Institute for Analytic Journalism

Roll-your-own choropleth map with free tools

analyticjournalism — 2009-11-12T03:59:00-07:00

Nathan, honcho at FlowingData, has put together a fine tutorial on making a choropleth map using free tools. This is one bookmark you will want to save.

How to Make a US County Thematic Map Using Free Tools

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 10:57 PM PST

There are about a million ways to make a choropleth map. You know, the maps that color regions by some metric. The problem is that a lot of solutions require expensive software or have a high learning curve...or both. What if you just want a simple map without all the GIS stuff? In this post, I'll show you how to make a county-specific choropleth map using only free tools.

The Result

Here's what we're after. It's the most recent unemployment map from last week.

Step 0. System requirements

Just as a heads up, you'll need Python installed on your computer. Python comes pre-installed on the Mac. I'm not sure about Windows. If you're on Linux, well, I'm sure you're a big enough nerd to already be fluent in Python.

We're going to make good use of the Python library Beautiful Soup, so you'll need that too. It's a super easy, super useful HTML/XML parser that you should come to know and love.

Step 1. Prepare county-specific data

The first step of every visualization is to get the data. You can't do anything without it. In this example we're going to use county-level unemployment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, you have to go through FTP to get the most recent numbers, so to save some time, download the comma-separated (CSV) file here.

Philip Meyer Awards - Call for Entries

analyticjournalism — 2009-10-15T23:24:00-06:00

The deadline for applications for the Philip Meyer Award is approaching. Established in 2005, the award was created to honor Philip Meyer’s pioneering efforts to utilize social science research methods to foster better journalism. The postmark deadline for entries is October 31, 2009.

The contest recognizes stories that incorporate survey research, probabilities and other social science tools in creative ways that lead to journalism vital to the community.

Three awards are given annually:

    * $500 for 1st place
    * $300 for 2nd place
    * $200 for 3rd place

Last year’s winning entries exposed bureaucratic lapses that have hindered the search for causes of SIDS; uncovered the NHTSA’s failure to consider non-deploying airbags as being a significant safety issue; and analyzed arrest and court data to reveal towns where blacks were being arrested in extraordinary numbers for minor offenses like loitering or jaywalking.

Work submitted for consideration must have been published between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009. A pdf of the entry is available to download online (http://www.ire.org/resourcecenter/contest/MeyerEntryForm09.pdf) . For additional information, please refer to the Philip Meyer Award FAQ page (http://ire.org/resourcecenter/contest/meyerawardfaq.html).

Award winners will be honored at the 2010 CAR Conference in Phoenix, Ariz.

The Philip Meyer Award is sponsored by the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, a joint program of IRE and the Missouri School of Journalism; the Knight Chair in Journalism at Arizona State University; and IRE.

--
Beth Kopine
Resource Center Director & Contest Coordinator
Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc.
141 Neff Annex
Missouri School of Journalism
Columbia, MO 65211
Phone: 573-882-6668
Fax: 573-882-5431
Email: beth@ire.org

Could World of Warcraft be the new War and Peace?

analyticjournalism — 2009-10-02T15:18:00-06:00

From the Nieman Foundation "Storyboard":

Could World of Warcraft be the new War and Peace?

Whether Pacman or Halo first introduced you to video games, calling them “high art” might stretch the sensibilities. But boardwalk nickelodeons led to movies like The Godfather—could a similarly radical transformation be underway with games?

Narrative journalism draws many of its core principles from novels, films, and short stories. Elements like character development, scene-setting, and a narrative arc work whether the tale is true or made up.

Games, however, are different.

“There are characters and stories in games, just like there are ...

UPDATED: Inflation Conversion Factors for Dollars 1774 to Estimated 2019

analyticjournalism — 2009-09-30T18:08:00-06:00

Here at the IAJ, we have long been a fan -- and user -- of Prof. Robert Sahr's "Inflation Conversion Factors" web site and tools. We were snoozing at the switch a bit and didn't notice that Sahr updated the site in early June 2009. Check it out: it's filled with both PDF and Excel data/tools to calculate the comparative costs of most anything from 1774 to 2019. The site also includes some fun data:

The charts on the following topics are available either by scrolling down or by selecting the appropriate link:

Price levels and the US economy

Millionaires Then and Now

Pay of Presidents and Members of Congress

Selected Government-related Items (number of government employees, Social Security and AFDC/TANF; stamp prices, minimum wage, mean and median family income)

Presidential Election Costs 1860 to 2000

National Government Budget: Outlays (Spending), Revenue, Deficits or Surpluses, and National Debt

Selected Commodity Prices (gasoline and gold) [gasoline revised June 2009, using June 2009 price data and estimated 2009 dollar conversion factors]

Movies

Budget Details

More insights into how and why journos can't deal with data

analyticjournalism — 2009-09-30T13:26:00-06:00

This tip comes from our friend Stephan Russ-Mohl, of the European Journalism Observatory.

Darned Statistics

by Stephan Russ-Mohl

European Journalism Observatory, September 26, 2009

Many journalists face difficulties in dealing with statistics, and frequently lack the competence to present quantitative information to their publics in easy-to-grasp language.

This is nothing new, as most journalism textbooks contain tips on how to deal adequately with numbers and percentages. Thus far, these remain rules of thumb. Three U.S. researchers – Coy Callison, Rhonda Gibson and Dolf Zillmann – recently tested these rules. Drawing from 240 students who participated in an experiment, their empirical analysis provides new, surprising insights.

The test subjects could deal as easily with percentages as with absolute numbers. Contrary to textbooks, they experienced more difficulties when percentages were characterized verbally. For example, “30 percent of the citizens of XY have AIDS” has a meaning different from “3000 of the citizens of XY have AIDS” – but the percentage is no more difficult to grasp and remember. If, instead, the percentage is transformed into the phrase “Three of ten of the citizens of XY have AIDS,” an additional barrier of comprehension is created. The researchers mention, however, that their experiments should be expanded, and that less educated groups still need to be included.

Coy Callison et al.: How to Report Quantitative Information in News Stories, Newspaper Research Journal, Vol 30/Nr. 2, Spring 2009, 43-55.

Wondering what the prez is doing???

analyticjournalism — 2009-09-19T16:47:00-06:00

We don't know how long this one's been around, but kudos to the gang at the WashPost for taking a concept/tool somewhat on the margin and putting it to good use for both reporters and readers. See http://projects.washingtonpost.com/potus-tracker/

Jobs by SimplyHired

POTUS Tracker

Analyzing Obama's schedule

ANALYSIS

CALENDAR

View Event List By:

ISSUE

TYPE

ATTENDEES

LOCATION

Every day President Obama meets with key members of his administration, Congress, foreign dignitaries, interest groups and regular citizens. Use our interactive database to track how Obama is spending his time, what issues are getting the most attention and who is influencing the debate.
Subscribe to daily schedule via RSS.

CREDIT: Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso, Madonna Lebling, Karen Yourish, Ryan O'Neil, Wilson Andrews, Jacqueline Kazil, Todd Lindeman, Lucy Shackelford, Paul Volpe

Have information we could use or suggestions about how to improve the site? Contact Us.

Vintage Infographics From the 1930s

analyticjournalism — 2009-09-11T17:41:00-06:00

Nathan, over at FlowingData, has posted a fine example of infographics. The work of Willard C. Brinton is a nice extension of what was being done by U.S. government agencies. Turns out, Brinton's book can be found in used book sites, and at an affordable price.

Vintage Infographics From the 1930s

Posted by Nathan / Sep 11, 2009 to Infographics / 8 comments

Someone needs to get me a paper copy of Willard Cope Brinton's Graphic Presentation (1939), because it is awesome.

