I've got some data.
Now what?
Chris Hagan | Web Producer, Data | WBEZ
@chrishagan | chagan@wbez.org
Slides at chagan.github.io/foia-fest-data
FOIA examples at github.com/chagan/foia-fest-data
You may think your data look like this
## What does that mean
* Come with questions
* Know their bias
* Who collected this? For what?
* How sure are they?
* Can't rely only on the data
More likely, your data are this
## Quick bath
* Take a min, max, sum and average
* Sort and scan
* Missing values
* Change things around
* Text to columns
* Convert to numbers, dates, text as needed
* Pivot tables
## Data smells
* Talk to the people who collect the data
* Get the documents behind the data
* Check previous years
* Excel row limits:
* Before 2007: 65,536
* After 2007: 1,048,576
* Round numbers
* Null Island
## Make your life easier
* Create a data dictionary
* Make a copy of the original
* Don't make changes in a cell, create a new column
* Track your changes
## Resources
* [ProPublica Guide to bulletproofing your data](https://github.com/propublica/guides/blob/master/data-bulletproofing.md)
* [IRE and NICAR-L](www.ire.org)
* [Poynter's Excel for journalists](http://www.poynter.org/news/media-innovation/154584/how-journalists-can-use-excel-to-organize-data-for-stories/)
* [StateImpact's Reporter's Toolbox](http://stateimpact.npr.org/toolbox/)
* [Data Journalism Handbook](http://datajournalismhandbook.org/)