Phil Levine on Humor for the Chart-Lover

My name is Phil Levine and I’m a full-time statistician in search of things that make me laugh, because a lot of my work just isn’t funny and there is research that shows that laughing will make me live longer. The Genuine Evaluation Blog (always a good read) regularly posts “The Friday Funny” (always a funny read). I asked if I could have my post on aea365 on Friday so that I too could be funny. So, for a little humor for the chart-lover, I offer these sources, ordered from the least likely to make you laugh to the most:

Rad Resource – Chart Porn: Chart Porn offers “data visualizations you just gotta love.” The odd thing here is that a number of the posts are absolutely serious, while others are quite funny. Conveniently, the funny ones are tagged humor and may all be accessed here. In search of the funny, yet useful, I found this on Chart Porn, streamed from epic.graphic. I’m not completely sure that I agree with the metaphor but it made me think, and appeared yummy.

data cake

Rad Resource – Graph Jam: Here’s the reality – this is a humor site. It is supposed to be funny. In theory all of the graphs there should make you laugh. They don’t. But if you search, one might make you giggle a little bit in an embarrassed sort of way. I want to laugh more, but the guffaws have gotten increasingly few and far between.

Rad Resource – Graph Jam: Here’s the reality – this is a humor site. It is supposed to be funny. In theory all of the graphs there should make you laugh. They don’t. But if you search, one might make you giggle a little bit in an embarrassed sort of way. I want to laugh more, but the guffaws have gotten increasingly few and far between.

Rad Resource – Indexed: One per day. Every weekday. A little graph hand drawn on an index card. Completely funny. It’s been featured in Time, Good Magazine, and the Guardian’s Best of the Internet. Here’s a favorite that I found particularly relevant:

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2 thoughts on “Phil Levine on Humor for the Chart-Lover”

  1. I love the cake analogy. I have it on my wall which reminds me to use it and has generated many interesting discussions amongst colleagues on how we know when somebody ate the cake.

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