Brinton discusses various forms of graphic presentation in the 524-page book and what works and what doesn't. There's also some good stuff in there about how to make your graphs, charts, maps, etc (by hand).

Have we seen these?

The most interesting part is that many of the graphics - despite having no computers in 1939 - look a lot like what we have today. Albeit, they're a little rougher because they're made by hand, but that's just added flavor.

For example, you've got the Sankey diagram above, or a "cosmograph" as Brinton calls it. The instructions read:

One thousand strips of paper are set on edge to represent 100% and are separated into component parts of 100%.

What? You want me to arrange 1,000 strips of paper to make my diagram? Brilliant, I say.

Here are your choropleth maps...

network diagram...

and of course some of your usual suspects...

The entire book is freely available in PDF format, but it's low resolution and takes forever to browse. Michael Stoll has posted some higher quality shots on Flickr.

I still want more though.

Seriously, does anyone know where I can get a copy?

[via Datavisualization.ch]

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The Evolution of Darwin's Ideas

analyticjournalism — 2009-09-07T11:55:00-06:00

FlowingData passes along the link to this fine piece of work by Ben Fry. "Ben Fry Visualizes the Evolution of Darwin’s Ideas" Journos could be using a similar approach to analyze the evolution of the ideas of public officials.

Ben Fry Visualizes the Evolution of Darwin’s Ideas

Posted by Nathan / Sep 7, 2009 to Artistic Visualization / 2 comments

"Ben Fry, well-known for Processing and plenty of other data goodness, announced his most recent piece, On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces, made possible by The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online.

The visualization explores the evolution of Charles Darwin's theory of, uh, evolution. It began as a less-defined 150,000-word text in the first edition and grew and developed to a 190,000-word theory in the sixth edition.

Watch where the updates in the text occur over time. Chunks are removed, chunks are added, and words are changed. Blocks are color-coded by edition. Roll over blocks to see the text underneath.

As usual, excellent work, Mr. Fry."

Mary Ellen Bates on "Google Squared"

analyticjournalism — 2009-08-25T12:27:00-06:00

Mary Ellen Bates offers up this good tip on "Google Squared" at
Bates Information Services, www.BatesInfo.com/tip.html ________________________________________________________________________________________

August 2009
Google Squared

Google Labs -- the public playground where Google lets users try out new products or services that aren't yet ready for prime time -- is my secret weapon for learning about cool new stuff. My favorite new discovery in Google Labs is Google Squared. It's a demonstration of a search engine trying to provide answers instead of just sites, and at a higher level than the simple "smart answers" you see when you search for "time in Rome" ...

SNA in R Talk, Updated with [Better] Video

analyticjournalism — 2009-08-20T10:20:00-06:00

OK, OK. Using R can be a steep hill to climb for some. But here, thanks to O"Reilly Radar, is a pretty good video of a presentation on using R as a Social Network Analysis tool.

"Social Network Analysis in R -- video and slides for talk on doing social network analysis with R."

SNA in R Talk, Updated with [Better] Video

By Drew Conway, on August 6th, 2009

Update II: It occurred to me that it would be much better for people to be able to view the entire talk in a single video, rather than having to switch between sections; therefore, I uploaded the whole thing to Vimeo.

~~Tonight I will be giving~~On August 6th I gave a talk at the New York City R Meetup on how to perform social network analysis in R using the igraph package. Below are the slides I ~~will be going over~~ covered during the talk, and all of the code examples from the presentation are available in the ZIA Code Repository in the R folder.

Below is a video of this talk, with a link to the slides I review during the presentation. If you are interested, I suggest downloading the slides and following along with videos while having the slides open, as much of what is on the screen in the video is hard to read.

Social Netowork Analysis in R from Drew Conway on Vimeo.

Andrew Little’s presentation on econometrics in R using Zelig and MatchIt are also available on YouTube starting here. I hope you enjoy the presentation, and please let me know if you have any questions or comments.