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Monday, January 30
Nice job of mapping from Newark
by
JTJ
on Mon 30 Jan 2006 03:31 PM MST
Ryan Konig, of the Arizona Republic, alerts us to the following via the NICAR-L list:
"For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, the NJ Star Ledger
(Gebeloff et others) has a two-day report on unsolved
homicides, "Getting away with murder," here:
http://www.nj.com/news/murder/
Includes an attrition graphic, like the famous
"Napoleon's March to Moscow" graphic, that shows
outcomes of murder cases from 1998-2003, and an
embedded Google Map, from which the rest of us can
steal ideas, such as having buttons for visitors to
click to reposition the map to a specific community or
intersection.
The map will take anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute
to load into Explorer and about 1 or 2 seconds in
either Netscape or Firefox.
Thursday, January 26
Scientists track money to help predict disease
by
JTJ
on Thu 26 Jan 2006 11:35 AM MST
Yet another fine example of creative thinking wherein a good idea in one discipline is morphed into an unintended application in another. (Something all-too-rare in the practice of journalism.) The journal Nature reports:
Another day another dollar
The
website wheresgeorge.com invites its users to enter the serial numbers
of their US dollar bills and track them across America and beyond. Why?
"For fun and because it had not been done yet", they say. But the
dataset accumulated since December 1998 has provided the ideal raw
material to test the mathematical laws underlying human travel, and
that has important implications for the epidemiology of infectious
diseases. Analysis of the trajectories of over half a million dollar
bills shows that human dispersal is described by a 'two-parameter
continuous-time random walk' model: our travel habits conform to a type
of random proliferation known as 'superdiffusion'. And with that much
established, it should soon be possible to develop a new class of
models to account for the spread of human disease. Letter: The scaling laws of human travelD. Brockmann, L. Hufnagel
and T. Geisel
Tailor-Made Cartography with Google Maps
by
JTJ
on Thu 26 Jan 2006 11:12 AM MST
We missed this one when it was originally posted on the National Public Radio site, but the story offers such interesting info and links, we wanted to get it into the IAJ archive. The NPR links at the top are of value, but be sure to scroll down to see other fascinating mashups from around the world.
Jan 12, 2006
Tailor-Made Cartography with Google Maps
NPR's Top 10 Markets
See Google Maps "mashups" of public radio stations and their coverage areas in the ... more »
Wednesday, January 25
Encouraging signs of analytic journalism at UC-Berkeley J-School
by
JTJ
on Wed 25 Jan 2006 02:32 PM MST
From the Nieman Watchdog.org posting....
How not to cover the economy
SHOWCASE | January 23, 2006
A fed-up Berkeley economics professor joins up with the J-school to
teach journalists and would-be journalists how to cover – and even more
emphatically, how not to cover – economic news.
By Dan Froomkin
froomkin@niemanwatchdog.org
Brad DeLong – the Berkeley economics professor whose popular blog includes more than a bit of media criticism
– launched a fascinating experiment last week: He joined forces with
Journalism School Professor Susan Rasky to teach a class for would-be
journalists called “Covering the Economy.”
In DeLong’s hands, the class ... more »
Monday, January 23
Getting that tabled data from there to here
by
JTJ
on Mon 23 Jan 2006 04:47 PM MST
Another reason to use Firefox....
Copying and pasting data from online tables into a spreadsheet is often fraught with frustration, often centering around invisible characters or custom formatting in web tables. And then there's the problem of getting data from non-adjacent cells. Some fine fellow -- actually, it is Davide Ficano -- has written a slick extension for Firefox to minimize these, um, challenges. See:
"Table2Clipboard - Firefox Extension
Table2Clipboard 0.0.1, by Davide Ficano, released on January 13, 2006
More Previews»
Quick Description
Mozilla applications allow to select rows and columns from a table
simply pressing Control key and picking rows/columns with left mouse
button.
The selection can be copied to clipboard but the original table
disposition is lost making ugly results when you paste the text on
datasheet applications (eg excel).
If you want to paste data in Microsoft Excel on OpenOffice Calc with correct disposition simply use Table2Clipboard.
Pasting in plain text editors is also supported as CSV file (but you can change rows and columns separators from option dialog)
SJ Mercury-News Series: "Tainted Trials, Stolen Justice."
by
JTJ
on Mon 23 Jan 2006 04:18 PM MST
Friend-of-IAJ Griff Palmer alerts us to an impressive series this week that examines the conduct of the DA's office in Santa Clara County, California. If nothing else, the series illustrates why good, vital-to-the-community journalism takes time and is expensive. Rick Tulsky, Griff and other colleagues spent three years -- not not three days, but YEARS -- on the story. Griff writes:
Friday, January 20
Charlotte Mortgage Foreclosures
by
JTJ
on Fri 20 Jan 2006 10:02 PM MST
Three-Day Series
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/special_packages/foreclosure/
summary stolen from (http://www.thescoop.org/)
Charlotte Mortgage Foreclosures
Posted by Derek on January 18th, 2006. Filed under Fed Data, Mapping.
