Hi, this is Qichun. In Chinese, it’s written as ‘其纯’. You are welcome to call me Q if you have no idea how to pronounce my name. 🙂 Of course, I am more than happy to teach you how to say it if we can meet in person!
In my first post, I would like to talk about why I start this site and what the contents will be.
WHY
I am not a big fan of social media because I don’t like post pictures online and chat in the comments. I want to live in the moment, not worrying about the texts and pictures in a post on social media. I prefer to spend time with friends in person – drink coffee, have dinner, hike in the park, and travel to a new city. I take photos but save them on my Google Drive and only share with the friends in those photos.
However, the pandemic happened. Almost everything went virtual. I was trapped in my apartment by myself from March 2020. During the past year, I had to adapt to a new communication style. While still preferring in-person communication, I admit that I expanded my social circle online. I video-called my family almost every day; I chatted with old schoolmates who I haven’t met for a decade; I made new friends who helped me with Tableau on Twitter; I discovered many talented data visualization gurus and their blogs.
This experience made me rethink my attitude towards social media. It is indeed a fantastic tool not only to learn from other people but also to share my interests and ideas without physical boundaries. This is the main reason that I create this site. Additionally, I hope to produce something useful. And here come the contents.
WHAT
There are two topics I want to present on my site. Essentially it’s all about data visualization.
- Who I Am
Sometimes I reflected on this question and found it hard to clearly describe it in my mind, let alone to strangers. Then what is an appropriate way to tell people who I really am? One day, I watched an interview with Steve Ballmer who founded USAFacts. He said: “Using numbers and charts to describe things is very important. Debate your opinions. Don’t debate the facts.” I had an epiphany. The best way to show who I am (not who I think I am) is probably to show the data of myself. Data are facts. They do not contain opinions. Instead of saying I exercise a lot, I can draw a chart of my workout frequencies in the past year. Maybe you think it’s regular or it’s just occasional. It’s up to you.
I formed a habit of collecting my daily data after watching the TED talk by Alithia Williams. I will analyze them and publish the data viz on this blog.
- My Data Visualization Journey
I am on the journey of learning data visualization. I would love to share my projects and summarize the new techniques I learned. Perhaps you could offer me a piece of advice or it might be helpful to you.
Thanks for reading my debut post. It is my pleasure to virtually meet you!
Qichun Dai 