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Data Journalism (big data)

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Welcome. Introducing the data journalism handbook | News. All the Data That’s Fit to Print: The Data Journalism Handbook. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a viral infographic is worth 10,000 page views. But many companies are still behind the data visualization curve because of perceived barriers of entry—the notion that only computer whizzes, database hounds and stat geeks with a flair for graphic design can produce compelling infographics.

But new tools and software are effectively imploding those barriers and making data visualization more accessible to the masses. One of the most important new guides to DIY data design is The Data Journalism Handbook. The first of its kind, the handbook is an open-source, seven-part compendium that outlines best practices for collecting, analyzing and finally presenting data in an engaging visual form. The Handbook also provides real-world case studies, step-by-step examples and a variety of perspectives by different authors.

There are also tools available that can assist novices with taking data and turning it into something that’s understandable and visual. Anyone can do it. Data journalism is the new punk | News. This is a chord… this is another… this is a third. NOW FORM A BAND So went the first issue of British punk fanzine Sideburns in 1977 in the "first and last part in a series". It might be 35 years old, but this will do nicely as a theory of data journalism in 2012. Why? Crucial to it was the idea: anyone can do it. Is the same true of data journalism? Now is the time to examine this - in May 2010, we published this piece on how reporters would soon be flooded with a "tsunami of data".

There are even different streams now - short-form, quick-and-dirty data visualisations of the kind we do every day on the Datablog, right through to complex investigations and visualisations - such as our riots data analysis or the kind of projects which made the shortlist of the Data Journalism Awards, from around the world. So, can we still say that anyone can do data journalism; in the first and last part in a series. 1) This is a dataset 2) Here's another 3) Here are some free tools But is that enough? What data can and cannot do | News. In the early days of photography there was a great deal of optimism around its potential to present the public with an accurate, objective picture of the world. In the 19th century pioneering photographers (later to be called photojournalists) were heralded for their unprecedented documentary depictions of war scenes in Mexico, Crimea and across the US.

Over a century and a half later – after decades of advertising, propaganda, and PR, compositing, enhancement and outright manipulation – we are more cautious about seeing photographs as impartial representations of reality. Photography has lost its privileged position in relation to truth. Photographs are just a part of the universe of evidence that must be weighed up, analysed, and critically evaluated by the journalist, the analyst, the scholar, the critic, and the reader. Data can be an immensely powerful asset, if used in the right way. Data is not a force unto itself. Please let us know what you think in the comments below. Why We Need Creative People to Help Understand Data. One of the largest problems facing organizations today is Big Data. I’m sure you’ve read countless articles highlighting the growing concern of the costs associated with sorting and analyzing the ever growing volume. A study conducted by consulting firm McKinsey on Big Data, found that as organizations have become smarter, US companies in every sector will have “at least an average of 200 terabytes of stored data (twice the size of the US retailer Wal-Mart’s data warehouse in 1999) per company with more than 1,000 employees.”

And that’s not the worst of it. We’re currently faced with a large gap, according to the same report there is “a need for 1.5 million additional managers and analysts in the United States who can ask the right questions and consume the results of Big Data effectively.” As the amount of information we have access to continues to increase and affect our daily lives, it’s going to be important to include as many different disciplines as possible.

What do you think? Big Data's Impact in the World. In the age of big data, data journalism has profound importance for society. The promise of data journalism was a strong theme throughout the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting’s (NICAR) 2012 conference. In 2012, making sense of big data through narrative and context, particularly unstructured data, will be a central goal for data scientists around the world, whether they work in newsrooms, Wall Street or Silicon Valley. Notably, that goal will be substantially enabled by a growing set of common tools, whether they’re employed by government technologists opening Chicago, healthcare technologists or newsroom developers. At NICAR 2012, you could literally see the code underpinning the future of journalism written – or at least projected – on the walls. “The energy level was incredible,” said David Herzog, associate professor for print and digital news at the Missouri School of Journalism, in an email interview after NICAR.

