer conversations. This makes it especially useful for applications such as chatbots and virtual assistants, where maintaining a natural and fluid conversation is key.

In addition to its conversational capabilities, ChatGPT is also able to generate text in a variety of styles and tones, making it versatile and adaptable to a wide range of applications. It can produce formal, professional language for business documents, or more casual and informal language for social media posts and chat conversations.

Overall, ChatGPT is a powerful and highly capable NLP model that has many potential applications in the fields of language processing and artificial intelligence. Its ability to generate human-like text and maintain context in conversations make it a valuable tool for developers and researchers working on the cutting edge of NLP technology.

==

Q: summarize key challenges for open science in canada

ChatGPT Answer:

One of the key challenges facing open science in Canada is the lack of consistent policies and frameworks across different research institutions and funding bodies. This can make it difficult for researchers to know what is expected of them in terms of sharing their data and research outputs, and can hinder the dissemination and uptake of open science practices.

Another challenge is the lack of infrastructure and support for open science. Many researchers may not have access to the necessary tools and resources to enable them to effectively share and collaborate on their work, which can limit the uptake of open science practices.

Furthermore, there may be cultural barriers to the adoption of open science, such as a lack of awareness of the benefits of open science or a lack of incentives for researchers to engage in open science activities.

Overall, addressing these challenges will require a concerted effort from research institutions, funding bodies, and policymakers to develop and implement consistent policies and provide the necessary infrastructure and support to enable the adoption of open science practices in Canada.

==

Q: write code for plotting sin(x) in python

ChatGPT Answer:

To plot the function sin(x) in Python, you can use the matplotlib library. Here is an example of how to do it:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

# Create an array of x values from 0 to 4π
x = np.linspace(0, 4*np.pi, 100)

# Compute the y values for sin(x)
y = np.sin(x)

# Plot the function
plt.plot(x, y)

# Add labels and title
plt.xlabel('x')
plt.ylabel('sin(x)')
plt.title('Plot of sin(x)')

# Show the plot
plt.show()

This code will create a plot of the sin(x) function from 0 to 4π. You can adjust the range of x values and the number of points in the plot by modifying the values passed to the np.linspace and plt.plot functions. You can also customize the appearance of the plot by using various options in the matplotlib library.

==

Q: Why is chatgpt disturbing to use?

ChatGPT Answer:

There are a few reasons why someone might find chatgpt (or any large language model)
disturbing to use.

First, chatqpt is a machine learning model that has been trained on a vast amount of
human-generated text, so it is able to generate responses that are often indistinguishable
from those of a human. This can make it difficult for users to know whether they are
interacting with a machine or a human, which can be unsettling for some people.

Second, chatgpt is designed to generate responses based on the input it receives, so it can
sometimes produce responses that are unexpected or inappropriate. This can be
disorienting for users and can make them feel like they are losing control of the
conversation.

Third, chatgpt is a large language model, which means it has been trained to generate
responses that are coherent, fluent, and relevant to the input it receives. This can make it
difficult for users to tell whether they are interacting with a machine that is following pre-
programmed rules, or a human who is thinking and speaking spontaneously.

Overall, chatgpt and other large language models can be disturbing to use because they
blur the line between human and machine, can produce unexpected or inappropriate
responses, and can make it difficult for users to know whether they are interacting with a
machine or a human.

4th Annual Neuro Open Science in Action Symposium 2022

The 4th Annual Neuro Open Science in Action Symposium 2022 will be held on November 30.

It will be a hybrid event organized by the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute (TOSI) at The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute).

This year’s symposium will focus on how academic institutions can pave the way for the future of open research.

Three virtual panel discussions will focus on inter-institutional coalitions, institute-wide efforts to promote Open Science, as well as initiatives and projects within Canadian institutions enabling researchers to learn about and practice Open Science. Expert panelists will showcase new ways of recognizing and enabling open research, the efforts of forward thinking institutions to promote Open Science through education and support, and how collective action is enabling a more open future.

The symposium will close with the presentation of the Neuro - Irv and Helga Cooper Foundation Open Science Prizes to the awardees, followed by an Open Science Networking event and Reception.

You can register through EventBrite.

Canada's 2022-2024 National Action Plan on Open Government

Canada's 2022-2024 National Action Plan on Open Government is available, the main landing page is

https://open.canada.ca/en/content/national-action-plan-open-government

and the plan itself is available as a PDF.

Open Science is in commitment 1.3.2:

1.3.2 Yearly reports on progress against existing metrics that measure how science-based departments and agencies implement open science, with a focus on open access metrics and diverse types of open access, to be released in the open

Government of Canada science departments have posted the Departmental Open Science Plans that will be the basis of the yearly reporting.

Previously:
January 10, 2019  Open Science in Canada's 2018-2020 Open Government Plan

Check your sources - The Battle of the Fly

Summary

A Wikipedia statement about the zipper versus the button fly has turned into a story repeated by authoritative sources that in the pivotal year of 1937 Esquire magazine had a "Battle of the Fly" contest where the zipper won, with the memorable statement that a button fly had the "possibility of unintentional and embarrassing disarray".  The Wikipedia statement has no supporting reference, and in fact this entire scenario is unsupported by available online evidence, turning out to probably be a conflation of a (possibly apocryphal) 1937 event or fashion trend in France with advertisements in Esquire in the early 1930s.

SIDEBAR: My analysis depends on an assumption that Esquire's online archive search delivers complete results.  The site does say "Every Article.  Every Page.  Every issue of Esquire ever published.  1933 to today."  END SIDEBAR

It seems like the source may be a Smithsonian article citing a book about a zipper company, otherwise Wikipedia edits indicate the "Battle of the Fly" could just be the invention of a single contributor.  (I am happy to be corrected if someone has an authoritative source for the "Battle of the Fly".)

