Graphing New Yorkers' Lives Through the Open Data Portal

Ben Wellington is the man behind I Quant NY, a blog dedicated to telling the stories hidden in New York City’s Open Data Portal, a clearinghouse of more than 1,300 data sets from city agencies. Started by the city government in 2011, the open data initiative’s goal is to facilitate government transparency and increase civic engagement.

The blog itself comes out of a stats course Wellington teaches at Pratt Institute’s graduate program for city and regional planning, where he uses these data sets in coursework. Covering everything from gender divides in Citi Bike usage to finding the farthest point away from a Starbucks in Manhattan, Wellington’s larger mission is to get people thinking critically about the numbers that, if analyzed right, can be the key to understanding New York City.