FROM COVER TO COVER
5,000 Top-Selling Book Covers, Arranged By Visual Similarity
An interactive map of over 5,000 book covers, organized by machine learning.
pudding.cool
BORROW A PAGE FROM THE PAST
Your Hipster Summer Reading List, According To Data
It's officially summer and you're looking for your next read. But you don't want to read what everyone else is reading. So we (programmatically) sifted through over 100 million checkout records from the Seattle Public Library to find fiction books that haven't been checked out in over a decade.
A TIMELINE OF ABSURDITY
A Chronicle Of The Anti-Vaccination Movement
This is a story about the pernicious claims borne out of a single, discredited scientific paper in 1998.
ON MY WAY TO CHRIS PRATT NOW
The Most Wikipedia'ed Resident Of Every US City
Who's the most famous person (or at least the person with the most Wikipedia traffic) from your hometown? This extremely detailed map from The Pudding has your answer.
IT TAKES TWO
The Rise Of Hyphenated Last Names In Pro Sports
Looking at just professional sports, there's a clear trend, especially for the four leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL) that have been around since at least the 1950s.
JUDGING AN INDUSTRY BY ITS COVER
Colorism In High Fashion
In the past 19 years, there have been 228 issues of Vogue, with a total of 262 female cover models. Let's look at where these women fall on the skin lightness spectrum.
MODEL CHARACTERS
How Algorithms Know What You'll Type Next
To see how text predictors work in action, we will predict tweets by four Twitter accounts: Barack Obama, Justin Timberlake, Kim Kardashian and Lady Gaga.
A STAR IS CALCULATED
Who Is The Biggest Pop Star?
Billboard claims the most popular musicians of 2018 were Drake, Post Malone, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and Cardi B. But neither Sheeran nor Swift released an album in 2018; does this ranking truly represent music culture?
G-Y-L-E — OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD
The Gyllenhaal Experiment
These charts show the most common misspelled permutations of celebrity names like Jake Gyllenhaal and Britney Spears.
5 SECONDS OF PAST SUMMERS
The Internet Boy Band Database
An audio-visual history of every boy band to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 since 1980.
DOES YOUR CITY HAVE THE BRAGGING RIGHTS?
The Winningest Cities In North American Sports
What makes a title-town?
A WHOLE NEW WORLD
Human Terrain: Visualizing The World's Population In 3D
Kinshasa is now bigger than Paris. Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Shenzhen are forming an epic, 40 million-person super city.
THE PATRIARCHY IS REAL
Women's Pockets Are Inferior
We measured the pockets in both men's and women's pants in 20 of the US' most popular blue jeans brands. Take a look at what we found.
THE KISS OF DEATH
Life After Death On Wikipedia
While not perfect, Wikipedia traffic serves as a solid proxy for the ebb and flow of a celebrity's cultural relevance.
QUEER AND HERE
Men Are From Chelsea. Women Are From Park Slope
How "gayborhoods" in 15 major American cities are divided by gender.
LOCATION, LOCATION, DIGESTION
Mapping Gastronomic Borders In The US
Taking this idea one step further, we began asking: what is the taco capital of the US? What is the exact longitude where Chinese food eclipses tacos? What about regional preferences, such as the South‘s affinity for BBQ?
LOOKING IN THE MIRROR
A Visual History Of Satellites
Humans have been trying to capture pictures of Earth since the invention of the camera in the 1800s. But it wasn't until 1966 that they got a picture of the whole Earth in one go.
SHE GIGGLES, HE GALLOPS
The Most Used Words For Women Vs. Men In Screen Directions
Relative to men, women are more likely to gasp, hurry, smile, hesitate, and stir (mostly while cooking), regardless of whether the writer is a man or a woman.
'WHAT HAPPENED 9 MONTHS AGO?'
The Timing Of Baby Making
As the story goes, whenever people are stuck in one place for a long time, or their sports team wins a title, etc. they'll get frisky... and become new parents nine months later. But the data doesn't quite bear that out.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 6 WORDS
Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive?
It seems like pop songs have been getting progressively more and more repetitive over the decades, but does the data bear that out?
