data as a language

northwestern university knight lab

a beginner's guide to thinking about data, according to anne miao li (@annemiaoli)

how many journalists would consider themselves "math people"? 

numbers are not scary.

they create a language, with their own hidden meanings, definitions and connotations.

what do you care about?

Created by Mallory Busch and myself with Highcharts. See the interactive real deal, The Grade Escape.

data spotted at:

• Census Reporter
• public institutions (like IDOE)
• federal/niche resources (like NCES or Fan Graphs)

a .xlxs is pretty and powerful, but a .csv is more versatile.  

question

visualize

question, again

data is powerful.

data can also be deceiving.

as journalists, we bear the responsibility of translating what data is capable of showing and hiding to our audience.

numbers are not our enemy.

they strengthen our work and our words. 

Tools and terms to know

• Excel
• R

• standard deviation 
• mean/median/mode
• regression

• Python
• Javascript

• to FOIA
• to scrape

• scatterplot
• box-and-whiskers plot
• bar graph
• line graph
• (etc.)

software

verbs

descriptive stats

languages

visualizations

extra readings

• "What do I do when I get a new data set as told through tweets" by Jeff Leek
• "Bulletproofing the data project" by Sarah Cohen
• MuckRock and FOIA Machine  (FOIA generators)

thank you!

anne miao li

tweet: @annemiaoli

visit: annemiaoli.com

write: annemiaoli@gmail.com