Category: The Outlier
-
Top of the charts: 15 most-viewed visualisations of 2024
The Outlier’s collection of charts surpassed the 650-mark this year, an accomplishment our small team is very proud of. Here’s a list the 15 most-viewed charts on our website this year, which cover topics as diverse as politics, television, travel and, of course, money.
-
Burst pipes, falling levels and unplanned fixes: Numbers behind Joburg’s water crisis
Joburg’s water woes have been decades in the making, with ageing infrastructure and poor maintenance unable to keep up with a growing population. In the past two months, unplanned maintenance incidents have doubled compared to planned ones, affecting over 440 suburbs.
-
What it costs Gauteng residents to get around
The amount spent by people living in the province varies widely, with respondents reporting spending anything between zero and R9,500 a month. The median spend is R500.
-
OpenRefine Part 3: Fixing inconsistencies with the cluster and edit tool
If you’re still on the fence about using OpenRefine or feel intimidated by its features, this tutorial will walk you through two of its most powerful tools: clustering and editing. These tools will help you clean and standardise your dataset, saving hours of work.
-
HIV in South Africa: Deaths drop by 80% as treatment uptake grows
An estimated 7.8-million people are living with HIV in South Africa and three-quarters (5.9-million people) are on antiretroviral medicine.
-
South Africa’s pay divide: Who earns what and why it matters
Stats SA’s latest report on monthly earnings reveals striking disparities in South Africa, from a persistent gender pay gap to regional and educational influences on income. Women earn 20% less than men, and median earnings barely cover basic living costs.
-
SA murder count on track for a two-year low
So far this year to September, 19,279 murders were reported in South Africa. Unless December is particularly violent, we are on track to record the first decrease in murders since 2021.
-
OpenRefine Part 2: Removing duplicates and using version history
OpenRefine is one of The Outlier’s favourite tools when working with large datasets. This powerful open-source program is ideal for cleaning messy data. In this post, we focus on two essential features: removing duplicates and using version history to keep track of your changes.
-
OpenRefine Part 1: Installing and merging datasets
If you find yourself getting bogged down when you’re working with large datasets in Excel or Google Sheets, OpenRefine might be the solution you’ve been looking for.