Numbers in the newsroom
A change in poll results from 38% to 42% is an increase of________
Four percentage points (not percent)
The number of days a California agency has to respond to an open-records request
10
How you keep track of your data work.
Data diary
Select all fields from the table party
Select *
from party
True or false: You should get as many numbers in your story as possible.
False! Readers can handle only about eight digits in a paragraph.
It's a list that tell you what records an agency keeps.
Records retention schedule
What is one place to find federal campaign finance data?
Do this before using data from a city data portal or open data site.
Check with the original agency that it is the most current and correct data.
Sort reverse alphabetically by name
Order by name desc
Mean
What should you do if a records custodian denies your records request because they are too busy.
Appeal - that's not a valid reason
Where can you find data about schools?
NCES, State Dept of Education, District
What to do before writing a story based on your analysis.
Rerun it, check it, check it again
What's missing: Select name, count(*)
group by name
"from" table name
The middle value or the divider in a highway.
Median
How would you respond if an agency says that your request will cost thousands of dollars?
Ask for an itemized estimate and check what part of the law allows them to do that.
A place to get information about a business.
Bloomberg terminal, opencorporates, Secretary of State, local business licenses
A way to make extra sure your data work is bulletproof.
Have another person review your work.
find the records containing "leg"
Where description like "%leg%"
When the average is higher than the median, what does that tell you about your data.
High end values are pulling up the average - outliers
A tool for finding federal court records.
PACER or RECAP
Common issues to watch for in your data.
Inconsistencies, missing data
One type of join in SQL
Left, right, inner