I'M ADAM

I'M NAT

WE WRITE:

STORIES

COMPUTER PROGRAMS

DATABASE QUERIES

why is

that a thing?

he said/she said

sucks

(sorry)

ADAM'S

life goal:

suck

less

(A LITTLE  every day)

proving things

helps me suck less

data is

how we

prove things

you only need...

1. A theory
   
   
2. A way to test it
   
   
3. A computer

why should

i care?

our dirty secret:

data is the

easiest
differentiator

things you can't learn in 1 week

being...

things you can learn in 1 week

in 1 semeseter:

basic programming

in other words:

BETTER STORIES

also:

better jobs

A THEORY

(OR HYPOTHESIS TESTING)

(WOW, THAT'S A LONG WORD.)

A THREAT FROM THE UNION

ELECTION DAY

THE HUNCH

The Post matched employee databases from the school district with county voter records. To ensure accuracy, reporters then checked hundreds of records by hand.

"ELECTION DAY CAME

AND THE VAST MAJORITY OF TEACHERS

DIDN'T SHOW UP."

Teacher turnout was 24 percent, the Post found. Although significantly higher than the turnout of other county voters, it wasn't enough to change the outcome of a single district race in August.

In the county, the belief that most teachers don't vote has been talked about -- quietly -- for years.

the rankings

42%: school librarians

33%: History Teachers

32%: Principals/asst. principals

29%: Music teachers

25%: Math teachers

24%: English teachers

22%: Physical ed teachers

20%: Elementary teachers

let's talk about

counting

Stand your ground

• People often go free under "stand your ground" in cases that seem to make a mockery of what lawmakers intended. One man killed two unarmed people and walked out of jail. Another shot a man as he lay on the ground. Others went free after shooting their victims in the back. In nearly a third of the cases the Times analyzed, defendants initiated the fight, shot an unarmed person or pursued their victim — and still went free.

stand your ground

In the most comprehensive effort of its kind, the Tampa Bay Times has identified nearly 200 "stand your ground'' cases and their outcomes. The Times identified cases through media reports, court records and dozens of interviews with prosecutors and defense attorneys across the state.

For nearly five years, the Broward County School District has been paying a former head custodian more than $100,000 a year to teach school janitors the finer points of cleaning.

Reynolds Hedland III, 52, has no college degree or state teaching certificate, yet earns more than 99 percent of Broward County's teachers. His lessons include how to mop and scrub bathrooms, strip and wax floors, and "maintain the cleanliness, orderliness, appearance and safe condition of schools."

He's scheduled to teach only 58 days this year ...

USING A

DATA LENS

LET'S TALK ABOUT

cops

More than 100 cops involved in serious misconduct cases either remain on the job or continued to work for years before retiring. They include Nassau Officer Anthony DiLeonardo, who was found in an internal affairs investigation to have shot and beat an unarmed cabdriver without justification while off-duty in 2011 after a night of drinking.

Serious misconduct stays hidden behind state Civil Rights Law 50-a, which makes any record used to judge an officer’s performance confidential. As a result, Long Island’s taxpayers are left to trust elected and police officials to provide proper oversight of some of the nation’s best-paid law enforcement officers.

in other words...

a data story on

a lack of data

That trust is unwarranted, a Newsday investigation has found.

In Albany, state laws proposed to address misconduct or increase oversight have gone nowhere.

One bill would have called on state troopers to investigate DiLeonardo’s shooting of the cabdriver the night it happened. Another would have given the state attorney general power to investigate police misconduct.

Both failed, as have more 50 attempts to increase oversight of police since 2009, according to a Newsday review of proposed state laws.

None of these issues, or any related to officer misconduct, were discussed in the county legislatures’ public safety committees, which can hold hearings and propose legislation as part of their role providing oversight of law enforcement.

0

Nassau's meeting lasted only seven minutes, which is not unusual. Since 2007, 80 percent of the committee's meetings lasted less than half an hour. Half ended in less than 10 minutes.

The remaining 61 either did not answer or declined to comment...

new theory:

cops speed

A three-month Sun Sentinel investigation found almost 800 cops from a dozen agencies driving 90 to 130 mph on our highways. Many weren't even on duty — they were commuting to and from work in their take-home patrol cars.

The evidence came from police SunPass toll records. The Sun Sentinel obtained a year's worth, hit the highways with a GPS device and figured out how fast the cops were driving based on the distance and time it took to go from one toll plaza to the next.

YOU NOTICE...

IN SUFFOLK,

THE COPS always get their man...

...to confess

HUH!

WHERE FROM HERE?

A year-long Newsday study has found that 94 percent of the murder defendants in Suffolk between 1975 and 1985 allegedly made incriminating statements. None of the other six suburban counties studied by Newsday has a rate close to Suffolk's. Their rates range from 54 percent in Montgomery County, Maryland, to 74 percent in DuPage County, Ill.

sidenote

you think YOU

can't use computers?

1986

WORKING

THE INTERSECTIONS

let's talk about

joining

JOINING:

HARD

let's talk about

getting

RECORDS

REQUESTS

if they have data electronically,

you can get it
that way

case study

"We don't have it

that way"

[RE: Day care inspections]

Q: how do you collect it?

in other words...

always ask for everything

you can use language like...

As this information is stored in an electronic database, I request it be provided electronically, in a spreadsheet or other delimited text-file.

I LIKE:

I request these records be provided in an electronic format that can be imported into standard database software. Examples of such formats include an Excel .xls or .xlsx file, an Access .mdb or .accdb file, a text-based delimited file such as .csv or tab-delimited .txt, a .dbf file or an SQL dump readable by standard open-source database software. (A PDF file would not comply with this request because PDF files are not readable by database software.) If this information is stored in a relational database, I request it be provided in its original relational format, not "flattened" or de-normalized. 

... but no pdfs

no pdfs

understand the process

tools

spreadsheets

EXCEL, GOOGLE SPREADSHEETS

databases

MICROSOFT ACCESS

SQL [SQLITE, MYSQL, POSTGRESQL]