UPDATE 2022-09-18: It looks like the source for the "Battle of the Fly" is the book Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty by Robert Friedel (1994). I have ordered the book to find out. 

Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty

The Independent reviewed Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty under the remarkably awkward headline "Hookless hookers: the battle of the fly".  This review was the only definitive source I could find specifically stating that this term is used in the book:

But he notices also, as he narrates what became known as "the battle of the fly" ... - The Independent, "Hookless hookers: the battle of the fly", book review by Robert Winder, 21 April 1995

It seems likely this book is the source but the information has gotten jumbled along the way.  END UPDATE

An Uncited Assertion

If you try to find out why jeans mostly have zippers rather than button fly, googling brings up endless variations of this Wikipedia paragraph:

The zipper beat the button in 1937 in the "Battle of the Fly", after French fashion designers raved over zippers in men's trousers. Esquire declared the zipper the "Newest Tailoring Idea for Men" and among the zippered fly's many virtues was that it would exclude "The Possibility of Unintentional and Embarrassing Disarray."^{[citation needed]} - Wikipedia: Zipper - History section

There are quite a few assertions sitting behind that "[citation needed]".

This raises the question of whether anyone actually checked that Esquire made that statement, and whether the statement was made in 1937 (as could be implied by the paragraph). The answer appears to be no.

Endless Variations

It's hard to know how much of the scrambled way this info has propagated is due to past Wikipedia edits and how much is due to current mis-reading of the Wikipedia entry, but this paragraph shows up in variations in lots of authoritative sources including the Smithsonian:

The upswing for the zipper came in 1937 when the zipper beat the button in the 1937 "Battle of the Fly" and french fashion designers began to rave over the zipper. Esquire magazine declared the zipper the "Newest Tailoring Idea for Men" and of zipper's many virtues it would exclude the "possibility of unintentional and embarrassing disarray." - Smithsonian blog "Unbound", The Up and Down History of the Zipper, May 3, 2010

There is an interesting sequence issue, as this Smithsonian article predates the Wikipedia entry.  Is this the origin of the Battle of the Fly?  The Smithsonian cites two books:

UPDATE 2022-09-18:

1. Talon, inc. : a romance of achievement / / an abridgement of the original manuscript by James Gray to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the company ; [edited by Stanley H. Brown]. Chicago : Rand McNally, c1963.
2. Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty by Robert Friedel (1994, reprinted in 1996)

As a niche corporate history, the Talon book is basically unavailable to me, but I have ordered the Zipper book (it is not available in electronic form).  I could also try contacting the author but if he's around he may not be all that keen revisiting a book he wrote over 28 years ago.

I speculated whether Talon's corporate hagiography is the origin of the story, but it seems clear now it is the Zipper book.  You'll find out more about the Talon company below.

END UPDATE

There were also various 100th anniversary quick takes in 2013, from e.g. the CBC:

Esquire magazine raved in 1937 that the zipper would help men avoid "the possibility of unintentional and embarrassing disarray." - CBC News - Science - Apr 29, 2013 - Zipper anniversary: 10 bits of trivia to impress the pants off you

Notice how it's now Esquire magazine in 1937, the date having apparently drifted due to a misreading of the Wikipedia paragraph.

Here's the Chicago Tribune:

It is said that Esquire magazine put the zipper in every other intimate place. In 1937, the magazine hosted a "Battle of the Fly" contest pitting the zipper against the button fly, according to the Encyclopedia of Modern Everyday Inventions. Game, set, match, Sundback's secure zipper. It helped avoid "the possibility of unintentional and embarrassing disarray," the magazine concluded. - Chicago Tribune - Oct 16, 2013 - The Zipper (1893)

So now, wait, Esquire hosted a "Battle of the Fly" contest in 1937, according to the Encyclopedia of Modern Everyday Inventions (circa 2003), and Esquire concluded that contest with the memorable "unintentional and embarrassing disarray" phrase. But that's just not true.  That's not even what the Encyclopedia says, at least in the 2003 version available to search online.  The Encyclopedia says

In 1937, men's clothing designers began to experiment with zippers in trousers.  The zipper fly was praised by Esquire magazine as helping prevent "the possibility of unintentional and embarrassing display". - Encyclopedia of Modern Everyday Inventions, Fasteners section, page 121 "The Zipper", from Google Books, search inside this book

The Wikipedia entry was only created on August 22, 2003 (without this information).  Either Wikipedia ends up getting this story from the Encyclopedia or elsewhere, or I'm looking at a post-2003 revised version of the Encyclopedia text in Google Books.

Incidentally zippers in trousers are actually from 1933 or earlier.

So the Chicago Tribune, an authority, is citing an Encyclopedia as an authority and a magazine as an authority, but the Encyclopedia text isn't true.  (It's not clear what the source of the Encyclopedia's statements might have been.) Basically the Tribune managed to invent an entire Esquire event based on misread sources that are in turn based on an unsupported Wikipedia source. The ultimate is when in 2014 Esquire online repeats this story about itself, creating an apparently authoritative citation to a statement it never actually made.

fashionistos and functionalists alike saw the auto-clasp's allure and initiated the Battle of the Fly… which was swiftly and definitively won by the zipper in the 1930s. Even this illustrious publication in 1937 declared (and still does declare) it the superior idea in men's fashion, both for style and for its potential to avoid, "the possibility of unintentional and embarrassing disarray." - Esquire, The Battle of the Button Fly, June 9, 2014

A Very Different Story Pre-Wikipedia

In Esquire's defense, they do have a good article about the zipper from 1989, with rather surprising references to Brave New World, and less surprising ones to the royals as trendsetters

Men didn’t have zippered trousers when the book was written. They had buttons. Zippers were still a novelty in 1932, and in Huxley’s view they were symbolic of the mechanical and dehumanized future that lay in store for all of us. ... Custom tailors disdained zippered flies as vulgar, and mass manufacturers claimed they were too expensive—a zipper added a dollar to the cost of a pair of trousers; buttons cost only two cents. That’s where matters stood until 1934, when the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, and their second cousin “Dickie” Mountbatten suddenly started wearing zippered flies. - Esquire, The Zipper, by John Berendt, May 1, 1989

It's interesting how in 1989, pre-google and pre-Wikipedia, this entire "Battle of the Fly" narrative doesn't exist.

