Storytelling with Open Data

Rhiannon CoppinJournalist, coder

@coppinr

Storytelling with Open Data

Rhiannon CoppinJournalist, coder

@coppinr

Storytelling with Open Data

Rhiannon CoppinJournalist, coder

@coppinr

(An incomplete survey of cool stuff)

A bit about me…

Web Writer for CBC.ca (part-time)&

Dabble in code, math, stats

• Excited about:– Natural Language Processing (NLP)– Machine Learning (clustering, regression)– Automation (feeds)

Types of stories we tell:

1) Things we already know 2) Things we don’t already know

http://www.urbanresearchmaps.org/comparinator/pluralitymap.htmhttp://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer?ref=us

Open data• Government data

http://vis.stanford.edu/jheer/d3/pyramid/shift.html

Open data

• Publication information

http://www.cs.umd.edu/~bederson/papers/index.html

Open(ish) data

• Publication content – things we know

http://bost.ocks.org/mike/miserables/

Open(ish) data

• Publication content – things we don’t know

http://overview.ap.org/

Twitter: Things we know…

http://blog.echen.me/2012/07/06/soda-vs-pop-with-twitter/

Twitter: Things we don’t know…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/interactive/2011/dec/07/london-riots-twitter

More animation

• Motion Charts

http://www.gapminder.org/world

More animation (automated)

• Imagine… circulation data

http://www.wunderground.com/US/Region/US/2xWindSpeed.html

More animation (automated)

• Imagine… circulation data

http://hint.fm/wind/

(some) Tools

Open Source• D3.js (also: jQuery)• Overview• R• PANDAFree• Google Refine, Fusion Tables, Motion ChartsOther: Excel, SPSS

Where to go for more

• Open news – Ideas, people, code:– open.blogs.nytimes.com – propublica.org/nerds– blog.apps.chicagotribune.com– datadesk.latimes.com– guardian.co.uk/data– mozillaopennews.org

• Coursera (free!) – stats, data analysis, NLP

Storytelling with Open Data

Rhiannon CoppinJournalist, coder

@coppinr

Thank you!

(An incomplete survey of cool stuff)