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Welcome! Let's get rolling!

Today

- Homework Review: Assignment 1

- Guest Speaker: Nathaniel Rakich

 

- Intro to Stats for Journalists

    - Activity 1

    - Lecture

    - Activity 2

 

- Homework Preview: Assignment 2

- Project Brainstorming: "speed dating"

Assignment 1

Homework Review

Assignment 1

Headlines / Key Takeaways

Anonymous

SurveyUSA Poll

 

Polling error: How one survey changed the Newsom recall campaign - CalMatters

SurveyUSA CEO Jay Leve admits that their earlier poll could have acted as an alarm clock. “It was not our intention to cause Democrats to suddenly sit bolt upright in their chairs,” he told CalMatters. And yet, “that, I think, happened.”

 

Mea Culpa - SurveyUSA

Key Takeaway

🔑 Know your data

 

Always spend some time with the primary source materials in addition to reporting around that source material.

In this case:

- Poll PDFs (Toplines / Crosstabs)

- Press Releases

- Conversations with experts

- Academic discussions & articles about those polls

- News about the polls themselves (like the CalMatters article)

 

✅ Looking for "apples-to-apples" comparisons

✅ Context on how often this has happened before

✅ Explaining events around the key turning points, without making strong causal claims

⚠️ Reporting levels of precision in data

⚠️ Claims about the data's predictive value

⚠️ Causal Claims

⚠️ Keeping in mind the temporal element

Guest Speaker

Intro to Stats for Journalists

Summary Stats

Mean

 

 

 

Ben Orlin — Math with bad drawings

Ben Orlin — Math with bad drawings

Weighted Average

 

 

Text

Example

Median

Ben Orlin — Math with bad drawings

Ben Orlin — Math with bad drawings

Mode

Examples

 

 

 

Ben Orlin — Math with bad drawings

Ben Orlin — Math with bad drawings

Range

Ben Orlin — Math with bad drawings

Ben Orlin — Math with bad drawings

Correlation

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/negative-correlation.asp

Correlation

Pearson's Correlation Coefficient

Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'.

https://m.xkcd.com/552/

Ben Orlin — Math with bad drawings

Ben Orlin — Math with bad drawings

Correlation & Causation

 

Standard Deviation

 

 

 

 

 

 

Variance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Examples

 

 

  

Ben Orlin — Math with bad drawings

Ben Orlin — Math with bad drawings

Mystery Data

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fywjh2itH6p8Vpld8LAprdwXzsDByEhXiN5HqTQtpOM/edit#gid=0

What can you tell about these 4 mystery datasets with summary statistics?

 

Calculate:

- Mean

- Median

- Mode

- Correlation

- Variance

 

Distributions

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/al-gores-new-movie-exposes-the-big-flaw-in-online-movie-ratings/

Normal Distribution

Plotting

Exploratory Data Visualization

Pearson correlation is ????

Pearson correlation is 0.9909

Editorial Choices

 

Let's Try It

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yKpTZCq9PbrwRzsPWjVT0qA2FM3n2s7QHM_z3EI6aSU/edit#gid=1323361134

 

 

  • Which pollster is most / least accurate?
  • How accurate are polls from:
    • Brown University
    • American Research Group
  • Who is the most Republican-leaning pollster?
  • Who is the most Democratic-leaning pollster?

  • Are state polls less accurate than national polls?

  • Which states has the most inaccurate presidential polling?

  • How predictive are recall elections polls?

     

     

 

Let's Try It

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yKpTZCq9PbrwRzsPWjVT0qA2FM3n2s7QHM_z3EI6aSU/edit#gid=1323361134

 

 

  • Which pollster is most / least accurate?
  • How accurate are polls from:
    • Brown University
    • American Research Group
  • Who is the most Republican-leaning pollster?
  • Who is the most Democratic-leaning pollster?

  • Are state polls less accurate than national polls?

  • Which states has the most inaccurate presidential polling?

  • How predictive are recall elections polls?

     

     

 

Let's Try It

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yKpTZCq9PbrwRzsPWjVT0qA2FM3n2s7QHM_z3EI6aSU/edit#gid=1323361134

 

 

  • Which pollster is most / least accurate?
  • How accurate are polls from:
    • Brown University
    • American Research Group
  • Who is the most Republican-leaning pollster?
  • Who is the most Democratic-leaning pollster?

  • Are state polls less accurate than national polls?

  • Which states has the most inaccurate presidential polling?

  • How predictive are recall elections polls?

     

     

 

Let's Try It

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yKpTZCq9PbrwRzsPWjVT0qA2FM3n2s7QHM_z3EI6aSU/edit#gid=1323361134



  • Which pollster is most / least accurate?
  • How accurate are polls from:
    • Brown University
    • American Research Group
  • Who is the most Republican-leaning pollster?
  • Who is the most Democratic-leaning pollster?

  • Are state polls less accurate than national polls?

  • Which states has the most inaccurate presidential polling?

  • How predictive are recall elections polls?




What makes a good pitch?

Dataset?      or a

I have a dataset I'm interested in

Question?

I have a journalistic question that I'm interested in trying to answer

Does your pitch start with a:

What questions will I ask?

Where will I get the data?

Quick Brainstorm

project group "speed dating" 

https://forms.gle/bzjmNvmXaqAmygjU7

  • Headline of Pitch Brainstorm
    - Trash in New York City
     
  • Questions
    - Where does NYC export it's trash to?
    - Does that differ by borough?
    - Are there private / public actors?
     
  • Possible Datasets
    - NYC Trash data?
    - Google Maps?

Project Brainstorm

 

https://forms.gle/dJue4zuAFmewcwdw6

Slack

https://ledeprogram.slack.com/

#data-ms-2022

#data-ms-2022-discussion

#data-ms-2022-coding

 

OR

 

directly message Dhrumil/Aseem

 

Office Hours

 

Dhrumil

Weekdays 2-4pm

calendly.com/dmil

 

Aseem

Night before your assignment is due: 6-9pm

calendly.com/aas2345

During the week...

Reporting II - Day 2 (stats)

By Dhrumil Mehta

Reporting II - Day 2 (stats)

  • 363