Workshop data
Jan 14, 2015
Workshop data
Database Journalism: Finding the smoking gun
Steve DoigArizona State [email protected]
Why use “data”?
Precision journalism
What is “data”?
Information -- but not data Steve Doig is a 65-year-old
professor who teaches at Arizona State University in Phoenix.
Now it’s data!
Last name
First name
Age Title City
DoigSteve 65
Professor Phoenix
Jones Bob 45 Editor Sydney
Smith Tom 34 Reporter Melbourne
Getting data WOBBING.EU
Wet Openbaarheid van Bestuur (Open Government Act)
ISTAT.IT Request from agencies Build your own?
History lesson
Recent “big data” stories Education cheating (USA
Today) UK MPs’ spending (Guardian) Medicare fraud (CalWatch) EU fishing subsidies (ICIJ)
More examples Budgets and taxes Crime patterns School test scores Auto accidents Demographic change Pet licenses Air quality Sports statistics
Data journalism tools Analysis:
Spreadsheet (Excel)
Database (Access) Mapping (ArcMap) SPSS, SAS Text editor Social network
analysis (NodeXL)
Presentation: Google fusion
tables Ruby, Django,
perl, python, et al.
Photoshop
Patterns and outliers
Data power tool: MS Excel
A blank spreadsheet
What Excel can do Import data from many formats Sort data by one or more variables Filter data to show only selected
rows Transform data using functions
and formulas Summarize data into categories
Importing data Common formats
*.xls (or *.xlsx) Fixed-width text Delimited text (comma, tab, etc) *.dbf files (old dBase) HTML tables
Data Import Wizard will help
Delimited text example
Sorting a table
Now it’s sorted
Filtering: Data…Filter…Autofilter
Pick a category…
…and see just that
Transforming data Math functions
Add, subtract, multiply, divide Average, median, maximum, minimum
Date/Time functions Day of week, days between
Text functions Extract parts of text strings Search and replace text
Function Wizard (ƒx)
Function Wizard (ƒx)
Summarizing data
Example data
Pivot table example Data: Region, province, population,
murders, etc. Question: “How many murders
occurred in each region?” Visualize the piece of paper that
would answer the question
Building a pivot table
Pivot table
Sorted pivot table
Data journalism resources
DataJournalismHandbook.org
Publications
DOMANDE?