Data Journalism

Data-Driven Journalism
Mindy McAdams
University of Florida

What is “a great story”?
Convinces us of something
Makes us question our assumptions
Compels us to action
Enlightens us: Brings a new realization
Touches us: Connects to our humanity

Can numbers tella great story?

usatoday.com
Religions: Percentages for the complete United States

usatoday.com
Religions: Percentages for only California

usatoday.com
Religions: Percentages for only Texas

usatoday.com
Religions: “Do you think there is a hell?”

usatoday.com
Religions: “Do you think there is a heaven?”

Great data visualizationtells a great story.

Finding the story in data
Data can be boring — if you don’t know what you’re looking for
In raw form, numbers and words lack meaning
A dataset is a bucket full of numbers
“There are stories in that bucket”
—Nathan Yau, Flowing Data

nytimes.com

Data visualization graphicscreate a picturethat makes clearwhat the numbers mean.

All data presentations are NOT equal

nytimes.com

Visualizations allow us to understand and process enormous amounts of information quicklybecause it is all represented in a single imageor animation.
7 Things You Should Know About Data Visualization

nytimes.com
Movie box office revenues, January 1986 to February 2008.
Vertical shows weekly revenue amount.
Horizontal shows how long the movie ran in theaters.

Data visualization includes:
Design
Organization
Fact checking
Detective work
Research
—Nathan Yau, Flowing Data

Data visualization is the graphical representation of information.

4 common types of data graphics
Maps
Show patterns that occur in geographic space
Bar charts
Show simple numerical comparisons
Line graphs
Show continuous change over time
Pie charts
Show proportional differences
See: Visualization Options Available in Many Eyes

washingtonpost.com
Map shows all public schools in Washington, D.C.

washingtonpost.com
Map shows all schools where at least 60 percent of students
passed the 2006 D.C. math exam.

washingtonpost.com
Bar chart: U.S. service members killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, 2001-2006.

nytimes.com
Line graph compares time progression of present crisis with average of all past crises
and with five worst worst crises (July 18, 2008)

Pie chart: FeedBurner.com stats showing which RSS readers sent traffic
to the blog Teaching Online Journalism in 2007

Where to begin?
Use Microsoft Excel
Collect data and learn to sort it
Make friends with a graphic designer
Take a computer programming class
Take a statistics class
Take a geography class where you can learn to draw maps

Links.http://delicious.com/macloo/data+journalism

Data-Driven Journalism
Resources used for this presentation include
Great Data Visualization Tells a Great Story, by Nathan Yau,
and 7 Things You Should Know About Data Visualization

Data Journalism

by Mindy McAdams on Apr 01, 2011

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Data Journalism — Presentation Transcript

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