Deck 9: Data Journalism

Question 1

Data is:

A) A collection of facts
B) Always numerical
C) Not really useful in journalism
D) All of the above

Answer 1

A collection of facts

Question 2

Some journalists, both new and experienced, feel some anxiety about working with data - "But I hate math!" or "I want to tell stories, not crunch numbers!" are common complaints. What are three concerns you have about using data in journalism, and how can you address these?

Answer 2

No Answer.

Question 3

Journalism exists in how we gather and present information about the world. Data on its own is not journalism, but neither are words or photographs. On a site such as the Guardian's DataBlog, find an example of data journalism. What takes it from "just" data to a piece of journalism?

Answer 3

No Answer.

Question 4

In a spreadsheet, data with a non-numerical value is known as _________ data.

A) quantitative
B) ratio
C) digital
D) string

Question 5

Which of the following data visualization approaches consists of a matrix of rows and columns?

A) List
B) Table
C) Chart
D) Timeline

Question 6

Of the LATCH approaches to organizing data, which deals with magnitude or rank?

A) Location
B) Alphabetical
C) Time
D) Category
E) Hierarchy

Question 7

Of the LATCH approaches to organizing data, which is usually the least informative?

A) Location
B) Alphabetical
C) Time
D) Category
E) Hierarchy

Question 8

What are the two parts of a spreadsheet formula?

A) function and values
B) function and parameters
C) values and parameters
D) parameters and index

Question 9

Raw data on its own is not meaningful because of differences between units (such as state population) Converting raw data to a meaningfully comparable form is called:

A) sterilization
B) data processing
C) interpretation
D) normalization

Question 10

Which of the following is NOT required for a Freedom of Information Act request?

A) It must be in writing
B) It must include the requester's signature
C) It must reasonably describe the information you seek
D) It must comply with specific agency requirements

Question 11

The United States legal precedent that establishes that facts are NOT copyrightable is:

A) Feist v. Rural Telephone Service
B) Citizens United v. FEC
C) Marbury v. Madison
D) Brown v. Board of Education

Question 12

If you wanted to search only for data from a specific domain, you would use:

A) filetype:
B) daterange:
C) allintext:
D) site:

Question 13

The questions we ask of data depend on measured items that can have different values, which are called:

A) points
B) categories
C) variables
D) entries

Question 14

Data that is based primarily in numbers is:

A) categorical
B) mutually exclusive
C) qualitative
D) quantitative

Question 15

As journalism changes, data skills are turning up in different positions. Some newsrooms have dedicated data specialists in a specific department, much like the photo or graphics departments. Others prefer to have many journalists with general data skills rather than have a specialized data team. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach?

Question 16

Data that describes the qualities of something is:

A) categorical
B) mutually exclusive
C) qualitative
D) quantitative

Question 17

Data that classifies mutually exclusive types is:

A) nominal
B) ordinal
C) interval
D) ratio

Question 18

Data based on ranking (e.g., 1st through 10th) is:

A) nominal
B) ordinal
C) interval
D) ratio

Question 19

Which of the following is NOT an example of a search engine operator?

A) AND
B) IF
C) OR
D) NOT

Question 20

The "wild card" search operator, which is used to seek incomplete words or phrases, is:

A) *
B) ~
C) &
D) ..

Question 21

You created a simple scraper that returned public data from a government site's table. The function used to do this was:

A) =import()
B) =importData()
C) =importHTML()
D) =importXML()

Question 22

Which of the following is NOT required for a Freedom of Information Act request?

A) It must be in writing
B) It must include the requester's signature
C) It must reasonably describe the information you seek
D) It must comply with specific agency requirements

Question 23

Raw data on its own is not meaningful because of differences between units (such as state population). Converting raw data to a meaningfully comparable form is called:

A) sterilization
B) data processing
C) interpretation
D) normalization

Question 24

To add all the cells in a given range, what function would you use?

A) =COUNT
B) =AVERAGE
C) =SUM
D) =ADD

Question 25

Which of the following is a conditional function?

A) =COUNTIF
B) =DAY
C) =MAX
D) =MIN

Question 26

Of the LATCH approaches to organizing data, which is usually the least informative?

A) Location
B) Alphabetical
C) Time
D) Category
E) Hierarchy

Question 27

Of the LATCH approaches to organizing data, which deals with magnitude or rank?

A) Location
B) Alphabetical
C) Time
D) Category
E) Hierarchy

Question 28

Journalism exists in how we gather and present information about the world. Data on its own is not journalism, but neither are words or photographs. On a site such as the Guardian's DataBlog, find an example of data journalism. What takes it from "just" data to a piece of journalism?

Question 29

Some journalists, both new and experienced, feel some anxiety about working with data - "But I hate math!" or "I want to tell stories, not crunch numbers!" are common complaints. What are three concerns you have about using data in journalism, and how can you address these?

Question 30

As journalism changes, data skills are turning up in different positions. Some newsrooms have dedicated data specialists in a specific department, much like the photo or graphics departments. Others prefer to have many journalists with general data skills rather than have a specialized data team. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach?