Breakin’ up is, as Neil Sedaka once sagely pointed out, hard to do. But for one recently divorced woman, studying the data behind the breakup was a balm to help her through a tough emotional time.
Quantified Breakup is a Tumblr which mashes up the personal data of the woman in question — phone logs, emails, chats, bank statements, and GPS traces — to help her cope with the life change. She explains:
Divorce is hard. Putting this process into numbers, images and data visualizations is helpful. It yanks me out of these all-consuming moments of sadness and helps me understand how, perhaps as time passes, things are going to be ok in the long run (looking for positive trends within the data!) I hope these web things can help you, too.
The resulting blog is full of charts, maps and visualisations that illustrate the breakup. Here are a few highlights.
Recording Changing Sleep Patterns
Mapping Cathartic Exercise Sessions
Visualising Retail Therapy
You should go read the full blog over at Quantified Breakup for an insight into how a little geeking out can help heal a broken heart. [Quantified Breakup via Flowing Data]