Getting to the Truth - Unintentional and Embarrassing Disarray

Actually searching the Esquire archive for the phrase "unintentional and embarrassing disarray" returns zero articles, but two advertisements from the Talon Hookless Fastener Company, from September 1933 and February 1934.  If I change to search just "embarrassing disarray" I get a total of twelve Talon ads running to November 1936.

The September 1933 advertisement extols the virtues of Talon's "slide fastener" (they couldn't say zipper, because it's actually ZIPPER® trademark B.F. Goodrich, and Goodrich was assertive in defending its trademark at the time).

Here's just the first two of the ten-point list in the Talon ad.

Why TALON means new distinction in trousers

1. Talon eliminates ugliness of the button fly.  Side wrinkles, gaps between buttons, and bulkiness are gone.
2. Talon excludes the possibility of unintentional and embarrassing disarray.

This text displayed beside a man wearing flat-fronted trousers that would be ridiculously high-waisted today.

Getting to the Truth - The Newest Tailoring Idea for Men

The BBC News says:

Esquire magazine hailed the zipper's use on trousers in the late 1930s and declared it the “Newest Tailoring Idea for Men”. - BBC News, The ingenious invention to better the button, 23rd March 2017

A link, an actual link to a source.  Except the source is wrong.  The source is the rather imposingly-titled The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History, Volume 3 (circa 2010) and on page 922 it says:

In 1937 a French fashion magazine declared that there were more trousers being made with zippers on their flies than buttons, and Esquire magazine in the United States proclaimed the zipper as the "newest tailoring idea for men," ... - The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History, Volume 3 - Google Books, search inside this book

But this is just the same rabbit hole all over again. In any case, it demonstrates again a second phrase attributed to Esquire is that the zipper is "the newest tailoring idea for men", but searching the Esquire archive reveals the sole mention of this phrase is in the self-same Talon advertisement from September 1933.  In starting its list of benefits, it has a header reading:

TALON
Slide Fastener for Trousers
Newest Tailoring Idea for Men

So both phrases that are attributed to an Esquire article are actually a few lines in a September 1933 advertisement, a segment which surely must be fair use for me to reproduce.

And here, for possibly the first time on the Internet, is the actual primary source link:

Esquire magazine, "Hookless Fastener Company" (Talon advertisement), September 1, 1933.

It is kind of ridiculous than an endlessly-recirculated set of phrases trace down to a single advertisement.

Getting to the Truth - The Battle of the Fly

NOTE: The investigation below was before I had strong signals indicating that the Zipper book is the source for this phrase.  It's still a useful investigation.

One data point is there are zero search results in the Esquire archive for "battle of the fly".  It seems unlikely the magazine has any association with this phrase, let alone hosting some kind of contest in 1937. Googling has the problem that all the results are just rephrases of the Wikipedia paragraph with no primary sources.  Even when the sources seem primary they're not. Basically all I have to go on is something in France in 1937 "Battle of the Fly".

If this was a thing in France, I would hope it would show up in the French Wikipedia article Fermeture éclair, but it doesn't. Setting aside Google translate's fanciful notion that "pants fly" translates as "pantalon voler" (which means literally pants flying in the air) the actual translation of trouser fly is "la braguette".  So if this "Battle of the Fly" is a real thing, it should be something like "Bataille de la braguette".

This being France, one hit is on the history of seins nus, which asserts in passing that there has never been a battle of the fly, although they mean this more in the sense of a battle to have men expose below the waist in the same way that women expose above the waist.

Cette mode scandaleuse d'une virilité exhibée dans des étuis rigides inspire aussi les sarcasmes d'Etienne Pasquier, la braguette " représentant par l'extérieur chose grosse et grande, combien que le plus de temps, il n'y ait rien ou bien peu dedans ". Mais, malgré les railleries, il n'y a point eu dans l'Histoire de " bataille de la braguette " comme il y eut une " bataille des seins nus "... - Le blog de Philippe Poisson (not safe for work), Gabrielle d'Estrées lance la mode des seins nus, 30 Août 2009 (not safe for work)

Searching Google France in French this is the one and only result. If I broaden my search, using "braguette" I unsurprisingly mostly get histories of the pants fly, with assertions that in France at least, it's the 1960s that mark the transition to the zipper, not 1937.

Dans les années 1960, lorsque les boutons cédèrent leur place à la fermeture éclair puisque ces derniers se décousaient régulièrement. | "In the 1960s, when the buttons gave way to the zipper" - On sait pourquoi la braguette est inversée sur les jeans et des hommes et des femmes, 11 juillet 2021

Let's try the history of the zipper, fermeture éclair histoire.

• franceinfo - 22/04/2017 - La fermeture à glissière a 100 ans
• Europe 1 - Historiquement vôtre - Les origines - 31/08/2020 - Aux origines de la fermeture éclair par David Castello-Lopes

The two French sources above cite the use of the zipper by American army in their boots in the first world war.  They also enjoy mentions of the zipper as scandalising puritan sensibilities.  But there is no mention of the 1937 Battle of the Fly.