Lisa Hammersly Munn, Binyamin Appelbaum and Ted Mellnik of the
Charlotte Observer have a three-part series on mortgage foreclosures,
finding that home loan failures have more than quadrupled in Mecklenburg
County since 1999. More foreclosures are filed here, per person, than any
other county in the state. On average, 11 Mecklenburg houses are sold in
foreclosure auctions every business day. The owners are evicted, their
credit ruined, and they face thousands in court fees and moving expenses.
Included with the series is an interactive map of Mecklenburg County
foreclosures and a sidebar reporting that local loans from the Federal
Housing Administration are failing at almost twice the national rate.
The Numbers Guy - WSJ
by
JTJ
on Fri 20 Jan 2006 09:40 PM MST
Wall Street Journal
Richard Holden says journalists at his seminars often don't find
the problems in his examples of poorly presented numbers from
newspapers. "I'm surprised with professional newspaper people, how
frequently it goes right over their head," he tells Carl Bialik.
"Many times, I'm greeted by 30 blank stares." Part of the problem is
embedded in the culture of the profession, he says. "Journalists always
prided themselves on knowing so little about math."
Thursday, January 19
More lies, loudly spoken, from the Bush Administration?
by
JTJ
on Thu 19 Jan 2006 10:44 PM MST
Posted on Thu, Jan. 19, 2006
Feds dispute mine safety report
By SETH BORENSTEIN and LINDA J. JOHNSON
Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/nation/13661497.htm
WASHINGTON - Federal mine safety officials on Wednesday disputed a Knight Ridder analysis showing a dramatic reduction in the dollar amount of large fines for mine safety violations during the Bush administration, saying in an Internet posting that those fines are actually up.
Mine Safety and Health Administration spokesman Dirk Fillpot said that Knight Ridder made "assumptions that were incorrect'' in its Jan. 6 analysis. But when Knight Ridder conducted a new analysis in the manner suggested by Fillpot using MSHA's newest database, it showed the same dramatic drop.
The newest data show a 43 percent reduction in proposed median major fines from the last five years of the Clinton administration when compared with the first five years of the Bush administration. That's the same percentage reduction found in Knight Ridder's original analysis, using a smaller, online database of MSHA violations.
When asked about that drop and the analysis, Fillpot refused Wednesday to answer 11 specific questions about MSHA's fines, its analysis or the posting of its critique. Instead Fillpot repeated a prepared statement that said "it is unfortunate that Knight Ridder's analysis of MSHA's penalties was inaccurate.''
But four statistical experts who looked at the databases and analyses said Knight Ridder's findings were accurate and that MSHA's assessment didn't contradict the newspaper's findings of smaller fines during the Bush administration.
"It's really wrong for them (MSHA) to say you're incorrect,'' said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. "There's no question that the average/median proposed penalty has gone down."
MSHA's response "is looking at two different things and making a statement as if they are looking at the same thing,'' said Jeff Porter, a database library director for Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., an association of journalists. Porter also teaches data analysis at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
On its Web site, MSHA said the size of the final assessments -- which are lower after bargaining and appeals -- are up by "nearly 38 percent.''
Knight Ridder looked only at proposed fines because some of the actual fines are determined not by MSHA, but by administrative judges when mining companies appeal those penalties. Further, Knight Ridder found that fines finally assessed and paid fines are still lower on average in the Bush administration.
Fillpot wouldn't explain how his agency came up with the 38 percent figure.
The statistical experts said they couldn't understand how MSHA figured that out. Fillpot said "that information is taken from actual MSHA enforcement records and is accurate.'' He refused to elaborate.
In an unusual posting on the Internet on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday on Monday, MSHA said, "Knight-Ridder's numbers are inaccurate, obscuring the reality that penalties issued by MSHA have gone up during this Administration -- not down.''
After Knight Ridder questioned the posting, it was taken down Tuesday afternoon. It went back up Wednesday morning. Among fines of $10,000 or more, the median penalty levied in the past five years was $27,139. During the last five years of the Clinton
administration, the comparable fine was $47,913, according to Knight Ridder's analysis of the newest data from MSHA.
That data, which included 221 large fines that weren't in the publicly available database used by Knight Ridder for its initial analysis, show that the total number of large fines increased to 527 in the Bush administration from 461 during the last five Clinton years.
Fillpot declined to say where those extra fines came from or why they weren't in the online database.|
(Johnson reports for Lexington Herald-Leader.)
Mr. Google, may I introduce you to Ms. Associated Press
by
JTJ
on Thu 19 Jan 2006 10:59 AM MST
From the Librarians' Internet Index
"AP News and Google Maps Mashup
This mashup plots selected current
Associated Press (AP) news stories superimposed on a Google map or
satellite image of the United States. It includes national news,
sports, business, technology, and "strange" stories. Clicking on a
marker provides a synopsis with a link to the full story as hosted on
the site for the San Francisco Chronicle. From a software developer
with a degree in computer science.
URL: http://81nassau.com/apnews/
LII Item: http://lii.org/cs/lii/view/item/20125"
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