Alfredo Covaleda,
Bogota, Colombia
Stephen Guerin,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
James A. Trostle,
Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
“ePodunk is a site that focuses on place and provides information on 25,000 communities in the U. S. The site also contains a number of interesting maps, including maps of the Katrina diaspora, ethnic origin, fastest growing counties and others. There is also a Canadian version of the site, focusing on Canadian places, but it, sadly, does not seem to have any maps.”
With newspapers — and news magazine — cutting staff on an almost weekly basis, some of us in journalism are going to have to reinvent ourselves. One of our tenents of Analytic Journalism is simulation modeling, a methodology and analytic tool we believe will be to the social sciences in the 21st century (and journalism IS a social science) what quantum physics was to the hard sciences in the 20th. So here's an interesting opportunity for someone.
“> The Department of Mathematics as the University of California, Los > Angeles is soliciting applications for a postdoctoral fellowship > position in Mathematical and Computational Social Science. The > qualified applicant will work in the UC Mathematical and Simulation > Modeling of Crime Group (UCMaSC), a collaboration between the UCLA > Department of Mathematics, UCLA Department of Anthropology, UC > Irvine Department of Criminology, Law and Society and the Los > Angeles Police Department to study the dynamics of crime hot spot > formation. The research will center on (1) development of formal > models applicable to the study of interacting particle systems, or > multi-agent systems, (2) simulation of these systems and (3) > directed empirical testing of models using contemporary crime data > from Los Angeles and other Southern Californian cities. > > The initial appointment is for one year, with possible renewal for > up to three years. For information regarding the UCMaSC Group visit > > http://paleo.sscnet.ucla.edu/ucmasc.htm > > DUTIES: Work closely with an interdisciplinary team of > mathematicians, social scientists and law enforcement officials to > develop new mathematical and computational methodologies for > understanding crime hot spot formation, diffusion and dissipation. > Responsibilities include teaching one course in the Department of > Mathematics per year, publication and presentation of research > results. > > REQUIRED: A recent Ph.D. in Mathematics, Physics or a related > field. The qualified applicant is expected to have research > experience in one or more areas that would be relevant to the study > of interacting particle/multi-agent systems including, but not > limited to, mathematical and statistical physics, complex systems, > and partial differential equations modeling. The applicant is also > required to have advanced competency in one or more programming > languages/environments (e.g., C++, Java, Matlab). > > Qualified candidates should e-mail a cover let, CV and the phone > numbers, e-mail addresses, and postal addresses of three > individuals who can provide recommendation to: > > Dr. P. Jeffrey Brantingham > Department of Anthropology > 341 Haines Hall > University of California, Los Angeles > Los Angeles, CA 90095″
A piece on calling the elections in Detroit:
BY CHRIS CHRISTOFF FREE PRESS LANSING BUREAU CHIEF
November 10, 2005
What was a viewer to believe?
As polls closed Tuesday, WDIV-TV (Channel 4) declared Freman Hendrix winner of Detroit's mayoral race by 10 percentage points.
WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) showed Hendrix ahead by 4 percentage points, statistically too close to call.
But WJBK-TV (Channel 2) got it right, declaring just after 9 p.m. that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was ahead, 52% to 48%, which turned out to be almost exactly the final 53%-47% outcome declared many hours later.
And it was vote analyst Tim Kiska who nailed it for WJBK, and for WWJ-AM radio, using counts from 28 of 620 Detroit precincts.
Kiska did it with help from Detroit City Clerk Jackie Currie. She allowed a crew that Kiska assembled to collect the precinct tallies shortly after the polls closed at 8 p.m.
Using what he calls a secret formula, Kiska calculated how those 28 precincts would predict the result citywide.
His formula also assumed that absentee voters chose Hendrix over Kilpatrick by a 2-1 ratio.
That's different from the methods of pollsters who got it wrong Tuesday, Steve Mitchell for WDIV and EPIC/MRA's Ed Sarpolus for WXYZ and the Free Press. Both men used telephone polls, calling people at home during the day and evening and asking how they voted.
It's a more standard method of election-day polling, but Tuesday proved treacherous.
Kiska, a former reporter for the Free Press and Detroit News, has done such election-day predictions since 1974, but said he was nervous Tuesday.
“Every time I go into one of these, my nightmare is I might get it wrong,” said Kiska, a WWJ producer. “I had a bad feeling about this going in. I thought there was going to be a Titanic hitting an iceberg and hoping it wouldn't be me.”
Kiska said he especially felt sorry for his friend Mitchell.
Mitchell said he's been one of the state's most accurate political pollsters over 20 years, but said his Tuesday survey of 800 voters turned out to be a bad sample.
He said polling is inherently risky, and that even well-conducted polls can be wrong one out of 20 times. “I hit number 20 this time.”
For Sarpolus, it's the second Detroit mayoral race that confounded his polls. He was the only major pollster in 2001 who indicated Gil Hill would defeat Kilpatrick.
Sarpolus said the pressure to get poll results on the air quickly made it impossible to adjust his results as real vote totals were made public during the late evening.
Of Kiska, Sarpolus said: “You have to give him credit. … But you have to assume all city clerks are willing to cooperate.”
Contact CHRIS CHRISTOFF at 517-372-8660 or christoff@freepress.com.
Interesting announcement from Yahoo Maps this week. Seems as though Google, Yahoo and Amazon (with it's A9 entry) are starting to look like three NASCAR competitors on the backstretch of the lap before the finish line. Here's the latest from Yahoo: ==========================
In June of this year, we gave developers the ability to overlay geographic data on a Yahoo! Map. Since then, we've seen a lot of terrific maps mash-ups. But you wanted more. You wanted the ability to embed Yahoo! Maps on your own Web site. You wanted to programmatically convert addresses into geocoded longitude/latitude pairs. You wanted more data feeds, such as highway traffic and local data, to plot on a map. But most importantly, you wanted a user experience that's better than any online mapping product out there.
Today we build on the success of the Simple Maps API by adding several new APIs for Yahoo! Maps. These products enable developers to use Yahoo! Maps in exciting new ways — including embedding maps on your Web site.
With this release, we are providing:
Of course, the Simple Maps API we released in June is still there, giving developers and non-developers the ability to plot locations on Yahoo! Maps with no programming and no rate limits.
We're giddy with excitement about this release, and we can't wait to see how you use the new APIs. We know there's lot to digest here, so if you have questions, feedback, or just want to show off what you've done, please join us in the yws-maps group.
Jeffrey McManus Director, Yahoo! Developer Network
For those interested in the forensic process — and in this case, computer forensics — be sure to check out this fine, fine piece of digital detective work by Mark Russinovich, a computer security expert with Sysinternals. He discovered evidence of a “rootkit” on his Windows PC.
We don't think journalists need to know how to DO this kind of deep-diving probing, but we should be aware that it is possible and, broadly speaking, the methods if only to know the appropriate search terms. Through heroic forensic work, he traced the code to First 4 Internet, a British provider of copy-restriction technology that has a deal with Sony to put digital rights management on its CDs. It turns out Russinovich was infected with the software when he played the Sony BMG CD Get Right With the Man by the Van Zant brothers.
Here's WIRED Magazine's take on the story, “The Cover-Up Is the Crime“
And here's what Dan Gillmor had to say about it, with additional links.
Another example of how journalists can learn from other disciplines comes to the surface in the form of an LA Press Club meeting Nov. 9. “Digging deep: What reporters can learn from and about private investigators,” is the topic, and the panel of speakers, though large, seems rich with potential.
Here at the IAJ we also value the well done blog, “PI News Link,” run by Tamara Thompson. Check it out; enter it in your blog harvester.
We're all awash in data, so finding the significant bits and bytes that can lead to information is a maddening process. Jon Burke, writing in the November 2, 2005 edition of MIT's Technology Review, presents some web-based technological options. See “Finding Signals in the Noise.” We were impressed by a new product/site called “Memeorandum,” but Burke points out a handful of alternatives. Excerpt:
“Few would dispute that we live in an age of information overload. In the last few years alone, blogs have increased the torrent of information each day to unmanageable levels. This would explain, then, why a corresponding torrent of startups has surfaced recently to help us filter, manage, and control this flood of information. Some rely on insightful algorithms that understand popularity to filter the news, while others rely on the preferences of readers.
For example, Digg is a San Francisco startup that ranks news items by letting people choose which stories they like. It just landed $2.8 million in venture capital from Omidyar Network, former Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, and Greylock Partners. We also understand that a comparable site — Memeorandum — may close a round of financing shortly.
The concept of making users prioritize or create hierarchies for news is not new — Slashdot has been doing it since 1997. But the latest generation of sites like Digg and Memeorandum are showing that user-prioritized news is, indeed, a powerful and easy way to drive traffic — in some cases to a site created by a single employee with a lone server.”
Simulation modeling is one of the four cornerstone areas of interest to the IAJ. It's a relatively new, and largely unknown, field that can be of great advantage to journalists if we can take the time to learn how it works and then how we can apply it to our field. The best resource to date for journalists is the J-Lab, (http://www.j-lab.org/) at the University of Maryland.
But today along comes this announcement of a rich issue of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. It's filled with deep thinking and application.
