Hello,  my name is...

Dhrumil Mehta (he/him)

Associate Prof. of Journalism @ Columbia U.

Deputy Director of Tow Center

Visiting Associate Prof of Public Policy @ Harvard Kennedy School

dhrumil.mehta@columbia.edu

 @datadhrumil

@dmil

Highlights:

Currently

• Associate Prof. @ Columbia Graduate School of Journalism

• Visiting Associate Prof. @ Harvard Kennedy School

Previously

• Database Journalist, Politics @ FiveThirtyEight

• Software Development Engineer @ Amazon
• Northwestern:
  • BA in Philosophy + Minor in Cognitive Science
  • MS in Computer Science

Off the record?

Database Journalist, Politics

2014 - http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/job-opening-database-journalist-politics/

2021 - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/were-hiring-a-data-editor/

A day in the life

Some of the work I've done as a "Database Journalist, Politics"

Data-Driven Storytelling

https://fivethirtyeight.com/contributors/dhrumil-mehta

Data Scraping / Cleaning

Building Software

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

Bots

Internal Workflows

Bots

Reports Election Results

Bots

Lets readers see results that FiveThirtyEight deems unexpected

Expectations are calibrated before results ever start coming in.

Open Data

data.fivethirtyeight.com

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

Quantitative Editing

Research

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

Computationally analyzing text to better understand media and political environments.

I have a research interest in text analysis

Types of Data Stories

Counting Stuff

Identify a Phenomenon

Identify a Phenomenon

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-media-really-has-neglected-puerto-rico/

Debunk or Justify Conventional Wisdom

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/

Huge Data Dump

• Uber Data [1,2,3,4]​
• Census Release
• Election Results

Election Results

Answer a question with data

Support/Oppose a hypothesis

Data-Driven Profile

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

The Rare Datapoint

Lack of Data

Data driven investigative work

Data driven investigative work

Provide relevant context

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

Build our own dataset

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

Archiving Data

Explain Calculations

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

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

Use Innovative Methodology

https://dhrumilmehta.com/cowboy-state-daily/

Use data to inform traditional reporting

Reporting on Forecasts/Models

Whether we show the chances in percentages or odds, this is the portion of an election forecast that is most anticipated — and has the most potential to be misunderstood. In 2016, we aimed for simplicity, both visually and conceptually. In 2018, we leaned into the complexity of the forecast. For 2020, we wanted to land somewhere in between. 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-we-designed-the-look-of-our-2020-forecast/

Reporting on Forecasts

2020 

2018

2016

2014

Communicating Uncertainty

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-we-designed-the-look-of-our-2020-forecast/