Posts Tagged ‘data’
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…
Read MoreIntegrity checks and simple data cleaning – the art of doubt
There is a saying about software engineering that could easily be applied to formatting data. The truism goes something like, “it’s like looking for black cats in a dark room that has no cats in it.” And then, someone yells, ‘I got one!’” Well, Joe Kokenge of ProPublica is practicing animal control. His presentation on…
Read MoreHadley 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…
Read MoreData viz on a shoestring
The plethora of data visualization tools available these days creates a high-quality problem: a lack of resources to create visualizations becomes a hard task of choosing which of the many to use. Sharon Machlis of Computerworld offers a rapid-fire, well organized and nearly comprehensive inventory of data visualization tools that can be deployed for little…
Read MoreBeware of data – cautionary tips and tales of statistics
A nine year-old girl was beaten to death by her foster brother in Kentucky, but the tragedy did not become a statistic. The state agency in charge of counting abused children didn’t categorize it as a death, attorney Jon Fleischaker said in the “Legal issues, access and big data” session. Local and state government goes…
Read MoreThe data-driven story from launch to presentation
This three-part series moderated by Brant Houston of the University of Illinois walks through a data-driven story, from interviewing the data to proving the story to your editor to telling it to your audience. Using a database (available from the NICAR data library) of government-backed loans from the Small Business Administration, a group of reporters…
Read MoreIRE welcomes new Google Journalism Fellow
IRE is gaining a new summer fellow as part of the first ever Google Journalism Fellowship. Nicole Pasulka of New York University will spend 8 weeks with IRE, as well as a week with Google and a week with the Knight Foundation. Pasulka is currently getting an M.A. in journalism at NYU in the Literary Reportage program.…
Read MoreCAR guides: What a journalism/computer science student is looking forward to
By Dan Hill The hands-on workshops at last year’s conference blew me away, and I hope to leave Louisville with exposure to new tools I can put to use in the newsroom. Although technology is always changing and this year’s tools may soon be obsolete, there are some skills workshops I don’t want to miss.…
Read MoreCAR guides: Advice from a conference veteran
By Wendell Cochran For me, the NICAR conference is one of the highlights of the year. I have attended nearly every one since the first in Raleigh in 1993. Over the years, my roles have changed, but NICAR remains helpful to me. These days I don’t go so much to learn new skills or even…
Read MoreCAR guides: Valuable sessions for an interactive news developer
By Derek Willis The first eight or 10 NICARs that I attended, I went heavy on the skills-based sessions, learning specific software from experienced users. As I’ve gravitated towards a (relatively) compact set of everyday tools, I find myself at more thematic sessions that dig deep into a specific problem or approach. One of the…
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