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David Asboth

@davidasboth.com
3.9K followers 1.2K following 1.3K posts

Data generalist, educator, author of The Well-Grounded Data Analyst (Manning, 2025). Co-host of the Half Stack Data Science podcast.

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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 03/12/2025
Recently, I started a tiny experiment: - coming up with a data challenge - livestreaming my own ongoing solution (~once a week) The topic I picked was "are there films rated higher than the books they're based on?" Here's a sneak peek, will livestream a write up at some point! #databs #datasky
A scatter plot showing the average rating of books vs. the average rating of their film adaptations. Some books are labeled as the book being better than the film and vice versa.
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 05/10/2025
I think Randall Munroe made this just for you!
A chart showing "number of cuts" versus "number of measurements" with phrases like "serial killer", "surveyor", "really bad carpenter", "good carpenter", "good carpenter" and "surgeon" occupying different points. The chart is titled "Measure Twice, Cut Once - Carpentry proverb"
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 19/09/2025
Only in the UK could you have stops with these names.
A train schedule showing stops called Manchester Piccadilly, Ashburys, Guide Bridge, Flowery Field, Newton for Hyde, Godley, Hattersley, Broadbottom, Dinting, Glossop, and Hadfield
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 19/09/2025
I'm at PyCon UK today in Manchester! I'll be speaking later about dynamic code generation and execution in Python. Here is a crab I found on the way to the venue. 🦀 Anyone I know attending? #databs #datasky
A man with a beard and glasses standing in front of a display case that contains a giant land crab specimen
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 15/09/2025
I don't normally do book reviews on social media but I really enjoyed Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things? by @pierrenovellie.bsky.social. A personal, thoughtful, well-researched, and often hilarious perspective on autism. I learned a lot from it and you will too! #booksky
A book cover of Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things by Pierre Novellie. A man with brown hair and a beard is holding a cupcake with a face and a single candle.
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 08/08/2025
Obligatory: xkcd.com/481/
xkcd webcomic that goes as follows

[Black Hat approaches Danish typing at a computer.]
Black Hat: What are you writing?
Danish: Virus.
Black Hat: What's it do?
Danish: When someone tries to post a YouTube comment, it first reads it aloud back to them.
Soon, everywhere:
[Cueball is commenting on YouTube with a laptop.]
type type type
[Youtube comment is read back.]
Cueball: ...I'm a moron.
[Cueball leaves desk and partially closes his laptop.]
[Cueball is seen sitting on steps, depressed.]
[Cueball puts his head in his hands.]
Cueball: I... I didn't know.
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 21/06/2025
I like writing and want to do more so I'll be taking a little writing challenge later this year. Join me in the @nycmidnight.bsky.social 500-word Fiction Challenge on August 15th! Learn more at nycmidnight.com/500
An image banner that says "The 500-word fiction challenge, August 15, nycmidnight.com"
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 16/06/2025
Data science courses be like #databs #datasky
A meme featuring Geordie LaForge. He rejects "how to actually do things like configure Jupyter" and points happily at "excessive amounts of linear algebra"
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 15/06/2025
Hats off to anyone attempting Viz Buzz, it's really tricky to recreate a plot in just 40 minutes! Especially if you waste lots of minutes on basic data cleaning... Here's my version and the original. I popped the whole thing on YouTube as well: www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8sE... #databs #datasky
A line chart showing temperature over time, labelled "Dayton's Weather in 2014". It is an attempt to recreate an existing data visualization in 40 minutes for the Viz Buzz competitionA line chart showing temperature over time, labelled "Dayton's Weather in 2014". It is the original data visualization that I attempted to recreate in 40 minutes for the Viz Buzz competition
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 01/05/2025
It's over everyone. Copilot has come to MS Paint.
A snapshot of the "ribbon" menu from MS Paint, including a Copilot option.
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 28/04/2025
"Organisations like Freelance". Never change, LinkedIn.
A LinkedIn message that says "Hi David, Just wanted to connect as your profile is very interesting and I tend to work with organisations like Freelance, specifically people in your position. Look forward to connecting"
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 01/04/2025
Very pleased to announce my new book, coming out in 1912! #dataBS #datasky
An image of a spoof O'Reilly book cover titled "Surviving the Titanic: The only dataset you'll ever need" by D. Asboth. There's a picture of a parakeet. The top text says "From the real-world data series"
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 20/03/2025
On the one hand, I hate the fact that Meta has (probably) trained its models on my work. They'll benefit from that, I won't. I'm privileged that I can withstand this. The whole thing is a mess. On the other hand... look, my work's been pirated! Weird that it's an older early access version.
A screenshot of The Atlantic's search where authors can search whether their work is available in LibGen, and has therefore probably been used to train Meta's AI models. The screenshot shows the search term "david asboth" returns one book: "solve any data analysis problem MEAP v08"
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 18/03/2025
Since it's #NeurodiversityCelebrationWeek, good morning to everyone except Cixin Liu for writing this in Death's End. So much wrong with how autism is portrayed here I don't even know where to start.
An extract from the novel Death's End by Cixin Liu:

The head of the Black Hole Project was 高 Way. Cao Bin had worked with him for a few years. He could not hide his complex feelings about the man as he described him to Cheng Xin.

"The man suffered from severe autism—no, I'm not talking about some kind of lonely genius choosing to isolate himself, but a real mental condition. He was extremely closed off and had trouble communicating with anyone, and he had never even touched a woman. His extraordinary professional success would only be possible in this age, but despite his accomplishments, most of his supervisors and colleagues thought of him as merely a high-powered intelligence battery. He was tortured by his illness and tried to change himself, and in this, he was different from other geniuses.