“I didn’t see participants wringing their hands and worrying about the future of journalism. They’re too busy building it.” “St. Statistics and Storytelling — Why We Need Them Both in Science. Image by Jill Clardy via Flickr Two thought-provoking articles published last week in JAMA make compelling and complementary arguments to the rhetorical power of both numbers and words in conveying the message of science. The first, “Reporting of Effect Direction and Size in Abstracts of Systematic Reviews,” by Elaine Beller and others, looks at the reporting of statistical results in the abstracts of reviews that contain meta-analyses. Meta-analyses are important in medicine for synthesizing the research literature. They do this by pooling the results of many individual studies and attempting to estimate an overall effect. An odds ratio of 2 means that one outcome was twice as likely to occur as the other, but just half as likely when the odds ratio is 0.5.

Although abstracts should present estimates of effect and confidence intervals, interpretation of the results should not require statistical knowledge. Scientific reports are genuinely dispassionate, characterless, and ahistorical. Humanize Your Data. Normally when we think of data a series of “0s” and “1s” come to mind, or perhaps the twelve digits of an IP address come to mind. Let’s face it, when we normally think of data it’s normally viewed as a series of cold, hard facts. Jer Thorp wants us to change that. Yesterday, data artist in residence at The New York Times, Jer Thorp, gave a speech for TedX, independently organized Ted events, urging us to try and humanize our view of data. Among the projects Jer displays are All The Names, and Project Cascade, a New York Times initiative to help visualize the social interactions that occur (particularly sharing) that occurs on the web.

He also shows off a beautiful visualization of 11,000 “good morning” tweets. What I found to be the most interesting project he talked about was Open Paths. What does humanizing data really do? “Because these are our histories…but if we can do this with other data, we can put data into a human context, I think we can change a lot of things. Related. Jer Thorp TEDx Talk on the Weight of Data. Age Pyramids. A beautiful dynamic and interactive visualisation of the aging world! Taken from Like this: Like Loading... 2011: the year in data, journalism (and charts) | Datablog | News. What were the headline figures of 2011? Which numbers defined the highs and lows of a news-filled year? From Occupy to the tensions of the eurozone and the riots across England, the Datablog has covered it all.

Here is our look back at the year in data. 30 workers at Fuskushima power plant had been exposed to radiation over 100msv by May 30 after a Tsunami destroyed the Fukushima plant's safety systems. The recommended maximum limit in one year is 100 msv and a full-body CT scan will expose you to 10msv. Levels reached 400 msv in the first days of the disaster with two workers having received "between 200mSv and 580mSv". The youth unemployment rate in Spain at 48% is the worst in Europe. The increase in the interest rate Italy has to pay on the bonds sold to cover its debt is 52%. This matters because as a country the higher the rate you have to sell your bonds at, the more you'll have to pay back. The amount owed by Europe's governments in October 2011 was €10,125,117,000,000. 46.2m 7bn.

Don't fall victim to this. I came across this graph recently when catching up on some reading over the holiday. My question to you is simple: can you read it? The website where this interactive visual resides is called worldshapin, and it implores you to "compare countries through their shape.

" It visualizes data from the Human Development Report 2011 as a "star plot" along the six dimensions of education, population, health, workplace equality, carbon footprint, and living standards. As shown above, you can look at this data between countries and as it compares to continents and the world (when the world isn't obscured by the countries and continents you've chosen, as it is above).

Before I get to the don't fall victim portion of this blog post, let me first say that I do think this helps make the data in the report more accessible by making it visual. This visual is not fine, however, if you have a specific story that you want to tell through data. I used to make charts like this. The pitiful cult of ‘data journalism’ Times were that you could pick up a copy of the Wall Street Journal and be simultaneously educated and entertained by their informative infographics, which were lovingly crafted from authoritative data and accompanied by judicious analysis. The key to success with these graphics was that they explained something about the data you might not have gleaned simply by looking at a column of numbers.

The Economist, too, was pretty good at revealing trends and interesting correlations with clear, unfussy graphs. Then something odd happened. The nationals started getting a taste for these fancy ways of explaining data. But in imitating the method, they forgot the purpose, and began to drizzle their pages in useless, stupid pie charts that added nothing to the written stories beside them. More likely is that the hubris of the newsroom – the “Who can do me one of those?” The apotheosis of the trend toward explaining everything as if to children is seen on the BBC, particularly during elections.