At this point I think the 1937 Battle of the Fly may be an invention out of whole cloth.

I checked every table of contents for Esquire in 1937.  "And Fly with Safety" in June 1937 looked promising but it turned out to be about seaplanes.  There are lots of Talon ads, including prominently placed e.g. a full page ad on the left page next to the table of contents on the right page in the July 1937 issue.  "Knights in Armor" was a last hope in the December 1937 episode, but it is about actual suits of armor.

So on a scan, there is zero mention of zippers or this probably-imaginary "Battle of the Fly" in any 1937 Esquire. I would be happy to be corrected.

The most likely scenario now seems to be that pro-zipper, anti-buttonfly Talon's corporate hagiography book conjures up some "Battle of the Fly" that they won, and that's what is cited by the Smithsonian, and then in turn that's what got picked up in Wikipedia.

UPDATE 2022-09-18: The most likely scenario is that the term is in the Zipper book but may not have been widely used, and certainly wasn't used in Esquire.  END UPDATE

To wrap up, let's get the sequencing of changes from the Wikipedia entry history.

Getting to the Truth - Wikipedia History

The Wikipedia Zipper article was created on August 22, 2003, without the Battle of the Fly story. For almost seven years, the relevant paragraph was an almost unaltered and (as far as I know) historically accurate set of statements, here's the last example from 03:49, August 10, 2010:

The zipper slowly became popular for children's clothing and men's trousers in the 1920s and 1930s. In the early 1930s the haute couture designer Elsa Schiaparelli featured zippers in her avant-garde gowns, helping it to become acceptable in women's clothing. In 1934, Tadao Yoshida founded a company called San-S Shokai in downtown Tokyo. Later, this company would change its name to YKK and become the world's largest manufacturer of zippers and fastening products. By World War II, the zipper had become widely used in Europe and North America, and after the war quickly spread through the rest of the world. - Wikipedia - Zipper (03:49, August 10, 2010)

Then all of a sudden on August 17, 2010 the Battle of the Fly appears out of nowhere, courtesy of "Gagakong":

In the 1930's, a sales campaign began for children's clothing featuring zippers. The campaign praised zippers for promoting self-reliance in young children by making it possible for them to dress in self-help clothing. The zipper beat the button in the 1937 in the "Battle of the Fly," when French fashion designers raved over zippers in men's trousers. Esquire magazine declared the zipper the "Newest Tailoring Idea for Men" and among the zippered fly's many virtues was that it would exclude "The Possibility of Unintentional and Embarrassing Disarray." - Wikipedia - Zipper (22:06, August 17, 2010)

This unreferenced paragraph is never corrected for the next 12 years, other than getting a [citation needed] tag.

Gagakong made seven edits to Wikipedia (including two to Zipper) from August 1, 2010 to August 18, 2010 and then according to their contributions log https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Gagakong has never made an edit since.

Given the sequencing of events, it looks like Gagakong may have taken the "Battle of the Fly" in good faith from the Smithsonian source.  Otherwise, they may have just made it up, and if they remember this moment's editing at all, are delighted that it has survived and propagated to authoritative sources.

NOTE: The above reposted from my personal blog, with minor modifications.

Open Data Exchange 2013 - Twitter list

NOTE: This 2013 draft blog post is being published in 2022; it may be incomplete and the information is certainly out of date.

Open Data Exchange 2013 was a one-day conference in Montreal organised by Sauvé Scholar Naomi Kincler and developer Ted Strauss.

Twitter

• Michael Lenczner @mlenc - CEO, Ajah
• James McKinney @mckinneyjames -  Technical Lead, Open North@opennorth
• Michael Roberts @michaeloroberts - Acclar@acclar & IATI
• Pete Forde (session moderator) @peteforde - Hacker Tourist
• Sébastien Pierre - fondateur, FFunction@ffunction & Montréal Ouvert
• Guillaume Ducharme @GuillaumeAQESSS - gestionnaire dans le réseau de la santé et membre du collectif Démocratie Ouverte
• Josée Plamondon @joplam - co-conceptrice, ContratsNet@ContratsNet
• Jean-Noé Landry (l’animateur de discussion) - fondateur, Montréal Ouvert et Québec Ouvert @qcouvert
• Corey Chivers @CjBayesian - PhD candidate, Biology, McGill & Montreal R User Group
• Tracey Lauriault @TraceyLauriault - Open Data advocate & Postdoctoral Fellow, Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre, Carleton University
• Petko Valtchev - Professor, Computer Science, UQAM
• Ted Strauss (moderator) @trudatted - Co-founder, Trudat
• Diane Mercier @carnetsDM - chargée de projet principale en données ouvertes@MTL_DO , Ville de Montréal
• Trina Chiasson @trinachi - InfoActive
• Christian Gendreau @christgendreau - Canadensys@Canadensys
• Trevor Bekolay @TrevorBekolay - Waterloo University
• Steve Reitano @Beautifuldata - Open Data Survey
• Anton Dubrau @ant6n - cat-bus.com
• Heri Rakotomalala @heri - MTL NewTech
• Julia Evans @b0rk - MTL all-girl hack night
• Roberto Rocha @robroc - Montreal Gazette
• Edward Ocampo-Gooding @edwardog - Open Data Ottawa

• Sauvé Scholars @SauveScholars

engineered serendipity - does your space enable casual collisions?

This 2012 draft post was in line with thinking at the time. Now that I'm finally posting it in 2022 when we have remote work, it's not clear how much of this physical proximity theory actually was true, and how much was justification for particular office designs and management preferences.

