Data for Journalists Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Spreadsheets, Part 2: More Math and Managing Data

Here are exercises for this chapter and links to resources for using spreadsheets to filter data, calculate rates, do rankings, use pivot tables to summarize information by category, and do basic visualizations.

Here are links to some of the datasets used in the chapter. They included homicide data, campaign finance data and sewer and water charge data. The homicide data can be used for rates and filtering, the campaign finance data for summarizing with a pivot table, the sewer and water charges data and cronies data for visualizations. The simplified FBI table that can be substituted for the exercise rather than spending time on the FBI web site.

  • Exercises

Suggested exercises include:

1. Find crime data on the FBI site and download data on crime by year in the U.S.

2. Calculate crime rates for either a city, state or the country for violent crimes and property crimes.

3. Do a ratio of violent crimes to property crimes.

4. Create a pie chart of property crimes and violent crimes.

  • Data

Spreadsheet with Chapter 5 data: Campaign Finance for Pivot Tables

Spreadsheet with Chapter 5 data: Cronies Data for Visualization

Spreadsheet with Chapter 5 data: Homicide by City

Spreadsheet with Chapter 5 data: Simplified Table for Crime in the United States by Region, Geographic Division and State of 2015-2016 for Calculating Rates

 

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