Articles
Projects walkthroughs, tool teardowns, interviews, and more.
Articles tagged: data
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Introducing Elex, a Tool to Make Election Coverage Better for Everyone
By Jeremy Bowers and David Eads
Posted on“End the elections arms race” has become a rallying cry in American data journalism. Many newsrooms spend tremendous resources writing code to simply load and parse election data. It’s time we stopped worrying about the plumbing and started competing on the interesting parts. We decided it was time we put some code against our beliefs – our contribution is a tool we’re calling Elex. And it needs your help, too.
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Introducing agate: a Better Data Analysis Library for Journalists
By Christopher Groskopf
Posted onMeet agate, a Python data analysis library optimized not for performance, but for the performance of the human who is using it. That means focusing on designing code that is easy to learn, readable, and flexible enough to handle any weird data you throw at it. Here’s why you should try it.
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Tracking Amtrak 188
By Michael Keller
Posted onHow curiosity and tinkering let Al Jazeera America publish historical data for a derailed train’s route without Amtrak’s cooperation.
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Automating Transparency
By Ed Summers
Posted onSometimes you write a piece of software and it gets used for purposes you didn’t quite imagine at the time. Sometimes you write a piece of software and it unexpectedly rearranges your life.
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Consider the Boolean
By Jacob Harris
Posted onThe challenge of using binary data structures in a complicated world.
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Understanding Households and Relationships in Census Data
By Anthony DeBarros
Posted onThe Census Bureau’s population counts make trends in household makeup easy to track. All you need are two things: an understanding of how the Census asks Americans about households and relationships, and where to find the right tables amid the haystack of tabulations. That’s what this post aims to help you with.
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Scraping Nevada
By Derek Willis
Posted onDerek Willis breaks down the three stages of scraping (denial, annoyance, and acceptance) while confronting the election-results form from hell.
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Marriage Data: It’s Complicated
By D’Vera Cohn
Posted onD’Vera Cohn on everything you ever wanted to know about marriage data, but were afraid to ask.
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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Elections Scraping
By Jeremy B. Merrill and Ken Schwencke
Posted onJeremy Merrill and Ken Schwencke explore the fine art of anticipating and catching errors while wrangling the eccentricities of US elections data.
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The Census of Governments Has Your Number
By Mike Maciag
Posted onMichael Maciag’s walk-through of this under-utilized goldmine.
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Finding Stories in Census Data
By Emily Alpert Reyes
Posted onEmily Alpert Reyes on how to find promising needles in Census haystacks.
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Gender, Twitter, and the Value of Taking Things Apart
By Jacob Harris
Posted onJake Harris reverse-engineers Twee-Q to evaluate its use of data (and see if his ratio is as disappointing as Twee-Q says it is)
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From the BBC News Labs: Datastringer
By Basile Simon
Posted onBasile Simon walks through the process of building a new tool that aims to help reporters cover beats, and that was prompted by work by Knight-Mozilla Fellows and a presentation at Hacks/Hackers London.
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When and How to Use Census Microdata
By Robert Gebeloff
Posted onRobert Gebeloff’s primer on working microdata magic
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Comparing the Net Cost of College
By Soo Oh, Erika Owens, and Beckie Supiano
Posted onThe Chronicle of Higher Education set out to compare net cost of colleges and found an unexpected discrepancy. The team describes the piece they created to help explain the difficulty in comparing net costs.
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Covering the European Elections with Linked Data
By Basile Simon
Posted onThe BBC News Labs team explores ways of exposing linked data in public-facing election coverage, and encounters some interesting challenges.
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Pushing Hot Buttons with Census.gov
By Ronald Campbell
Posted onRonald Campbell on using census data to find facts in a world of speculation
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Distrust Your Data
By Jacob Harris
Posted onJacob Harris on six ways to make mistakes with data—and how to avoid them.
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How to Use the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey like a Pro
By Paul Overberg
Posted onPaul Overberg explains base tables and how to get the best data from them (hint: ask good questions!).
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Newsroom Analytics: A Primer
By Jacqui Maher
Posted onJacqui Maher says it’s not just the numbers, it’s what they mean about the audience.
What we learned from a year of Exit Interviews