Mr. Kelly was convinced that physical proximity was everything; phone calls alone wouldn’t do. Quite intentionally, Bell Labs housed thinkers and doers under one roof. Purposefully mixed together on the transistor project were physicists, metallurgists and electrical engineers; side by side were specialists in theory, experimentation and manufacturing. Like an able concert hall conductor, he sought a harmony, and sometimes a tension, between scientific disciplines; between researchers and developers; and between soloists and groups.

ONE element of his approach was architectural. He personally helped design a building in Murray Hill, N.J., opened in 1941, where everyone would interact with one another. Some of the hallways in the building were designed to be so long that to look down their length was to see the end disappear at a vanishing point. Traveling the hall’s length without encountering a number of acquaintances, problems, diversions and ideas was almost impossible. A physicist on his way to lunch in the cafeteria was like a magnet rolling past iron filings.

New York Times Sunday Review - True Innovation - February 25, 2012

Do any other organisations engineer serendipity in this way?  Google does

The person responsible for all the wonky integration started the New York office with 17 people.  She says she's incorporated the influx of new staffers with an eye towards what she calls casual collision, where Google staffers bump into people they don't normally work with.

Wall Street Journal - Tech: Andy Jordan (video) - quote from 3:37 to 3:51

via NYC Digital which also links to the WSJ article: Google Web Grows in City (Feb 29, 2012).

This kind of thinking applies to both offline and online spaces.

 

The Law of Infinite Perfect Copies

NOTE: This 2007 draft blog post is being published in 2022; it may be incomplete.

The Law of Infinite Perfect Copies

In the digital environment, an unlimited number of content duplicates can be made, with no degradation in quality.

The Law of Motivated Networks

A motivated network can always defeat a hierarchical bureaucracy.

review - Out of the Box web services

NOTE: This 2007 draft blog post is being published in 2022; it may be incomplete and the information is certainly out of date.

Out of the Box by John Hagel III

# Hardcover: 240 pages
# Publisher: Harvard Business School Press (October 28, 2002)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1578516803
# ISBN-13: 978-1578516803

The full title is Out of the Box: Strategies for Achieving Profits Today & Growth Tomorrow Through Web Services

The bottom line is that managers needs to develop more flexibility and collaboration capability to deliver continuing rounds of operating cost and asset savings as well as accelerated growth.  They need to escape from the high cost and inflexible infrastructures that make both cost reduction and growth such daunting challenges.

This book discusses how a new generation of IT and related architectures--known generally as Web services technology and distributed services architectures--will provide a significant catalyst in helping management break out of the boxes that confine it today.

The book is mainly targetted at managers, and talks mostly about business transformation challenges.  I liked the emphasis on bringing more flexibility to all aspects of business.  It doesn't talk about Service-Oriented Architecture directly at all, although it does talk sometimes about "Web service architectures".

If you're a manager and looking for ideas about how to transform your business, taking advantage of new technology and new IT processes, this would be a good book to read.

my review of The World is Flat

NOTE: This 2006 draft blog post is being published in 2022; it may be incomplete and the information is certainly out of date.

Despite having a huge stack of books to read, I found myself on vacation without anything to read, so I ended up getting The World is Flat (Updated Edition) mostly by accident.

I had rushed into the mall to get the Globe, which no one was selling, so on a quick scan of the bookstore, I thought, hmm, if I'm going to sling around the term I should probably actually read the book.

At 566 pages, it's no light read, but Thomas Friedman presents a comprehensive framework for understanding the impact of technology on our societies.

I had assumed the book was mostly about outsourcing, but it actually covers a wide range of current developments in work and technology.  Friedman describes our society as experiencing "Globalization 3.0".

I was once again surprised, particularly given that he was even using "3.0" terminology, that there was no mention of Toffler's The Third Wave but other than that, the book is very strong.

It covers technology change with explanations that are both clear and comprehensive.  The last thing I would have expected in a book about globalization would be to get a good discussion of underlying technology change, but lo and behold, I read

"But then," added Microsoft's Mundie, "we said to ourselves, 'Geez, if we really want to automate everything, then we need to make it much easier not just for people to talk to people, but for machines to talk to machines -- for machines to interact with other machines about any subject without any humans involved at all or any a priori relationship between the different companies whose machines are communicating."  This was the next work flow breakthrough.

Technically, what made it possible was the development of a new data description language, called XML (extensible markup language) and its related transport protocol called SOAP (simple object access protocol).  Together, they allow any two computer programs to exchange formatted data or documents that contain any form of information.

(from "The Ten Forces that Flattened the World - #3 - Work Flow Software" - page 82)

Issues

"globalization" is missing from the index.

There is no comprehensive reference list or bibliography.  While he does a great job of citing things within the text, it would be nice to have them all gathered together at the end as well.

CSPC - Open Science and Research Security - June 21, 2022

Open Science and Research Security - CSPC (sciencepolicy.ca)

A consensus is emerging on the importance of making scientific information accessible to all in the digital age. Access to information is a right, however how to balance this with security research, is the topic of this panel.

June 21, 2022 at 1pm Eastern.

Dr. David Castle will moderate a panel featuring Dr. Martha Crago, Dr. Monica Granados, and Emmanuel Kamarianakis.

2022 G7 Science Ministers’ Communiqué

German G7 Meeting
Frankfurt am Main, 12-14 June 2022

G7 Science Ministers’ Communiqué - BMBF

Directly link to PDF: Microsoft Word - G7 Science Ministers Declaration_20220613 (bmbf.de)

Canada is represented by Dr. Mona Nemer, the government's Chief Science Advisor.

Selected highlights related to open science.

