Persistence of Chicago Art Galleries
I’ve spent the quarter compiling and analyzing data exploring the persistence of Chicago art galleries, as a way of exploring CAR for the arts. I found a list from the Chicago Artists’ Coalition of 96 such businesses that existed in 1990, and tracked their fate. A story summarizing the trend follows (an assignment for my ...
Django app #2: Conquering forms and Google Maps API
It’s been a busy week for the programming journalists — as I’m sure you’ve seen. Congrats to all, especially the dev team at The New York Times, who just released the newest version of the Congress API, with plenty more robust features to play with, as well as my recent Data Delver interviewee Andy Boyle ...
Relating zip codes and geography using Processing
This week I tackled recreating Ben Fry’s Zipdecode project, which he gives great step-by-step instructions for in his Visualizing Data book that I have been following along with this quarter. It’s an interesting take on the concept of the scatterplot, even before using its interactive features, it asserts its usefulness as a population density map. ...
Parallelism: Packing information into visualization
Information is fascinating at many different levels. Show me a simple graph of the components that make up a whole, that tells me something. I’ve found almost anything is more interesting when looked at across time, since it adds another dimension. This also helps with analysis, because outliers or rapid changes are often related to ...
Keep it subtle, stupid: Differentiating data values in visualizations
I’m not anything resembling a visual genius, but I like to believe I have enough of an eye that I can tell what works and what doesn’t. The reason Tufte’s books are so helpful is that they tell me why something works, and give me rules so I know what I can and can’t do. ...
Committing fact errors in visualizations
At Medill, there’s a wonderful tradition called the “Medill F.” Make a factual error of any sort, and you fail the assignment. The sadistic part of me likes it — a journalist’s job is to tell the truth. If you miss the mark, you’ve failed the public, and failed at your job for the day. ...
Data Delver: Ted Mellnik, Charlotte Observer database editor
Computer-assisted reporting is important because of its potential for reporting and analysis. Visualization is important to present the information to readers. They both fall under the responsibilities of Ted Mellnik, database editor at the Charlotte Observer. His passion for data is as clear from a conversation with him as it is from his work. Combine ...
Which states have been hit hardest by unemployment in the last decade?
I matched up the unemployment rates for each state in November 2009 with the unemployment rates from Nov. 1999, that is, the same measurements from a decade prior. Then, I calculated the absolute change of the unemployment rate, to see which states have been hit the hardest, looking at the quantity of citizens they are able to keep employed.
Data set here, culled from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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