How to build data capacity in your newsroom

Introducing DUG, our beta data unit guide Forget the gist of the photo up there—the one reading “data has a better idea.” I don’t buy it. (Lovely photo though, no?) Data rarely has a better idea, because data doesn’t think. People think. Sometimes data can help people think a little better. The problem is that … Continued

Pre-reporting for data journalists

A brief intro to exploratory analysis In a recent paper, a pair of statisticians took a stab at outlining “the most important statistical ideas of the past 50 years.” Among them: “counterfactual causal inference, bootstrapping and simulation-based inference, overparameterized models and regularization, multilevel models, generic computation algorithms, adaptive decision analysis, robust inference, and exploratory data … Continued

Scrappy hacks for scrappy visual journalists

As far as I can tell, the Internet is mostly duct-taped together. And why should visual journalism be any different? In a world of flashy D3.js wrappers and React components and the like, sometimes you just need a chart—and you need it as quickly as possible. In other words, you don’t need interactivity; you need … Continued