1. Promoting and protecting freedom, integrity and security in science and research

...

We ... have decided to explore a Working Group to strengthen the cooperation between the G7 partners on
effective science communication. The focus is on the promotion of an evidence
informed development of science communication practice and enhanced science
literacy.

We support the work and results achieved so far by the G7 Open Science Working
Group. The group has made noticeable progress in examining data-sharing
infrastructures, research evaluation policies and open science incentives, and lessons
of research on research, and has identified barriers, challenges and enablers for
practicing open science that deserve and require common action (see Annex). We
encourage the group to continue its exploratory work and follow up with tangible
recommendations based on good practices and guiding principles.

Annex to the G7 Science Ministers` Communiqué 2022

https://www.bmbf.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/de/2022/220613-g7-annex.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=3

II. Open Science and Open Science Working Group (OSWG)

 

We will continue to promote open science with open and rapid sharing of knowledge,
data and tools. We recognize and reacknowledge the importance of our universities,
research organisations and science academies, as well as the industrial sector and civil
society groups. We jointly pursue these common goals, with renewed vigour and
determination in the continuation of previous declarations on international
cooperation in research and innovation.

We recognize open science as an essential enabler of scientific integrity and good
science communication. Making scientific research available to scientists, innovators,
students, educators, government and non-government entities, the private sector,
and the general public therefore providing the transparency necessary to build trust
in science. It also helps to ensure that scientific results are communicated in ways
that are open and equitably accessible to all based on mutual trust and confidence.

 

...

 

Event: The rise of Open Science in Canada

Unlocking Science: The rise of Open Science in Canada - Perspectives from Early Career Researchers

June 2, 2022
12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EDT

In this cafe, we will hear from two guest speakers about the importance and practice of open science, followed by small group discussion in break-out rooms to discuss how early career researchers can move open science forward. We will be discussing open science recommendations in the context of UNESCO’s open science framework.

Featuring:

• Dr. Masha Cemma, a policy advisor to the Chief Science Advisor of Canada
• Dylan Roskams-Edris, JD, Open Science Alliance Officer for the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute

Microsoft Dev Box cloud-based development environments

Microsoft Dev Box, a new cloud service that provides developers with secure, ready-to-code developer workstations for hybrid teams of any size. Microsoft Dev Box empowers developers to focus on the code only they can write, making it easy for them to access the tools and resources they need without worrying about workstation configuration and maintenance. Dev teams preconfigure Dev Boxes for specific projects and tasks, enabling devs to get started quickly with an environment that’s ready to build and run their app in minutes. At the same time, Microsoft Dev Box ensures unified management, security, and compliance stay in the hands of IT by leveraging Windows 365 to integrate Dev Boxes with Intune and Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

from Microsoft Tech Community - Azure Developer Community Blog - Introducing Microsoft Dev Box - May 24, 2022

Blog post covered e.g. in Ars Technica - Microsoft Dev Box will virtualize your Windows development PC in a browser window - May 25, 2022

I've written before that just getting a development environment set up with all the necessary supporting libraries and dependencies sorted out is a major barrier to casual development these days, and that language-specific cloud services such as Google Colaboratory for Jupyter Notebooks help address this.

Additionally in a corporate environment there are often rights restrictions that limit the end-user's ability to install and manage software, which can make it difficult to maintain a complex software development environment. 

Pre-packaged virtual machines in the cloud offer a potential quick path to productive development environments.

This may also help scientific researchers who may want to do software development but have neither the time nor expertise to install and configure a complete environment themselves.
Additionally as MS indicates, this means access to a full Microsoft development environment even if your underlying platform is macOS or Linux.

because Microsoft Dev Boxes are hosted in the Microsoft cloud, you can access them from anywhere: Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, or your web browser

Microsoft Dev Box has Microsoft 365 integration (unsurprisingly) which may also make it an easier fit for corporate environments.

Currently in private preview, public preview coming "in the next few months".

FeedBlitz email list restarted

FeedBlitz apparently puts mailing lists on hold if the blog has been inactive.  I have now restarted the email list.

You should now get emails for new blog posts.  If you had long ago forgotten that you were a subscriber, the email should also give you the ability to unsubscribe.

(If you have this FeedBlitz on hold issue for your own blog, login to FeedBlitz, go to your FeedBlitz dashboard, click on Mailing Lists, then click on Restart.)

Departmental Open Science Plans for the Government of Canada

Government of Canada science departments are to create Open Science Plans, per the Chief Science Advisor's Roadmap for Open Science.

These plans are linked on the Government's science.gc.ca site:

Departmental Open Science Action Plans

Automatic posting to Twitter

A reminder that new posts are automatically tweeted on Twitter account @scilibfeed

The link to Twitter was broken for a while but should be fixed now.

Recognizing an open data success

Note: This is a technical examination of available COVID-19 open data.  For general information please visit your relevant local website, including:

• Canada.ca/coronavirus
• Ontario.ca/coronavirus
• OttawaPublicHealth.ca/coronavirus

Summary

Sometimes when advocating for a particular change, it can be hard to step back and recognize the progress that has been made.

COVID-19 open data in Ontario is available and is provided in a way that meets many of the goals that open data advocates had set out.  The City of Ottawa and the Province of Ontario both prominently link directly to COVID-19 open data on their dashboard pages.  The Government of Canada also links to open data, but not as prominently or consistently.  There is also an academic site providing data and code for Ottawa.  All sites provided clear licensing.

These data visualisations and open data can be considered a kind of infrastructure.  In the context of academic use of open data, particularly with the addition of open source computer code, these sites can even be considered part of a digital research infrastructure.

