2026-09-11 22:19:41
My August newsletter, issue number 26, that was sent out to subscribers a couple of weeks ago, is now open for all to read.
You can also access this issue, as well as visit the full catalogue of previous issues, via the Newsletter page.
If you’re not already a subscriber, its time to change that! To receive this free monthly newsletter straight into your inbox you can sign up here or visit the Newsletter page to get a bit more background information and instructions.
Thank you as always to everyone who subscribes, reads, shares, visits and responds to this newsletter. But above all thank you to all the people doing ace work that I’m able to curate and share through these issues.
The post The August 2026 newsletter is now open to all appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.
2026-09-11 21:55:06
I’m happy to announce details of a new public training course: A two-day classroom-based ‘Masterclass in Data Visualisation‘ will take place in London on 23-24 November 2026 and is hosted by the wonderful people at Flourish.
This is an essential non-technical course for anyone seeking to develop a sophisticated capability in the modern craft of data visualisation.
You can read more information about my training courses, which have been running since November 2011. Further public training events, virtual and classroom, will be arranged in response to demand and schedule availability. If your organisation would be interested in exploring options to arrange a training privately for your colleagues, just get in touch.
What is this training about?
This Masterclass training course provides attendees with a sophisticated understanding of how to visually communicate data in the most impactive way. Delivered over two full-day sessions this training de-constructs this complex, multi-disciplinary craft into an organised sequence of topics towards giving attendees a thorough appreciation of how to navigate through the many creative, editorial, and analytical options that exist.
In contrast to the shorter ‘Fundamentals of Data Visualisation’ training, also offered by Andy Kirk, this course has more breadth and goes into greater detail, including covering additional topics not covered in the shorter course. There is also more time to allow for opportunities to practice the learning gained through more exercise activities.
Who is this training for?
This training is relevant to anyone who has a role in or undertakes duties involving the analysis, presentation, and communication of data. Whether your work is primarily concerned with building dashboards, creating infographics, constructing data stories, or producing charts for reports, its all part of the same world.
This course is about refining your craft as a communicator. Its about embracing the careful thinking you need to go through to make judgments only humans can fundamentally make. Its about the choices that are right for the people your work is for, for the subject its about, for the analysis it portrays.
This is not technical training. You will not receive teaching in the form of instruction based tutorials for how to make nice charts in specific tools. You will learn about the profile of some of the most common tools that are being used in the field today, about the opportunities where collaborating with AI can be potentially useful, and you will be pointed towards many useful online references to help you develop your technical skills to apply what you learn in the course.
However, regardless of the tools you use now or how you engage with AI agents, LLM’s or built-in assistance features, this popular course aims to be of timeless value to help everyone judge the best approach they should be taking to visualising any data analysis in the most contextually-reasoned way.
For more information about the course contents and objectives visit the training page where you will also find a selection of testimonials from previous attendees.
Who is this training delivered by?
Andy Kirk is an independent data visualisation expert from the UK and now based in Ireland. He is one of the most in-demand, experienced, and prolific educators in the field, having delivered nearly 450 public and private training courses since becoming a freelance professional in 2010. Visit Andy’s website, visualisingdata.com, to learn more about his training experiences as well as his other work in visualisation design, consultancy, lecturing, and book authoring.
Where will this training be held?
This course will be held at Bersey Warehouse, a premise on the London campus of Canva, located at 293 Old Street on the corner with Coronet Street in the Hoxton area (postcode: EC1V 9LA). This is about 6-8 minutes walk from Old Street underground station. Specific arrival instructions will be provided to all attendees priort to the course.
Hot/cold drinks and snack refreshments will be available throughout the day and an optional lunch will also be provided. The venue is also closely located to many cafes and sandwich shop options.
Timings
On both days this training commences at 9:30am and finishes around 4:30pm. Arrival will be open from 9am onwards. There will be breaks during all morning and afternoon sessions, and a lunch break each day of around 60 minutes.
Technology
Attendees are requested to bring a laptop to use as a workspace for the session. The event is not technical in nature but this will enable you to access the course materials and exercise files referred to during the sessions. You will not require any specialist software beyond Excel/Sheets, a pdf reader, and a browser. Across a day you should expect to need around 3 hours of charge. Power access will be provided for charging devices.
