2025-08-08 06:54:49
OpenAI introduced GPT-5 in a livestream, and they used a set of seemingly straightforward charts for benchmarks. The point was to show the improved performance of GPT-5 over previous models. However, the labels do not remotely match the bar heights.
The bar for 69.1% is the same height as the one for 30.8% when the former should be more than twice the height of the latter. The bar for 52.8% is taller than the one for 69.1%. It’s off.
2025-08-08 05:02:21
Hansi Lo Wang reporting for NPR:
The 14th Amendment requires the “whole number of persons in each state” to be included in a key set of census numbers used to determine how presidents and members of Congress are elected.
It’s unclear if Trump — who, according to the Constitution, does not have final authority over the census — is referring to the regularly scheduled national head count in 2030 or an earlier tally.
Trump said he’s instructed the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, to “immediately begin work” on a census using “the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024.” It’s unclear why the election results would matter to the census.
The Trump announcement comes just a couple weeks after the Census Bureau released their operational plan for the 2030 count, naturally.
Tags: census, counting, government, NPR
2025-08-08 01:24:05
Matt Seaton, for the Atlantic, reports on how the statistical approach impacted cycling and led to Tour de France winning.
The riders now train with the data, they race with the data, they publish their data on Strava and similar training apps, they probably dream about their data. So we know that during a crucial mountain stage in last year’s Tour de France—won convincingly by Pogačar on his way to overall victory—he produced approximately 7 watts per kilo for nearly 40 minutes. His main rival, Vingegaard again, actually tried an attack that failed, despite an estimated output of more than 7 watts per kilo for nearly 15 minutes. These were efforts in the Pyrenees; at sea level, the numbers would be even higher. (This all gets geeky quickly.)
Winning cyclists are riding faster and more efficiently now than they were during the peak doping era.
These days, data plays a part in most sports to optimize athletic performance. There’s a clear response variable — winning — and everything else (explanatory variables) feeds into that.
Cycling and other endurance sports work especially well with data, because the interactions between opponents and the movements to get from point A to point B are more straightforward. Fewer variables and less uncertainty.
I’m looking forward to seeing advanced analytics for bowling. Competitive darts? Beer pong?
Tags: Atlantic, cycling, sports, Tour de France
2025-08-07 23:08:20
Hi everybody. Nathan here. This is the Process, a member-exclusive newsletter on data and visualization beyond defaults, but this week we think about how staying within chart defaults might provide an advantage.
Become a member for access to this — plus tutorials, courses, and guides.
2025-08-07 18:31:10
Reuters highlights unsafe temperatures in prison cells, using building models, public records, and temperature data.
There’s often little relief within the prison walls. Nearly half of state prisons across 29 states have partial or no air conditioning in housing units, according to an exclusive database created by Reuters using documents obtained through public records requests to all 50 states. The Bureau of Prisons, which oversees all 122 federal prisons, did not respond to Reuters’ request seeking information on how many facilities have air conditioning as of the time of publication.
Find more on their methodology here.
Tags: prison, Reuters, temperature
2025-08-06 21:06:26
It’s exciting when an animal escapes from the zoo. A monkey breaks free from its cage, ridding itself of restriction with nothing but freedom ahead. In a way, we are animals in a zoo biding our time until we can finally break free. Indeed.
For WaPo’s Department of Data, Bonnie Berkowitz, Artur Galocha, and Andrew Van Dam reminisce over the animal escapes since 1990, based on data catalogued by Born Free USA.
Tags: animals, Washington Post, zoo
