Visual-literacy.org has a great summary of a variety of information presentation techniques in their periodic table of visualization methods.  It’s probably the most concise summary that I’ve seen.  It is very likely that I will include an entire section on visual literacy in my next round of data utilization classes.

ESRI has recently published a new (free) e-book called GIS in the Social Sciences that provides some nice examples of how GIS has been used in a variety of social science disciplines.  The examples are diverse and have a nice international flavor.

InsideHigherEd has a new series called Ph.Do that discusses professional development issues.  It’s written by Eszter Hargittai from Northwestern.  So far, so good.

This article provides an amusing examination of the “dead grandma” problem.  Anyone who has ever taught at the post-high school level is quickly introduced to this problem the first time they give an exam or some other major assignment.  If only grandmas knew the risks involved in sending their grandchildren to college.

I have often said that I have the best job in the world.  Well, according to this report, I have the #8 best job in the world.  Notice how many of the top 10 jobs require good math skills.

ReadWriteWeb has posted a list of 10 cool web applications for students, just in time for the new school year.  I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t tried many of them.  I’m really interested in the note-taking apps, although getting students to realize that they should be taking notes during my lectures is my first challenge.  It looks like Google Notebook might be useful for putting together lecture notes if you use a lot of web content.  I may try it when I redesign one of my courses for next semester and then I can write a real review about it.  I’ve also heard good things about Zotero.

I’m always looking for great examples of data visualization and I’ve recently come across two that I found on the blog Strange Maps:

1.)  The first shows the distribution of different names for soft drinks across the U.S.  As “pop” drinkers from the Midwest, we still find it strange that New Yorkers say “soda” and even stranger when they don’t even know what “pop” is!

2.)  The second is a really good example of how visualization tools can capture change over both time and space.  The New York Times has a nice graphic that shows how countries have fared with respect to Olympic medals over time.

I suppose that most people have already seen the Randy Pausch videos, but since they are so great I felt it couldn’t hurt to be redundant.  Pausch was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two years ago and recently passed away.  Since his diagnosis he has built an amazing web presence by sharing his experiences and inspiring others to live life to the fullest.  The NYTimes compiled a list of his various web sites and online lectures and they are well worth exploring.  There are a lot of good professors who know a particular substantive area well and can communicate effectively with students; but the truly great professors, like Pausch, are those who aren’t afraid to show their humanity and  can connect emotionally as well as intellectually.

The China Data Center at the University of Michigan is a rich resource for all kinds of information about China, particularly social and demographic data.  They also promote mapping as a research tool.  They recently posted some interesting maps related to the recent earthquake and China and the populations that were most affected by this disaster.  These slides are missing their narrative context, but some of the figures are nonetheless compelling.

Blogs are a great place to learn about people’s experiences with grad school and transitions to faculty positions.  There are a lot of individual blogs that chronicle people’s lives and there are several group blogs, typically tied to a particular discipline or sub-field, that have branched into the business of collecting advice on different topics related to academia.  Since I haven’t found time to maintain a blogroll for this site, I’ll just highlight two of them here.  Orgtheory.net has a series called grad skool rulz that I’ve mentioned before.  They continue to add topics to the series.  Scatterplot, a group sociology blog, has a series called “ask a scatterbrain” that often includes good advice for grad students.  Two of their recent conversations that I found interesting were managing conflict and co-authoring.