The online whiteboard platform, Miro, will be used extensively during the course to collate and share exercise activities. More details will be provided in the class. Other than using a browser and a pdf reader, no additional tools will be necessary to have access to or skills with for this non-technical course.
Training materials will be issued digitally, including the teaching slides, exercise files and further useful resources, and delegates will receive instructions and information about this prior to the course resources. OneDrive, as a first preference, or WeTransfer, as an alternative, will be the typical methods used for material sharing.
Registration
Registration can be made online using the built-in Eventbrite payment processing system. Click on ‘Get Tickets’, choose the relevant ticket option, and then follow the instructions to complete the delegate registration and payment details.
If you would prefer to register offline and arrange payment via an invoice process for electronic transfer just email [email protected] to reserve your place and progress your registration.
Pricing: Fees, VAT charges, and Discounts!
The standard registration pricing for this course is £700+VAT per person. The total cost will depend on any additional processing fees, your VAT exemption status, and the application of potential discounts.
VAT charges are relevant to the following types of buyer:
VAT charges are exempt for the following types of buyer:
There are FOUR ways of joining this course at a reduced price…
(1) Subscribers to Andy Kirk’s Visualising Data Newsletter will find a promo code for a 10% discount mentioned in each monthly issue.
(2) Do you own a copy of the ‘Data Visualisation: A Handbook for Data Driven Design‘ book (any edition)? If you do there is a 10% discount available when using the promo code which is the full name of the final chart type in the gallery of methods presented in the book’s sixth chapter. The same final ‘chart’ is listed is all editions of the book. Removing the space, the code should be 7 characters in length.
To apply this discount, when you get to the training registration checkout, in the ‘Promo code’ box enter the code (not case sensitive) and this will reduce the price by 10%.
(3) Eventbrite charges a non-refundable processing fee of ~8% which applies to all registration types. To avoid incurring these additional charges you may instead choose to register offline and arrange payment via an invoice process for electronic transfer. If you/your organisation prefer this method please just email [email protected] to reserve your place and progress your registration.
(4) For some people interested in attending such training, finances can be a barrier. Whether it is due to the relative cost of living in your region or specific personal circumstances, it is entirely appreciated that financial obstacles will exist for some. As a commitment to widening access to these training courses, at least 2 places will be made available on this course, no questions asked, at a discounted ‘pay what you can afford’ basis.
If you would benefit from and feel you would qualify to take one of these available places please email [email protected] to make the necessary arrangements for your registration (ie. this may entail being issued with a discount code to apply to a standard registration procedure).
Cancellations and changes policy
Full refunds (less the non-refundable Eventbrite processing fees ~8%) are offered for any delegate cancellations made up to 7 days before the course start date. Please email [email protected] if this situation arises.
Cancellations made during the 7 days prior to the course starting will be offered a 50% refund (less processing fees), as it becomes much harder to fill a space vacated with such short notice.
Registrations can be switched to a different attendee. Please email [email protected] if this situation arises.
In the rare event the course itself has to be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances all attendees will be offered a choice of a full refund (excluding processing fees) OR the opportunity to attend an alternative training course in the future. Refunds will be limited to registration costs alone, Visualising Data Ltd is not liable for any other costs incurred.
The post New Course: ‘Masterclass in Data Visualisation’ (London, November 2026) appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.
2026-08-19 18:16:20
My July newsletter, issue number 25, that was sent out to subscribers a couple of weeks ago, is now open for all to read.
You can also access this issue, as well as visit the full catalogue of previous issues, via the Newsletter page.
If you’re not already a subscriber, its time to change that! To receive this free monthly newsletter straight into your inbox you can sign up here or visit the Newsletter page to get a bit more background information and instructions.
Thank you as always to everyone who subscribes, reads, shares, visits and responds to this newsletter. But above all thank you to all the people doing ace work that I’m able to curate and share through these issues.
The post The July 2026 newsletter is now open to all appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.
2026-08-11 20:08:32
Earlier this summer I embarked on an outside-of-work project to bring a bit of colour to a blank garden wall. Other than brightening up a part of the garden that spends most of the day in shade, it was also a nice opportunity for some analogue creativity and to briefly, if not entirely, get away from tech.
Here’s the wall in question in its original state.
Since we moved into our new house in December I’d been thinking about what to do with this wall.
It was such a tempting blank canvas, rich in potential to have something creative done to it. I knew it was unlikely to be a place where we grew stuff up it (there’s an opposite white wall in full sun where that can happen) but I knew just whitewashing it wouldn’t be enough.
That said, whitewashing was the first stage, along with some filling and removing of some wall fixtures. Here’s the before-and-after shot…
…but I know you probably want the timelapse of the whitewashing. Of course you do, its always very satisfying. This was done on Bank Holiday Monday, May 4th.
The canvas was prepared, but what to do with it?
In my previous apartment in Dublin city centre I lived near an amazing stretch of street art on South Dock Road, along the River Dodder. I’ve always fancied having a go at spray painting and seeing the artists down there doing what they do was simultaneously inspiring but also cautioning. As much as I’d like to give it a go, without the talent and experience I knew it would be the wrong thing to try for this project. Another time maybe.
Beyond the choice of material, in terms of the creative ‘subject’ I also knew that to attempt something figurative would be high-risk: unless it was perfectly executed it would look rubbish and would be misaligned stylistically with the garden setting. Sure, I could always CTRL-Z by whitewashing but I didn’t want to waste my time.
Although I flirted with the idea, I quickly rejected any pursuit of a data-driven creation. I wanted to be a bit freer than that would afford and I also sought some clear water with the day job.
I settled on pursuing something that would be abstract and geometric in nature. I let my brain relax into waiting for something compelling to come to mind and one night I had a vision of a rectangular grid of squares overlaid with concentric rings. I don’t know why, it just popped up in my mind. I wrote down my idea on my phone’s Notes app then drew it out in Illustrator in the morning. I immediately had that inner feeling that here was something I could work with.
The dimensions of the wall space were approx 6 metres in length and 2 metres in height, which was a neat aspect to work within. I adjusted the initial outline sketch to match those dimensions making the overall pattern more rectangular. I also adjusted the layout to find the right harmony for the numbers of rings, the most elegant positioning of each circle’s origin, and the ideal grid-cell dimensions.
But what would I do with this outline pattern? How would I fill it? With what colours would I paint it?
I initially considered a blend of filling isolated cells and then combining others into continuous shapes. I wanted to use a range of colours but I needed some theme to work towards and maybe some rules to work within.
To help experiment with different options I exported from Illustrator an SVG of my final pattern and then used Claude AI to build a little tool to isolate all the pattern’s individual cell regions and fill them with different colours, drawing from a set of predefined palettes as well as the flexibility to customise my own.
I was getting closer to finding the answer. I extended the tool to allow modifications to the pattern’s stroke colour and width and, above all, introduced an optimised layout rule whereby no cell would be filled in the same colour as a directly adjacent cell. This would help me determine the required number of distinct colours. I added a feature to save generated custom palettes and to export the resulting patterns as png/svg images. With that I also included the option to add a numeric colour label so that I would be able to follow a ‘paint by numbers’ approach when executing it on the wall.
Although I had liked the burst of bright rich colours offered by some of the palettes, the choice of these colours was arbitrary. I wanted something a bit more meaningful, or at least a bit more deliberate.
As I was thinking more about the pattern, I started seeing it as being an abstract depiction of ripples in water. Maybe the movement of water when you are in a swimming pool looking down at its tiled floor. This ‘water’ theme was also relevant given about 600m (as the crow flies) beyond the wall I was painting on are the waters of Dublin bay.
I liked this idea, focusing on different variations of one primary hue (blue) with a single accent colour (gold). I was still unsure whether to actively paint the outline strokes of each region but I was clear that, though the tool was generating patterns based on a full rectangle, I was going to ignore the corners and have rounded edges.
Having worked out the design wireframe and paint-filling approach, I had to choose my paint material. I did some research into the most robust exterior paint types (the wall is exposed to Ireland’s climate, after all) as well as considered which range would offer me the widest variety of colour options AND be available in the right volume quantities. I didn’t want to invest in huge 2L/5L tubs of different paint colours if I was only going to need to use small amounts of each.
The best option came with B&Q’s ‘Valspar’ paints, specifically their exterior masonry range. Not only could I pick from a huge range of colours I could also get 236ml tester pots of my chosen colours for €7. Having established I would need six different colour paints, I calculated how much surface area each colour was expected to cover. I ordered two tester pots for each (the ‘gold’ colour was sourced from another paint specialist), giving me just enough to do one coat with a bit of spare paint leftover for future touch-ups.
It was time to start. With my pattern guide printed I plotted out the design’s real-world dimensions and got to work on drawing it up on to the wall.
With the wall’s surface being far more lumpy-and-bumpy than I’d realised I decided to use a dry-wipe marker pen to draw out the pattern (this was a mistake as it turns out dry-wipe pen plus rain equals goodbye drawing. Who knew?). With a metre rule, set square, and spirit level I created the outline grid.
To form the circles I used a simple method of string attached to the circle origin at one end and to the pen at the other and drew out the arcs, extending the string length by a grid’s-width each time.
I then marked out all the cells that would be taking the first of my blue colours, using my paint-by-numbers guide to put little blobs of colour in each relevant region.
The most challenging aspect of doing the painting was coping with the wall’s uneven nature. Not only was the wall not uniformly flat or straight throughout, the surface would be best described as being akin to painting on a giant poppadom. Because of this it took far longer and far more effort to complete each cell as accurately as I could manage without losing my marbles. This was made harder by the deteriorating outlines of the pattern during what was becoming quite a wet month of May.
Despite that, progress continued…
By the end of May I had managed to get through filling in all the regions for all four of the blues.
Next up, the hugely satisfying addition of the gold paint. The final colour to add.
Until finally, belatedly after a few weeks break due to bad weather and holidays, by mid-June I applied the final touches using a gold-ink pen for the tiny little regions that were too fiddly for the paint brush.
And there we have it. Took a few weeks in the end because it was only possible to make occasional progress. I reckon if I’d been working on it continuously and without weather interruptions it would have taken a full working week. I’m not sure I would have had the patience though to do it so relentlessly like that.
The post My summer side quest appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.
2026-07-20 23:41:46
The World Cup is over!! And wow…
I know people have had mixed feelings about the tournament, but one thing no one can deny is that it has been full of memorable moments. From Cabo Verde coming out of nowhere and stealing everyone’s hearts, to England and France battling it out for bronze, and of course, the final itself. It’s been one incredible tournament.
But while the players have been putting their hearts on the line, another battle has been taking place in the background: the battle between football fans and technology.
I don’t know how many people I’ve heard say that the thing they dislike most about the modern game is VAR and all the technology now involved in football. I mean, in one match, there were even arguments about whether the ball had hit a drone before coming back down! Whether you love it or hate it, technology is now deeply woven into the game.
And where there are drones, AI and controversy… There must be data.
Data In The Wild
Welcome back to another edition of Data in the Wild, the series where we investigate how data is formed, collected and used to influence the world around us. Today, we’re going to explore three ways data and technology are shaping modern football: the ball, the game and the culture.
Let’s do it.
Data & Technology in Football Isn’t New
This may seem obvious to some, but it doesn’t hurt to be reminded. As much as it feels like technology in football is a recent phenomenon, it’s actually been evolving for decades.
For most of football’s history, the game relied almost entirely on human judgment. Referees made decisions based on what they saw, coaches relied on memory and handwritten notes, and fans debated controversial moments for years because there simply wasn’t a way to know for certain what had happened.
Technology slowly began changing that.
During the 1980s, video analysis gave coaches the ability to replay matches repeatedly, transforming how teams prepared, learned and developed tactics. Then, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, sports science became increasingly important. Heart rate monitors, GPS trackers and performance data helped clubs understand how hard players were working, reduce injuries and tailor training to individual athletes.
But the biggest shift came during the last decade.
Rather than simply helping players perform better, technology began helping officials make decisions. Goal-line technology, introduced at the highest level in 2012, could instantly determine whether the whole ball had crossed the line. A few years later came Video Assistant Referees (VAR), giving officials access to multiple camera angles to review game-changing incidents.
