Data 2: Make a map with Google Fusion Tables

The resources we used in class: Week 10.

Your CSV data

Make sure you use the counties BLOCK assigned to you. If you use the wrong counties, or omit any schools, no points.

1. Go to the resources page (Week 10, linked above!) to find the link for mailing addresses for all Florida schools. Download the giant spreadsheet. Open in Excel.
2. Find ALL of your assigned counties and copy all the rows for each of your counties. Don’t miss anything.
3. Paste all the rows you copied into a new Excel spreadsheet. New file. Not a new sheet.
4. Close the big spreadsheet file and just keep it, unchanged. Use only your new spreadsheet for everything else.
5. Lots of things need to be cleaned up in this data. Instructions can be found here.

It is essential that you clean your data carefully BEFORE you save as a CSV file.

Saving the CSV is the final step BEFORE you make the Fusion Table.

Blog post 20: Reading assignment

In this blog post, publish your notes from Yau, chapter 8. Your notes must appear in the form of one numbered list. Write a brief statement above the list to explain or summarize it.

Write at least five (5) items in the list. You may try out one or more of the tools Yau recommends in the chapter and write about your experience with that tool.

Data 1: Use a CSV file and Excel to make a chart

The resources we used in class: Week 8 and Week 9.

Of course, we also needed Yau’s book.

The assignment is to use Excel to create a clear and attractive chart of 365 days of high temperatures from your assigned city for your assigned year (see the Week 9 resources for that link). Requirements are listed below. Your chart will look similar to this one:

Blog post 19: Exploring data journalism

The intention of this assignment is for you to discover, by yourself, what people in journalism are saying about data skills and programming skills for journalists today. This is NOT about HTML, CSS or Web page design. The topic is data, data journalism, data-driven journalism, and programming. It includes Excel, computer languages such as Python, frameworks such as Ruby, databases and large data sets, Big Data, etc.

Do several Google searches, using different search terms. Find articles about these topics, and go to different professional sites, industry sites, and/or blogs about journalism. You might find some articles in newspapers, but the better sources will be the sites about journalism.

You must read enough different material to be able to write a blog post about the consensus, the zeitgeist, the general attitude, toward programming skills and journalism today, in 2013. This assignment is intended to open your eyes, to inform you.

Investigate. Question. Seek answers.

Blog post 18: Reading assignment

In this blog post, publish your notes from Yau, chapter 3. Your notes must appear in the form of one numbered list. Write a brief statement above the list to explain or summarize it.

Write at least five (5) items in the list. You may try out one or more of the tools Yau recommends in the chapter and write about your experience with that tool.

The list is not meant to represent everything in the chapter. It should represent what was most meaningful to YOU. Thus each student’s list will be different.

Blog post 17: Reading assignment

In this blog post, publish your notes from Yau, introduction and chapters 1 and 2. Your notes must appear in the form of three (3) numbered lists, one for each chapter. Write a brief statement above each list to explain or summarize that list.

The list is not meant to represent everything in the chapter. It should represent what was most meaningful to YOU. Thus each student’s list will be different.

Register for the webinar

If you have not done so already, please register for this webinar:

http://businessjournalism.org/2013/03/11/data-journalism-101-online-oct-22-23/

It’s a two-hour session, with one hour on Tuesday, Oct. 22, and the second hour on Wednesday, Oct. 23.

We have two chances to watch the hour on each day: at noon, or at 4 p.m.

To prepare for the webinar, visit the Reynolds Center’s Webinar Help Page IN ADVANCE:

http://businessjournalism.org/connect_test/

This webinar will kick off our unit about data journalism.

To learn more about data journalism …

If you liked what we did in the past two weeks, here are some things to consider:

You could learn Python. Yeah, actually learn it. Here’s how.

When you read Yau’s chapter 8, you probably noticed he gave you three different examples. The first one used R, a programming environment that’s good for making statistical graphics. The second example used Python (yay! You have that!). The third example used Flash, in a particularly horrible way.

If you want to learn more about this stuff, you can’t try to learn three things at the same time.

But you can learn them one at a time. You could do the Python stuff in Yau’s chapter 8. You can try it. You can make it work.

Data 2: Maps and Google Fusion Tables

The resources we used in class: Week 10.

First, make sure you use the county assigned to you. If you use another county, no points.

Next, go to the resources page (linked above!) to find the link for mailing addresses for all Florida schools. Download the giant spreadsheet. Open in Excel. Find your assigned county and copy all the rows for your county. Don’t miss anything.

Paste all the rows you copied into a new Excel spreadsheet.

Data 1: Use a CSV file and Excel to make a chart

The resources we used in class: Week 8 and Week 9.

Of course, we also needed Yau’s book.

The assignment is to use Excel to create a clear and attractive chart of 365 days of high temperatures from your assigned city for your assigned year (see the Week 8 resources for that link). Requirements are listed below. Your chart will look similar to this one: