2. What is “a great story”? Convinces us of something Makes us question our assumptions Compels us to action Enlightens us: Brings a new realization Touches us: Connects to our humanity
13. Finding the story in data Data can be boring — if you don’t know what you’re looking for In raw form, numbers and words lack meaning A dataset is a bucket full of numbers “There are stories in that bucket” —Nathan Yau, Flowing Data
20. Visualizations allow us to understand and process enormous amounts of information quicklybecause it is all represented in a single imageor animation. 7 Things You Should Know About Data Visualization
21. nytimes.com Movie box office revenues, January 1986 to February 2008. Vertical shows weekly revenue amount. Horizontal shows how long the movie ran in theaters.
22. Data visualization includes: Design Organization Fact checking Detective work Research —Nathan Yau, Flowing Data
24. 4 common types of data graphics Maps Show patterns that occur in geographic space Bar charts Show simple numerical comparisons Line graphs Show continuous change over time Pie charts Show proportional differences See: Visualization Options Available in Many Eyes
28. nytimes.com Line graph compares time progression of present crisis with average of all past crises and with five worst worst crises (July 18, 2008)
29. Pie chart: FeedBurner.com stats showing which RSS readers sent traffic to the blog Teaching Online Journalism in 2007
30. Where to begin? Use Microsoft Excel Collect data and learn to sort it Make friends with a graphic designer Take a computer programming class Take a statistics class Take a geography class where you can learn to draw maps
32. Data-Driven Journalism Resources used for this presentation include Great Data Visualization Tells a Great Story, by Nathan Yau, and 7 Things You Should Know About Data Visualization