"Starting from, oh, I think the eighth year of the Broadcast Era, he dedicated himself to the theoretical study of lowering the speed of light. Over time, I think he began to develop a strange identification between the speed of light and his own personality—if he could change the speed of light, then it was the same as changing himself.
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 14/03/2025
TIL Sierra Leone is the roundest country 🇸🇱 (and Egypt is the squarest one 🇪🇬). I don't know how to explain that this is exactly the kind of data project I *love*. bigthink.com/strange-maps...
A diagram showing the squarest countries (Egypt with a squareness of 0.955) and the roundest (Sierra Leone, roundness 0.954)
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 02/03/2025
I like Squadcast, it's a perfectly good tool for recording our podcast, but it has the worst date picker I've ever seen. It annoys me whenever I have to use it.
A date picker where the hour, minute, and am/pm components are all scrolling interfaces rather than a text box or even a dropdown
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 24/02/2025
Maybe I'm late to the party, but did we really need to add AI to Notepad? Really??
A screenshot of Notepad, containing the text "Hello, World!". There is a dropdown visible with the following options: rewrite, make shorter, make longer, change tone, and change format. These are AI features within the Notepad application.
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 16/02/2025
Should you write a technical book? (Trying this again, hopefully with sound this time if the Bluesky gremlins will allow it) #dataBS #datasky
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 16/02/2025
Another walking video with some answers to the question: should you write a technical book? #databs #datasky
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 06/02/2025
Recorded another video on my walk earlier. Might do more of these! I've been thinking about what my niche might be. #dataBS #datasky
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 05/02/2025
TIL: did you know Python's enumerate method takes another argument, "start"?
Code to print strings from a Python list using `enumerate`, starting at 1. The entire code is:
engines = ["Thomas", "Edward", "Henry", "Gordon"]

for idx, engine in enumerate(engines, start=1):
    print(f"{idx}: {engine}")

And the output is:

1: Thomas
2: Edward
3: Henry
4: Gordon
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 29/01/2025
2/ The bot gets the data using SPARQL (a query language you can use to query Wikidata) and assumes that in any football match, there's exactly one home team and one away team. Here's a screenshot of this game as it's stored on Wikidata.
A screenshot of data from Wikidata, showing that both the Hungary men's national football team and the San Marino men's national football team were both the home and away teams in a football match. This has caused data errors.
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 27/01/2025
Obligatory: (xkcd.com/481/)
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 22/01/2025
I'm out walking and had some thoughts about data and fun stuff and mental health that I wanted to share. #dataBS
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 31/12/2024
Seriously, THIS is the UI to do that?!?
A row of data from Goodreads. It shows the name of the book (in this case Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) with the option to edit the "Date read", but the UI controls make you select year, month, and day as separate dropdowns with no defaults
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 27/12/2024
The floral LEGO sets are awesome, I got my wife this one a few years back!
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 25/12/2024
Post a game you got for Christmas Still one of my all time favourites. Fun story: I was new to video games and actuallt asked for the expansion not realising you needed the base game too. Luckily I was also gifted cold hard cash to help me buy it 😂
The cover of the classic video game Rollercoaster Tycoon. The cover shows the title of the game with a red rollercoaster track looping around it.
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 24/12/2024
Windows update is going well this morning.
A Windows update screen that just says "undoing changes made to your computer"
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 21/12/2024
The classic Bud Spencer film "Troublemakers" is a Christmas staple in Hungary (in Hungarian it's "fight until Christmas").
A poster for the film Troublemakers starring Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. The poster shows two cowboys walking side by side.
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 17/12/2024
Here's an AI attempt at a weasel emoji. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to adopt this little thing as the Data Weasel mascot.
A cute, AI-generated image of a weasel
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 17/12/2024
Your loyalties lie in the wrong place. Signor Rossi does not approve.
A disappointed Marco Rossi
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 17/12/2024
I can't quite explain it, but this is the sort of thing I love about being a data person.
A chart showing places people ordered BrewDog from. The chart shows one order placed via game console. The caption says "to the one person who recently placed their beer order via a games console: please make yourself known. We just want to talk"
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 10/12/2024
Call me pedantic but Humble Bundle really could have used an image of Python code instead of JavaScript for the "Become a Python expert" bundle...
A cover image for a "Become a Python expert" bundle, showing Javascript code instead of Python code
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 04/12/2024
New problem with Spotify Wrapped dropped this year: when you put a podcast on for your dog overnight 😂
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 02/12/2024
Input labels BELOW the inputs themselves? That's a no from me.
A confusing web form for entering your address, where the input labels are below the text boxes (they're traditionally above or to the side)
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 20/11/2024
Hungary reporting in 🫡
A picture of a Hungarian product, "bagged milk" - milk that can be bought in a bag
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 08/11/2024
2/2 I thought I could use the requests library to hit an API which would be enough to send a text. Sadly, it seems that "for data security reasons the Python code does not have network access" (github.com/microsoft/py...). Kelly will have to wait a little longer... #dataBS
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 08/11/2024
Remember when Kelly Rowland tried to send a text in Excel? Now that "Python in Excel" is a thing, I had a really dumb idea to try to make it work. Surely, we could use Python to send an email or a text message? Well... 1/2 #dataBS
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 02/11/2024
Not gonna lie, I'd play this.
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David Asboth @davidasboth.com · 30/10/2024
Years ago I gave a tongue-in-cheek talk titled "Kaggle Grandmasters Need Not Apply" telling students that chasing Kaggle competitions is optimising for the wrong skills. Well guess who's got egg on their face today?! #dataBS
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