Data in the Newsroom
~ Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
How to think about them
Ways to represent them
How to spot bad ones
What is a number?
An opinion
An opinion
A summary
An opinion
A summary
A guess
Numbers in copy—some tips
Fewer than eight digits.
The Office of Redundancy's budget rose 48 per cent in 2013, from $700.3 million to $1.03 billion.
Over the past year, the Office of Redundancy's budget grew by nearly half, to $1 billion.
per paragraph
Memorise common numbers.
The Government said it would spend $125.8 million over four years on several measures to strengthen cyber safety.
Is it big or is it small?
Round off—a lot.
An exact number is rarely useful in your copy.
Learn to think in ratios.
7
450
51 million
Learn from each other.
Broadcast journalists have some lessons for us here.
Everyone has different strengths.
Ask someone 'how else could I convey these numbers?'
What is data visualisation?
The representation and presentation of data
to facilitate understanding.
Representation.
- Size
- Position
- Area
- Colour
- Angle
- Quantity
- Shape
- Connection
- Slope
Presentation.
- Labeling
- Style
- Scale
- Tone
- Understandable despite subject
- You can 'see' the stories
- Astute use of colour for more depth
GOOD
Bad visualisations:
- Make understanding difficult (or impossible)
- Don't add any value
- Simply try to decorate data
- Misrepresent data
deck
By Simon Elvery
