Teaches the basic, yet all-important, data skills required by today’s media professionals
The authors of Data Skills for Media Professionals have assembled a book that teaches key aspects of data analysis, interactive data visualization and online map-making through an introduction to Google Drive, Google Sheets, and Google My Maps, all free, highly intuitive, platform-agnostic tools available to any reader with a computer and a web connection. Delegating the math and design work to these apps leaves readers free to do the kinds of thinking that media professionals do most often: considering what questions to ask, how to ask them, and how to evaluate and communicate the answers.
Although focused on Google apps, the book draws upon complementary aspects of the free QGIS geographic information system, the free XLMiner Analysis ToolPak Add-on for Google Sheets, and the ubiquitous Microsoft Excel spreadsheet application. Worked examples rely on frequently updated data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Election Commission, the National Bridge Inventory of structurally deficient bridges, and other federal sources, giving readers the option of immediately applying what they learn to current data they can localize to any area in the United States. The book offers chapters covering: basic data analysis; data visualization; making online maps; Microsoft Excel and pivot tables; matching records with Excel's VLOOKUP function; basic descriptive and inferential statistics; and other functions, tools and techniques.
- Serves as an excellent supplemental text for easily adding data skills instruction to courses in beginning or advanced writing and reporting
- Features computer screen captures that illustrate each step of each procedure
- Offers downloadable datasets from a companion web page to help students implement the techniques themselves
- Shows realistic examples that illustrate how to perform each technique and how to use it on the job
Data Skills of Media Professionals is an excellent book for students taking skills courses in the more than 100 ACEJMC-accredited journalism and mass communication programs across the United States. It would also greatly benefit those enrolled in advanced or specialized reporting courses, including courses dedicated solely to teaching data skills.
Table of Contents
Preface ix
1 Basic Data Analysis 1
Some Example Data 1
An Introductory Tool: Google Sheets 3
Getting the Data into a Google Sheet 4
Getting a Fixed Copy of the Data 9
Formatting the Data 11
Cleaning the Data 12
Planning your Analysis 13
Filtering 14
Calculating 17
Labeling and Tidying Up 21
Sorting 22
Where’s the “Save” Button? 24
Writing About the Analysis Results 24
Recap 26
References 26
2 Data Visualization 27
Preparing Your Data 28
Making a Column Chart 29
Publishing the Chart to the Web 33
Choosing the Right Type of Chart 35
Recap 41
References 41
3 Making Online Maps 43
Downloading a Shapefile 44
Importing the Shapefile into QGIS 45
Examining the Shapefile and Joining it with the Unemployment Data 47
Customizing and Publishing the Map File with Google My Maps 54
Mapping Specific Points with Latitude and Longitude Coordinates 64
Mapping Specific Points with Addresses 73
Making a Map When You Have no Geolocation Data to Import 77
Recap 83
References 84
4 Microsoft Excel and PivotTables 85
Introducing PivotTables 85
Getting Started: Aggregating Contributions by City 89
Using the PivotTable Tool’s “Filters” Box 92
Using the PivotTable Tool’s “Columns” Box 94
Investigating Relatedness 96
Spotting the Absence of a Relationship 105
Downloading Campaign Finance Data from the Federal Election Commission 107
Excel vs. Google Sheets 111
Recap 112
References 113
5 Matching Records with Excel’s VLOOKUP 115
Overview 118
Aggregating each Candidate’s Donations by Source 119
Using VLOOKUP 122
Using Filters to Create a Classification Column 127
VLOOKUP Pitfalls 129
Recap 131
References 131
6 Google Sheets and Inferential Statistics 133
Sampling and Assumptions of Inferential Statistics 134
Getting the Data and Installing the XLMiner Google Sheets Add‐on 136
Computing and Understanding Basic Inferential Statistics 138
Descriptive Statistics and Confidence Intervals 140
The One‐sample T‐test 143
The One‐sample Chi‐square Test 148
Knowing which Test to Use 152
Computing and Understanding Basic Bivariate Statistics 154
Two‐sample T‐tests 154
Chi‐square Analysis of a PivotTable 158
Correlation Between Two Continuous Variables: Regression 164
Recap 169
References 170
7 Other Functions, Tools and Techniques 171
DATE, NOW, and DATEDIF 171
AVERAGE, STDEV, MEDIAN, MIN, MAX 173
RAND 175
LEFT, MID, and RIGHT 175
The “Text to Columns” Wizard 177
CONCATENATE 179
IF and IFS 180
IFERROR 182
COMBIN and PERMUT 183
Google Forms 184
Comparing Numbers Over Time 187
Adjusting for Inflation 187
Adjusting for Population Changes 188
Recap 190
References 190
Index 191
