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PANDA: Make the robots work for you

As expected, there was no shortage of swag at “Make the robots work for you,” a panel on implementing PANDA, data store of the gods, brought down the mountain to a newsroom near you. (In the interest of full disclosure, the integrity of your reviewer was compromised by a free T-shirt.) For those of you…

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Investigating the Workforce

Unions and pensions may sound like daunting subjects to cover, but Tom McGinty of The Wall Street Journal and MaryJo Webster of the St. Paul Pioneer Press lay out compelling reasons to get past that impression, and helpful tools to get you there. McGinty (who stresses he is not a labor reporter, but learned a…

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2012: The Year in CAR

IRE executive director Mark Horvit and training director Megan Luther presented the Year in Car yesterday, highlighting data-driven journalism from across the country in 2012 and what can be learne from them. Here’s their list: California Watch: Broken Shield FINDINGS: Exposed flaws in the way a special state police force handles crimes against the developmentally…

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Photos from ‘A night on the town’

A CAR conference atendee throws a ball down the lane on Thursday night in Louisville. Photo by Travis Hartman, IRE/NICAR. Stephanie Peuriere from Strasbourg University bowls at the after hours bowling event on Thursday night in Louisville. Photo by Travis Hartman, IRE/NICAR.

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Getting started with an open-source database manager: MySQL

If you’re working from a Mac computer or getting into truly large datasets, Access may not be a viable option as a database manager. (It doesn’t work on Macs, and there are row limitations.) A good alternative is MySQL, an open-source database manager, which Alex Richards of the Chicago Tribune taught on Friday. MySQL essentially…

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Hadley Wickham explains data science for the perplexed

After teaching a full day of data science during NewsCamp on Thursday, Hadley Wickham on Friday morning presented a brief introduction to data science called “Data science for the perplexed. For everyone.” Wickham is an Assistant Professor at Rice University and working for RStudio. He describes himself as a statistician by training, and tried to…

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Smarter interactive web projects with Google spreadsheets and Tabletop.js

Using tabletop.js, one editor and two researcher, presenter Tasneem Raja of Mother Jones got the remarkable 47% graphic online for Mother Jones in under five hours. If that’s not reason enough for you to try tabletop.js, consider this: Raja says Tabletop has been an absolute “game changer” for the Mother Jones newsroom.  Think of tabletop.js…

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Waste investigations for any community

Start small, follow audit trails, and follow up. This session’s panelists offer advice, and underlying it all are those precepts, applicable to both your data skills and your investigative inquiry. The panel included Erin Jordan of The Gazette/KCRG-Cedar Rapids, Josh Sweigart of the Dayton Daily News (Cox Media Group), and Tim Eberly of the Atlanta…

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Get acquainted with the new look of Fusion Tables

Google Fusion tables has a new look.You can learn how to use it with Google Fusion Tables tutorials, and get a grip on how to import map data, and style, filter and share your creation with the world. Learn step-by-step how to formulate “lots of points” maps, heat maps and intensity maps. Some other cool…

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Advanced social media sleuthing

Geolocation tools help you search for social media activity buzzing in your beat, on your block and even in your building. The following tools help you search by geolocation information embedded in tweets, Facebook updates, youtube videos and more. “Geolocation is one of the most exciting things for journalists out in the field,” presenter Doug…

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