Alfredo Covaleda,
Bogota, Colombia
Stephen Guerin,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
James A. Trostle,
Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
The NYTimes Michael Gordon broke a fine story on Nov. 1, 2006 — “U.S. Central Command Charts Sharp Movement of the Civil Conflict in Iraq Toward Chaos.” The grabber in the story was a single PowerPoint slide some unnamed source slipped to Gordon that illustrated where the U.S. was on the “continuum of chaos” in Iraq. The story is a good and insightful read, but the important lesson to take away is how what might seem to be random events — in this case violent events — and be understood and communicated as the visual aggregate of a complex phenomenon. Journalists might give some thought to how can we (a) visually present both static and dynamic events in our towns and (b) what do we first have to learn and understand to do so?
Only then will we be able to ask the right and pertinent questions of the military, corporations and public officials — who are all using these and similar techniques.
Have your colleagues and student's give this a shot.
FYI, folks:
Prior to 2006, analysts had to make do with increasingly out-of-datedetailed information about households and individuals while they waitedfor the next decennial census. Starting in 2006, this information willbe made available on an annual basis in the ACS.
This course shows what sort of information is included, how to obtainit, and what methodological and sample size issues present themselves.
If you have not made use of similar Census data previously, learn howyou can leverage these improvements in data currency and timeliness foryour projects. If you have used decennial census data before, you willbenefit by learning about the methodological differences between thisSurvey and the decennial census long form – they affect the results andyou may make errors if you don't know how to handle the differences.
Ms. Taeuber, a senior policy advisor at the University of Baltimore'sJacob France Institute, has 30 years of experience at the U.S. CensusBureau, directed the analytic staff for the American Community Survey,and received the Commerce Dept.'s Gold Medal Award for her innovativework on the American Community Survey. She is the author of “TheAmerican Community Survey: Updated Information for America'sCommunities,” and more.
As with all online courses at statistics.com, there are no set hourswhen you must be online; we estimate you will need 7-15 hours per week.
Register: http://www.statistics.com/courses/census
Peter Brucecourses@statistics.com
P.S. Also coming up:
Nov. 3 – Cluster Analysis (useful for customer segmentation)Nov. 17 – How to deal with missing dataNov. 27 – Basic Concepts in Probability and Statistics
statistics.com612 N. Jackson St.Arlington, VA 22201USA
The past week or two has brought some press stories about games being designed/developed as tools for learning, as in “productive learning,” not learning how to inflict terror or be a better car-jacker. We recently ran across the site below, “Social Impact Games.” It's well worth a visit, as are the others.
We think these have great potential for journalism as tools to help readers/viewers learn how government, eduction, schools, the legal system and nature work.
Good links to simulation games:
*) Social Impact Games. This one is a very rich jump site: http://www.socialimpactgames.com or http://tinyurl.com/ygpa75 *) http://www.playmassbalance.com/ *) http://www.budgetsim.org/nbs/ *) http://www.peacemakergame.com/
From the website: “Combines humor, opinion, and fact to bring an entertaining and informative video game adventure to people everywhere.
“The use of this medium will hopefully reach many people who have not had the time or interest to read up on some of the appalling things that have taken place in our government and society over the past four years. For those of you who are paying attention, hopefully this game has helped to clarify some of the important things at stake in the upcoming elections. I realize that this game does not cover every issue, problem, and appalling action of the Bush administration. There are too many stories to report. Some issues ended up taking a back seat to others. Just know that this is just a silly game and please inform yourself for real and read books…and most importantly…please vote.”
By Starvingeyes/J. Oda.
A brief comment was passed along on the NICAR-L (National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting) listserv this morning by Daniel Lathrop, of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Said he:
Well, yeah. An interesting story, but also one demonstrating why newspapers as institutions simply do not grasp the shift in power inherent in the Digital Age, a shift away from institutions and to citizens.
First, the story reports: “The family connections between lobbying and lawmaking are prompting complaints that Congress is not doing enough to police itself.” Fair enough, but can't you SHOW us, in the online version, the evidence to support this sweeping generalization of “prompting complaints.” Why should we take your word for it, guys, when the evidence must be at hand.
Second, “…USA TODAY reviewed thousands of pages of financial disclosures and lobbyist registrations, property records, marriage announcements and other public documents to identify which lawmakers and staffers had relatives in the lobbying business.” WOW! Would I like to see those pages, and even drill down into them to see if there's anything there related to my representative. But nooooooooo. The paper must of had some way to manage all this public-record data, some way to cross-reference it, to search it, to retrieve documents and content. Why not put all that up on the web and let readers peruse their own subjects of interest?
Ironically, an example of the power shift mentioned above turns up, buried in a sidebar to the story, “Little Accountability in Earmarks.” There we find reference to something called the Sunlight Foundation. I had not heard of the Sunlight Foundation, but, hey, it's only been around since the first of the year. It turns out this organization is doing just what newspapers should be doing: leveraging the power of the digital environment to connect people to the data and tools needed to analyze that data so they can make informed decisions.
Another opportunity missed by the industry, and tragically so.
All we can say is that we were out of the country when this package of stories first appeared in early September, and we missed it. (Yeah, so much of the all-the-time-anywhere of the Internet.) But do take a look at what the graduate journalism students at Northwestern University served up. Good research coupled with good presentations on a topic most serious and under-reported.
Northwestern University's News21 fellows look at America's new system of surveillance, developed by the government with the help of private data mining firms after 9/11. One story uncovers new details about a secretive program in which the Education Department shared personal information on hundreds of student loan applicants with the FBI. Two immersive interactive presentations explore the digital trails we leave behind us in our daily lives and show you government data-mining initiatives that might incorporate information about you.
A fine piece of work on the NYTimes web site following the crash of the small plane into an East Side hi-rise apartment building on Wednesday (11 Oct. 2006). Check out “Small Plane Hits Building in Manhattan“
Eric Lipton has a piece in Wedneday's (4 Oct. 2006) NYTimes about some “new” research efforts to come up with software “that would let the [U.S.] government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas.” (See “Software Being Developed to Monitor Opinions of U.S.“) Surely this is an interesting problem, and one made especially difficult when the translation factor kicks in.
This is not, however, the first attempt to gin-up such software. We have long admired the work done some years ago at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the ThemeRiver™ visualization.
We hope the PNNL will continue by giving us more of this intriguing tool.
David Herzog posts this good tip to the NICAR-L list:
From All Points Blog. Read down into the original posting to see speculation as to why. Perhaps “user mapping fatigue”?
The company “What's New” page says little about why, just that the goodies are gone.
We have discontinued the A9 Instant Reward program, and the A9 Toolbar and personalized services such as history, bookmarks, and diary. To get help uninstalling your A9 Toolbar, visit toolbar.a9.com. We have also discontinued A9 Maps and the A9 Yellow Pages (including BlockView™).