As much as people claim technology is taking the thrill out of football, I have to admit that if a “Hand of God” moment happened in today’s game and nobody could prove what really happened, the corruption allegations would probably be on another level.
So, let’s get into the tech.
The Ball: The Smartest Thing on the Pitch
Let’s start with something I genuinely didn’t know until a few weeks ago.
Believe it or not, one of the smartest things on the pitch isn’t actually one of the twenty-two players or even the coaches standing on the sidelines.
It’s the football.
Inside the official match ball is something called an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), and it’s actually something you’ve encountered before.
In fact, if you’re reading this on your phone, you’re probably holding one right now.
Think about what your phone can do. It knows when you rotate it, which is why the screen flips between portrait and landscape. It knows when you’ve dropped it (hopefully not too many times), and it can even count your steps while you’re walking around.
The football works using a very similar idea.
Instead of measuring your movement, however, it spends the entire match measuring its own.
Inside the ball are tiny motion sensors that monitor changes in movement around 500 times every second. Every kick, every header, every deflection and every tiny touch changes the way the ball moves. Those changes are detected almost instantly, allowing the system to identify the exact moment the ball has been played.
At first, I didn’t think that sounded particularly impressive.
I mean… surely we can already see when someone kicks a football?
Well… yes and no.
Imagine trying to work out the exact moment someone kicks the ball using only television footage. Most broadcast cameras record around 50 images every second, which sounds like a lot until you compare it to the sensor inside the football. While the camera captures around 50 snapshots during a second of play, the ball is quietly collecting around 500 measurements over that same period.
That means the sensor can provide a much more precise timestamp for when the ball was actually touched. We’re talking about differences measured in milliseconds, but in football, a few milliseconds can be the difference between a player being onside or offside.
Of course, the football can only tell us when it was touched.
It can’t tell us who touched it.
For that, the stadium needs another pair of eyes entirely.
The Game: The Stadium Has Eyes
So, if the football can tell us when it was touched, how does the system know who touched it?
That’s where the stadium comes in.
Hidden high above the pitch is a network of dedicated tracking cameras whose only job is to watch the game. They’re not there to create the television broadcast or capture dramatic slow-motion replays. They’re there to measure movement.
Imagine watching a football match through sixteen pairs of eyes that never blink, never get distracted and can remember exactly where every player has been for the last ninety minutes.
That’s essentially what these cameras do.
They continuously track the players and the ball, collecting positional information around fifty times every second. Rather than simply recognising that “there’s a footballer over there”, the system tracks different parts of each player’s body using computer vision, creating a constantly updating digital representation of the match.
And this is what powers semi-automated offside.
If you’ve ever watched a VAR offside check, you’ve probably seen those 3D animations with players frozen in place and coloured lines appearing across the pitch. For the longest time, I assumed the computer was simply drawing lines on top of the television footage.
It turns out it’s much cleverer than that.
To decide whether a player is offside, the system needs to answer two questions:
Where was everybody?
And…
Exactly when was the ball played?
The cameras answer the first question by tracking the positions of the players.
The sensor inside the ball answers the second by detecting the exact moment the pass was made.
Artificial intelligence then combines those two streams of information, creating an automated offside alert for the video officials. They review the recommendation before passing the final decision back to the referee on the pitch.
That’s why FIFA calls it semi-automated offside rather than fully automated. The technology speeds up the process, but a human is still responsible for making the final decision.
Whether you love VAR or absolutely cannot stand it, I have to admit… that’s a pretty incredible piece of engineering.
The Culture: Commentary and Stats Merchants
Of course, what we’ve talked about today is only a small part of the story.
Once I understood how the technology worked, I suddenly looked at football statistics very differently. It made me realise that all the numbers commentators casually throw around during a match aren’t just random facts they’re built on carefully collected measurements, sound methodologies and statistical analysis.
The statistics we see on television are really just the final product.
Passing maps are built from tracking where the ball has travelled around the pitch. Shot maps reveal where players tend to shoot from and which areas are most dangerous. Heat maps show where players spend most of their time during a match. Possession statistics, sprint speeds and distance covered all begin with thousands of tiny measurements collected throughout the game.
Behind the scenes, clubs take this even further. Coaches, analysts and sports scientists use performance data to monitor player workload, fatigue, recovery and overall well-being, helping players stay fit and perform at their best throughout a long season.
Perhaps what fascinated me most, though, wasn’t the technology itself.
It was how quickly football culture has embraced data.
During the World Cup final, my WhatsApp chats were full of screenshots of passing networks, expected goals charts, shot maps and player comparisons. It honestly threw me off.
People often say data is difficult to understand, but I think context makes all the difference. Put a chart in a report and some people switch off. Put that same chart next to a football match and suddenly millions of people are analysing it, debating it and sharing it with their friends.
Maybe data isn’t as inaccessible as we sometimes think.
Maybe people just need a story they already care about.
Looking at Football Differently
Similar to many other industries and sectors, we need to be honest: technology, AI and all of the innovations we’ve talked about today aren’t going to decrease. They’re only going to become even more integrated into our lives and, undoubtedly, into football.
Learning about the current uses of these technologies alone has blown my mind, so I can’t wait to see what new innovations emerge over the next few years.
One of my favourite things about writing this series is that it completely changes how I look at everyday things.
I can’t turn on my phone’s GPS without thinking about satellites.
I can’t walk through London without wondering how much location data is quietly being created around me.
And now…
I don’t think I’ll ever watch football in quite the same way again.
The next time I hear a commentator mention a player’s sprint speed or see an offside graphic appear on my screen, I’ll know there’s an invisible network of cameras, sensors and algorithms working behind the scenes to make that information possible.
So, if you’re interested in learning more about how technology is being used to shape the way we experience the world around us, I look forward to seeing you next time as we uncover more data…
…in the wild.
Football is no longer just a game played on the pitch; it’s also a game of data. From sensors hidden inside the ball to AI-powered offside decisions and the statistics we see every match day, discover the invisible technology transforming how football is played, analysed and experienced around the world.
Smart motorways are quietly shaping how we drive. That sudden drop from 70 to 50? It’s not random. Sensors and systems are predicting traffic before it happens, slowing everyone down to prevent jams. It’s data controlling the road in real time… the question is, do we actually trust it?
In this edition of Data in the Wild, I explore what it really means to “share your location.” From GPS and Wi-Fi to ship tracking and TfL demand modelling, this piece unpacks how geolocation works, where it shows up in everyday life, and what we can build when movement becomes data.
The post Data in the wild #18: The Hidden Data Behind Football appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.
2026-07-20 21:53:18
Welcome to episode 9 of season 6 of Explore Explain, a long-form video and podcast series all about data visualisation design. Or, at least, it was…
This isn’t just the final episode of the season, it is the final episode of the show! I will post more about my reasons for this in due course, but let me thank right here every guest, listener and/or viewer for engaging with the 54 episodes we’ve pulled together, featuring 80 guests across six seasons and over the past six years.
And so, for this grand finale, I indulge in a bit of self-promotion by spending time exploring and explaining the creative process behind my new project: ‘The Seinfeld Chronicle: Digital Edition’, a rebooted and reimagined version of this long-term analytical investigation I’ve been doing about the popular US sitcom. To serve as a quick intro, you can read a bit more about the project by visiting the launch post.
The conversation was recorded as a live webinar episode featuring myself, as host and as a guest, alongside my multi-talented collaborators including data visualization designer and developer, Anne-Marie Dufour, as well as sonification superstars Miriam Quick and Duncan Geere (Loud Numbers). (Sadly, due to laryngitis, you won’t be able to hear Miriam, but you’ll certainly hear about her contributions to this project!).
As well as listening to this show, you can watch the video of this conversation. Head over to Youtube and visit the Explore Explain channel.
You can watch this episode using the embedded player below or over on the dedicated Explore Explain Youtube channel, where you’ll find all the other video-based episodes and curated playlists.
To listen directly, visit this link or use the embedded podcast player below. The audio podcast is published across all common platforms (such as Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music etc.), so you will find this series listed in their respective directories by searching for ‘Explore Explain’ or by manually entering – or copying/pasting – this url to your subscriptions – https://feed.pod.co/exploreexplain.
The post Explore Explain S6E9 – The Final Episode! appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.