Goals for Open Data

There were several elements that were envisioned for open data in general:

• available
• open license
• usable - clear descriptions
• usable - machine readable
• visible, in the sense that clear links to underlying data would be provided e.g. on websites
• discoverable through search

Basically, that anyone could find it and use it.  That it would provide a usable machine-readable alternative to scraping HTML web tables or hand-extracting data from PDF or Word documents.  And also that it would be provided from every organisation at every level of government.

For sustainability, it was also hoped that open data would be part of each organisation's own internal processes:

• used by the service providers themselves

There is an additional key element I have to say wasn't strongly considered by many of the initial advocates, which is that there should be tools provided to view and work with the data without having to go in and do your own spreadsheets or write your own code:

• tools are provided for anyone to work with the data

And I would add lastly, as the community thought through the provision of tools (e.g. website visualisations):

• are the tools themselves made available for open reuse, e.g. can you access the underlying code and pipelines that are used to make the website views

These goals sometimes seemed very far off.  But with COVID-19 data in Ontario, I would consider it a success.

COVID-19 open data is available at the municipal level (e.g. City of Ottawa), at the provincial level, and federally.  (And beyond, through international aggregation sites.)

 

City of Ottawa

Ottawa COVID-19 Open Data

Ottawa's open data site is https://open.ottawa.ca/

COVID-19 open data can be found just using "COVID-19" as a search.  In this case I've also filtered for just CSV format files.

https://open.ottawa.ca/search?q=covid-19&type=csv

There are 8 datasets, including:

• COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in Ottawa
• COVID-19 Weekly Cases and Rates by Age in Ottawa (Last 6 Weeks)
• COVID-19 Reproduction Number (R(t))
• Data tables for Public COVID-19 Maps

The only one that doesn't seem to be updated frequently is "Data tables for ONS Neighbourhood COVID-19 Maps".

So the good news is the data exist, the data are being kept up-to-date, and the data are in a usable, machine-readable format.

So let's look at three more aspects:

• Is the data surfaced with tools for people to work with the data?
• Is the data clearly linked when it is used?
• Do the city's own websites/tools use the open data (and is it clear that they do so)?

Ottawa COVID-19 website

The main general use site is Ottawa Public Health - Statistics on Coronavirus 19 (COVID-19) in Ottawa, it has links to:

• Daily COVID-19 Dashboard
• COVID-19 Vaccination Dashboard
• Mapping Products
• Wastewater COVID-19 Surveillance
• Projections

The dashboard is in Microsoft Power BI, which I have seen used on a number of COVID-19 information sites.

The data pipeline is clear, but I don't think it is one that is available to the public: "Data are extracted from [the provincial Case and Contact Management (CCM) reporting system] at 3 pm daily and loaded to the dashboard the following day."  In other words, it doesn't look like the Power BI visuals are generated directly from the Ottawa open data, but instead from the provincial closed system.

Open Data Clearly and Prominently Available

However, the really good news is right below the explanation of the data source used (CCM), and before showing the dashboard, the page links directly to the open data: "The following data tables are available for download on Open Ottawa". 

So this meets a key goal, it makes the data a kind of equal, so that you easily click the links and do your own analysis whether in a spreadsheet, by writing code, or using other data analysis tools.

It's hard to overstate what a big change this is in how data is provided to the general public.  Linking to the open data at all is a big deal, but linking to it right at the top before the visualisation is a really strong and clear statement of openness.

There is a gap in that as far as I know there's no way to access the underlying Power BI setup (which incidentally generates five different pages, use the < > way down at the bottom of the Power BI frame on the page to see other Power BI pages), which means that you can see the really complicated visuals but you don't get much insight into how they're made or how you could use Power BI to make your own.

There is also a gap in that, I guess due to different cut-off time for updates, the municipal dashboard numbers are different from the provincial ones.

In terms of discoverability there are basically two pathways to the open data, one directly from Open Ottawa and one from Ottawa Public Health, but they are not quite equal.

If you land directly on Open Ottawa, you would find out it has COVID-19 open data even without a search as they are surfacing several datasets (I would guess this is automated based on traffic to the datasets, but it could be manually curated).

But you wouldn't find wastewater data, because it's on a different site https://613covid.ca/wastewater/

The wastewater site uses more of an academic format, and presents all of the data visualisations up front, before you find out below that you can "See the Methods page for more information on how the samples were collected, access to the data, and how the plots were created." 

There are some issues at this point that are more web design and user-centric design than data.  For example the Methods page is actually called model, and you can't get directly to the top of the page by clicking the Methods menu item, you have to click "Projection models" within that menu.  If you're looking for data you're more likely to pull down the Methods menu and go to "Plot data", but that won't take you directly to the open data - basically you will have to navigate around the page quite a bit before you find out that the data are actually linked under "Waterwater surveillance".  The data are made available on GitHub.

https://github.com/Big-Life-Lab/covid-19-wastewater

So not only could the wastewater site benefit from more directly and clearly linking to the GitHub data near to where it is shown in visualisations and tables, but you can't find the wastewater data at all if you start on the Open Ottawa site.  So there is a gap in integrating these different open data sources.  However, the use of GitHub does provide another path for discoverability, and adds the ability to easily share not just data but also code.

The situation for data is similar for COVID-19 projections, which can be found at

https://613covid.ca/

The source data for the projection models is the Ottawa open data, which is a good clear reuse of the data directly.  The projection models themselves are drawn from a variety of clearly linked sources.  You can see that the wastewater data is kind of added on to the models, which may be one reason for some content visibility issues in the website design.  By navigating on GitHub I can also find that the 613covid.ca projections website is generated from

https://github.com/Big-Life-Lab/Ottawa-COVID-Projection

but I don't think you can find this on the projection website itself.  It's good that the website content is on GitHub as it means pull requests can be submitted with suggested changes; however creating and submitting pull requests for a site built from GitHub is a high barrier for most users.

