HUE CAN DO BETTER
Revisiting the vaccine visualizations
The right color palette can make a great visualization even better. This redesign of Wall Street Journal heat maps sets the bar. - Randal S. Olson

FORUM DRAMA
Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners
In many technical forums, there’s a pattern of beginners asking a vague question and forum veterans responding with snarky or curt replies. Here are some suggestions both parties can use to keep conversations productive. - Programming for Beginners

S.O.S.
The Five-Step Guide to Robust Help Center Metrics
When a documentation manager set out to revamp her company's help site content, she was surprised to find very few resources on how to measure her project. Thankfully, she documented her journey so we can all learn from it. Great tips in here for anyone looking to make their help center more, well... helpful.
- RJMetrics

CHOOSE WISELY
Writing Data: an introduction to choosing & using data formats
JSON, CSV, or HDF5? This guide outlines the perks and pitfalls of file formats for alphanumeric data. - Build Things Together

FUZZY NUMBERS
We Now Have Algorithms To Predict Police Misconduct
You've probably heard of predictive policing, but what about predictive policing for the police? One police department teamed up with researchers to test an algorithm that detects troublesome behavior of officers early on. - FiveThirtyEight

LOOSE ENDS
How to catch million dollar mistakes before they cost you millions of dollars
Are you measuring the impact of back-end updates on user behavior? Failure to do so could cost you big time. - Lucidchart

People are talking about: Sports analytics

The 10th Annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference stormed Boston this weekend. Here’s what the heavy hitters have to say:

• The Big Ideas From This Year’s Sloan Conference (FiveThirtyEight)
• Nylon Calculus at the 2016 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (Nylon Cactus)
• A small number of thoughts from Day 1 of the 2016 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (Boston.com)

What's goin' on at Mode

Re-engage users by taking a page out of Bridget Jones's Diary. Check out this post to find out what rom-coms can teach us about reducing user churn with well-timed messages.