============================================= The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk) published issue 4 of Volume 8 on 31 October 2005. JASSS is an electronic, refereed journal devoted to the exploration and understanding of social processes by means of computer simulation. It is freely available, with no subscription. ================= This issue is our largest ever, with 12 peer-reviewed articles, eight of them forming a special section on Epistemological Perspectives, edited by Ulrich Frank and Klaus Troitzsch. If you would like to volunteer as a referee and have published at least one refereed article in the academic literature, you may do so by completing the form at http://www.epress.ac.uk/JASSS/webforms/new_referee.php
How Can Social Networks Ever Become Complex? Modelling the Emergence of Complex Networks from Local Social Exchanges by Josep M. Pujol, Andreas Flache, Jordi Delgado and Ramon Sanguesa <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/4/12.html>
Violence and Revenge in Egalitarian Societies by Stephen Younger <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/4/11.html>
Influence of Local Information on Social Simulations in Small-World Network Models by Chung-Yuan Huang, Chuen-Tsai Sun and Hsun-Cheng Lin <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/4/8.html>
It Pays to Be Popular: a Study of Civilian Assistance and Guerrilla Warfare by Scott Wheeler <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/4/9.html>
——————————
Towards Good Social Science by Scott Moss and Bruce Edmonds <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/4/13.html>
A Framework for Epistemological Perspectives on Simulation by Joerg Becker, Bjoern Niehaves and Karsten Klose <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/4/1.html>
What is the Truth of Simulation? by Alex Schmid < http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/4/5.html>
The Logic of the Method of Agent-Based Simulation in the Social Sciences: Empirical and Intentional Adequacy of Computer Programs by Nuno David, Jaime Simao Sichman and Helder Coelho <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/4/2.html>
Validation of Simulation: Patterns in the Social and Natural Sciences by Guenter Kueppers and Johannes Lenhard <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/4/3.html>
Stylised Facts and the Contribution of Simulation to the Economic Analysis of Budgeting by Bernd-O. Heine, Matthias Meyer and Oliver Strangfeld <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/4/4.html>
Does Empirical Embeddedness Matter? Methodological Issues on Agent-Based Models for Analytical Social Science by Riccardo Boero and Flaminio Squazzoni <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/4/6.html>
Caffe Nero: the Evaluation of Social Simulation by Petra Ahrweiler and Nigel Gilbert <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/4/14.html>
==============================
Edmund Chattoe reviews: Routines of Decision Making by Betsch, Tilmann and Haberstroh, Susanne (eds.) <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/8/4/reviews/chattoe.html>
The new issue can be accessed through the JASSS home page: <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk>.
The next issue will be published at the end of January 2006.
Submissions are welcome: see http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/admin/submit.html
______________________________
The premise of the IAJ is to discover find how other professions and academic disciplines do what we do as journalists. That is, how do they find and analyze data and then present the results of that analysis.
We recently subscribed (it's free) to Law Technology News. It's no surprise that the data management needs of large law offices are much the same as those of journalism organizations. Lawyers pretty much follow the RRAW-P process, too. So topics like Calendaring, Case Management, Contact Management, Document Management, Electronic Data Discovery (EDD) are right up our alley. Law Technology News doesn't do much journalism, in fact it pretty much reprints press releases. But it does provide many, many pointers to products and methods related to journalism. Give it a look. as well.
Matt Ericson of the NYTimes has delivered yet again a piece of superb infographics. This one, sadly, illustrates the 2000+ U.S. deaths in Iraq. (See “Deaths in Iraq by Month” in the 26 Oct. 2005 story “2,000 Dead: As Iraq Tours Stretch On, a Grim Mark“) William Playfair (1759-1823) was the Scottish engineer and political economist who did the ground-breaking work in visual statistics. Charles Joseph Minard, in the mid-nineteenth century, produced the classic infographic of Napoleon's March to (and retreat from) Moscow. Minard's great work is notable for displaying multiple data sets on a timeline as well as their geographical relationships.
Ericson has done something similar by showing the combat deaths in Iraq from the March 2003 invasion until mid-Oct. 2005 as the occupation continues. Ericson shows not just the numbers, but the branch of service, the locations of the deaths and the causes of death (i.e. explosive devices, vehicle or plane crashes, etc.).
It's a brilliant piece of work that also demonstrates the added value that very good journalists and their editors can bring to what should be public discussion. But this kind of work doesn't happen overnight, nor is it cheap to do. (Are you listening Knight-Ridder, Gannett, et al.?)
We would only hope that someone at the Times would work to develop a flash program/presentation that would, in a relatively automatic mannter, constantly update this important informational display.