 

Province of Ontario

Ontario COVID-19 Open Data

The Province of Ontario's open data site is https://data.ontario.ca/

COVID-19 open data can be found just using "COVID-19" as a search.  In this case I've also filtered for just CSV format files.

https://data.ontario.ca/dataset?keywords_en=COVID-19&res_format=CSV

There are 19 dataset pages, which may link to more than one dataset per page.  For example, to find daily new cases you first go to the page

Status of COVID-19 cases in Ontario

and then select the dataset

Daily change in cases by PHU

(PHU means Public Health Unit.)

Having a full page means that a lot of explanatory and related information can be provided.  The data website itself has good functionality including the ability to preview a CSV dataset on the website itself as a grid (spreadsheet-like view), as a graph, or as a map.

https://data.ontario.ca/dataset/status-of-covid-19-cases-in-ontario/resource/8a88fe6d-d8fb-41a3-9d04-f0550a44999f

This is a great way to allow people to explore data without needing their own tools.

There is also an API available for the datasets.

https://data.ontario.ca/api/1/util/snippet/api_info.html?resource_id=8a88fe6d-d8fb-41a3-9d04-f0550a44999f

Ontario COVID-19 website

The main general use site is COVID-19 (coronavirus) in Ontario.

Right below a website display of COVID-19 cases, it has a prominent button:

Get COVID-19 data and details

and next to it,

Download the raw data from the Ontario Data Catalogue

So you have two highly visible pathways to the data.  The data and details page provides tables, maps and charts, so you can work directly with the data on the web without needing specialised tools.  At the bottom of the data and details page, it again links to the underlying data, in a "Where the numbers come from" section.  You are left a bit to navigate the data catalogue to figure out which datasets generate which charts.  The page would benefit from adding a CSV download button with each visualisation.

For example, I had to try several different data catalogue pages and examine a number of datasets before finding the new cases dataset.

Nevertheless, this is overall a really strong open data success, with multiple really clear linkages to the open data.

If you land directly on the Ontario Data Catalogue, you would find out it has COVID-19 open data even without a search as they are surfacing several datasets both under What's New (which I'm guessing is manually curated) and in the lists of Most popular and Recently updated datasets.

I will note however that their custom 2019 Novel Coronavirus group includes many more datasets than you would find just by searching COVID-19.  There is a pathway from a dataset to the group, but you would have to notice that there is a Groups option at the top of every dataset.

 

Government of Canada

Government of Canada COVID-19 Open Data

The Government of Canada open data site is https://open.canada.ca/en/open-data

COVID-19 open data can be found just using "COVID-19" as a search.  In this case, I've filtered to include CSV, JSON, GeoJSON, XLS, XLSX, XML only:

https://search.open.canada.ca/en/od/?sort=score%20desc&page=1&search_text=covid-19%20OR%20coronavirus&od-search-col=Non-Spatial|Open%20Maps&od-search-format=CSV|JSON|GEOJSON|XLS|XLSX|XML

With these filters, there are 118 datasets.

If you look at e.g. Cumulative number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in Canada by jurisdiction

https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/3b75a8d6-c5a9-48f9-834b-626eec16363f

you can see a clear description of the dataset and a link to download it in CSV format, but no tools to work with the dataset on the page itself.

Government of Canada COVID-19 website

The main general website is Government of Canada - Coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

A page about data can be found linked right in the top section

Current situation - COVID-19 data trends

Once we get there though, the situation is somewhat mixed.

The first link, Daily epidemiological report, takes you to many visualisations.  But it is really PDF bound, including a link to a PDF version of the page at the top, as well as (somewhat indirectly) linking to a weekly PDF summary (week of April 9, 2021 in this example).

There are some links to underlying open data, e.g. to CSV open data underlying "Current situation", but you have to be pretty sharp-eyed to spot them.

That being said, on the data trends page, there are two links in trend data that will take you to data:

• Downloadable data on COVID-19 across Canada takes you to the Government of Canada open data website, but it takes you to a single dataset, Public Health Infobase - Data on COVID-19 in Canada rather than a group or search or summary page listing all of the 100+ COVID-19 datasets.
• You can also find CSVs linked from some of the visualisations in Visual data gallery: COVID-19 graphs, charts, maps and more.

Overall I would say that while kudos is due to the Government of Canada for linking to open data, it could take lessons from the City of Ottawa and the Province of Ontario in more prominently and consistently surfacing the open data as part of its websites.

Similarly, if you land directly on the Government of Canada open data website

https://open.canada.ca/en/open-data

you get no indication that it has COVID-19 open data, unlike the prominent highlighting of COVID-19 open data on both the Ottawa and Ontario websites.

International

I will mention very briefly Our World in Data, which aggregates and then republishes international open data.  For COVID-19 specifically see

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

There is a clear open license at the top of the web page, and there are visualisation tools (charts) provided.

Notably both the data and the code are made available on GitHub.

https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/tree/master/public/data

Sidebar: Coding and Open Data

It is now much easier to work directly with open data in modern programming languages, particularly with CSV format data.  As an example, you can see my previous blog post about Juypyter Notebooks (Python coding) using Google Colaboratory, and a Jupyter Notebook that I created to chart new cases of COVID-19 in Ottawa is available on GitHub: https://github.com/scilib/ontario_cv19_opendata_plot

License for this blog post

This blog post is Copyright © 2021 Richard Akerman, and the text and associated images are licensed in the Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 International.

This blog post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

This license applies only to this blog post and not to the entire blog as a whole.