Unlocking Quant Skills

Data in the Classroom

Data in Journalism

Path

• Northwestern:
  • BA in Philosophy + Minor in Cognitive Science
  • MS in Computer Science
  • Knight Lab Student Fellow
• Political Framing + USA Today + APSA
  • ​http://politicalframing.com/blog/methodology
• MediaCloud & Framing - Berkman Center
• Software Development Engineer @ Amazon
• Democracy and Technology Fellow @ Ash Center - Harvard Kennedy School
• Database Journalist @ FiveThirtyEight + Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School

Database Journalist, Politics

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/job-opening-database-journalist-politics/

Day One

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/both-republicans-and-democrats-have-an-age-problem/

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-age-of-tea-party-members-in-congress/

Lessons

Month One

Year One

More Writing / Reporting / Picking Up the Phone

Building Software

Polls Database

Elections 2016

More Reporting &

Writing  

&

Data

Bots, scrapers, watchers, and integrated workflow

Open Data

https://www.datajournalismawards.org/project-listing/?project_id=2082

Code that is journalism - not code for journalism

Reflecting

http://journalism.stanford.edu/cj2016/files/Newsbots.pdf

Types of Data Stories

Huge Data Dump

• Uber
• Election Results
• Census

Answer a question with data

Support/Oppose a hypothesis

Identify a Phenomenon

Debunk or Justify Conventional Wisdom

Data-Driven Profile

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/

Lack of Data

Data driven investigative work

Dig for Data

Provide relevant context

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/

Build our own dataset

• With Code / Scrapers
• By Hand
• By Survey Tool

Explain Calculations

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/not-even-scientists-can-easily-explain-p-values/

Use Innovative Methodology

Use data to inform traditional reporting

The Rare Datapoint

My Lessons

Coding Is Journalism

To What End?