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Sunday, May 22
Could journalists visualize e-mail content?
by
JTJ
on Sun 22 May 2005 03:11 PM MDT
NYTimes science writer Gina Kolata publishes an interesting
– and for her, atypical – story Sunday related to content analysis and the
integration of statistical and graphic tools.
(See “Enron
Offers An Unlikely Boost To E-Mail Surveillance.”)The data under the digital
microscope? One and a half million
e-mails sent by the good folks at Enron that were posted to the Web in 2003 by
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
She writes:
“Scientists had long
theorized that tracking the e-mailing and word usage patterns within a group
over time - without ever actually reading a single e-mail - could reveal a lot
about what that group was up to. For
example, would they be able to find the moment when someone's memos, which were
routinely read by a long list of people who never responded, suddenly began
generating private responses from some recipients? Could they spot when a new
person entered a communications chain, or if old ones were suddenly shut out,
and correlate it with something significant?
There may be commercial uses for the same techniques. For
example, they may enable advertisers to do word searches on individual e-mail
accounts and direct pitches based on word frequency.”
Gee, scientists doing the theorizing? Advertisers doing word searches? Might not “tracking the e-mailing and word
usage patterns” be a good tool for journalists to think about using? Are there any journalism departments out
there teaching anything about applied content analysis? It appears so. At least Mark Miller, formerly of the University of Tennessee, was doing so a decade ago. And there are some other interesting attempts, here and here by the Project
for Excellence in Journalism. But it appears nothing as
methodologically sophisticated as that carried out by the computer
scientists and political scientists is being done by journalists.
Thursday, May 19
Figuring the odds
by
JTJ
on Thu 19 May 2005 07:29 PM MDT
Last week, NOAA predicated a serious hurricane season a'comin' in the Atlantic, which has implications for the entire U.S. East Coast. That's last week's
news, but if one lives in California, Mexico, Central America or Japan,
then today there's always the possibility of a major shaker. And
those are just risks imposed by nature. Modeling these and other
hazards of life is the mission of RMS, a fascinating California company demonstrating innovative thinking and analytic tools.
"RMS brings together a unique, multidisciplinary team of experts to
create solutions for its clients’ natural hazard and financial risk
management challenges. We are the technical leader in our market, with
over 100 engineers and scientists devoted to the development of risk
models. Of this number, approximately fifty percent hold advanced
degrees in their field of expertise.
Our specialists track research among leading experts and academic
institutions worldwide, and supplement this knowledge with internal R&D
to ensure that our models provide the most complete and accurate
quantification of risk."
Yup -- our kind of guys. Examples of the output of these "risk models" can be found here. Of special interest to U.S. journalists are the Catastrophe Risk maps. (They are a bit too small to read in detail, but big enough to get the gist of some of the RMS product.)
We hope to report more next week about RMS, how it does what it does and how there might be some synergy there for analytic journalists.
Doing well by doing good
by
JTJ
on Thu 19 May 2005 03:50 PM MDT
Here
at the IAJ we believe one of the reasons people come to newspapers or
broadcast stations is to get the data which, upon analysis, they can
turn into information that helps them make decisions. Ergo, the
more meaningful data a journalistic institution can provide, the
greater value that institution has for a community.
A good example arrived today thanks to Tara Calishain, creator of ResearchBuzz. She writes:
** Getcher Cheap Gas Prices on Google Maps
<http://www.researchbuzz.org/getcher_cheap_gas_prices_on_google_maps.shtml>
"Remember
when I was saying that I would love a Gasbuddy / Google Maps mashups
that showed cheap gas prices along a trip route? Turns out
somebody has already done it -- well, sorta. You can specify a
state, city (only selected cities are available) and
whether you're looking for regular or diesel fuel. Check it out
at http://www.ahding.com/cheapgas/ "
The data driving the map is ginned up by GasBuddy.com
It's not clear how or why GasBuddy gets its data, but it offers some
story potential for journalists and data for news researchers. It
has an interesting link to dynamic graphs of gas prices over time.
Surely the promotion department of some news organization could grab
onto this tool, tweak it a bit, promote the hell out of it, and
drive some traffic to and build loyalty for the organization's web
site.
That's the obvious angle, but what if some enterprising journo started
to ask some questions of the data underlying the map? What's the
range in gas prices in our town/state? (In Albuquerque today, the
range was from $2.04 to $2.28.) Are there any demographic or
traffic flow match-ups to that price range? How 'bout the
variance by brand?
Would readers appreciate this sort of data? We think so,
especially if there was an online sign-up and the news provider would
deliver the changing price info via e-mail or IM much like Travelocity
tells us when airline ticket prices change by TK dollars.
Monday, May 16
"Flashing" the human body
by
JTJ
on Mon 16 May 2005 02:15 PM MDT
The
power of good infographics is that they can greatly aid in the
upstream aspects of journalism -- providing insight for
journalists to understand what's happening with a particular phenomena
-- and then downstream, to help journalists tell the story and for the
audience to understand it.
The Digital Revolution has upped the ante far beyond what good ol' Leonardo was using and envisioning. One of the innovators in today's datasphere is Alexander Tsiaras. A recent story in Digital Journal has this to say about Tsiaras's company, Anatomical Travelogue:
"Digital Journal — At ideaCity04, one presenter was so overflowing with
information that host Moses Znaimer had to enter stage right and
patiently sit beside him, a silent reminder to wrap it up. But you
couldn’t ask Alexander Tsiaras to gloss over the wonders of the human
body, from blood flow to cell mutation.
During his presentation, he showed images from his visualization
software company Anatomical Travelogue, whose clients include Nike,
Pfizer and Time Inc. Tsiaras and his 25 employees take data from MRI
scans, spiral CT scans and other medical imaging technologies, and use
them to create scientifically accurate 3D pictures and animations.
In 2003, his book of images of fetal development, From Conception to Birth, sold 150,000 copies and his latest work is Part Two of this fantastic voyage, The Architecture and Design of Man and Woman. For a chapter on sex, Tsiaras even scanned an employee doing the deed with his girlfriend — all in the name of science."
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