tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60838254956640610082024-03-20T02:54:50.590-07:00Chad SkeltonTelling stories with dataChad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-32630643568182102502023-05-21T10:48:00.016-07:002023-12-21T10:32:42.943-08:00Using ChatGPT and the Noteable plugin for data analysis and visualization<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Inspired by <a href="https://twitter.com/DataRemixed?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DataRemixed</a> & <a href="https://twitter.com/Elijah_Meeks?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Elijah_Meeks</a>, I decided to give the <a href="https://twitter.com/noteable_io?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@noteable_io</a> plugin on ChatGPT a try.<br /><br />With a single prompt — "Create a notebook and do some basic data analysis and data visualizations on the data in the biketheftdata.csv file" — it produced all these charts <a href="https://t.co/cDx3M3P7Dt">pic.twitter.com/cDx3M3P7Dt</a></p>— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/1658930986187628551?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 17, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<p><br /></p><p>I've been a bit obsessed with ChatGPT ever since it launched in late 2022.</p><p>I got even more excited when my friend Ben Jones posted a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9hSCuFGNRU&t=1s">video</a> of how ChatGPT's "Code Interpreter" plugin could do data analysis and visualization.</p><p>I signed up for ChatGPT's paid Plus version in the hopes of getting access to the Code Interpreter plugin myself. That hasn't happened yet. But then <a href="https://docs.noteable.io/product-docs/chatgpt-plugin/get-started-with-the-plugin?_gl=1*1tw9l8j*_ga*MTQ2MTQzMzI2MS4xNjg0OTY1OTM5*_ga_Y2XKZ0FG6K*MTY4NTAzMzY5NS4zLjAuMTY4NTAzMzY5NS42MC4wLjA.">Noteable launched their own plugin</a>, which every ChatGPT Plus user has access to, and it seemed to have much of the same functionality as the Code Interpreter.</p><p>I've been playing with the Noteable plugin pretty non-stop ever since. Most of my musings have been over on <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton">Twitter/X</a> and <a href="https://www.threads.net/@chadskelton">Threads</a> (I'm increasingly annoyed at Twitter's new leadership, and hope to leave it eventually, but for now I'm posting in both places). But I've also started making some YouTube videos walking through how the tool works.</p><p>For those who have abandoned Twitter or missed my tweets, I thought I'd collect my various ChatGPT/Noteable videos and threads here. I've embedded the first tweet in each thread. You can click on "Read the full conversation on Twitter" to have the complete thread for each open in a separate window.</p><p>As I do more Twitter threads and videos on ChatGPT and Noteable, I'll add them here.</p><p><b>VIDEOS:</b></p><p><br />
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A1ualvzgJoo" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CDMZa_E3wUs" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uCxoPC8xOVw" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/L7jruf_T33E" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nBJaSaPIb0k" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PURphdRe_cw?si=tsbq_PIshkbpvxjc" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<br /><br /><b>TWITTER THREADS:</b></p><p>
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</p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Inspired by <a href="https://twitter.com/DataRemixed?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DataRemixed</a> & <a href="https://twitter.com/Elijah_Meeks?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Elijah_Meeks</a>, I decided to give the <a href="https://twitter.com/noteable_io?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@noteable_io</a> plugin on ChatGPT a try.<br /><br />With a single prompt — "Create a notebook and do some basic data analysis and data visualizations on the data in the biketheftdata.csv file" — it produced all these charts <a href="https://t.co/cDx3M3P7Dt">pic.twitter.com/cDx3M3P7Dt</a></p>— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/1658930986187628551?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 17, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Playing around some more with the <a href="https://twitter.com/noteable_io?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@noteable_io</a> plugin for ChatGPT, this time with 20 years of political donation data from British Columbia (~700k rows). Amazingly, the plugin seems to have significantly improved just since I last used it *two days ago*. 🧵</p>— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/1659715853087297536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 20, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Been having so much fun making data visualizations with the <a href="https://twitter.com/noteable_io?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@noteable_io</a> ChatGPT plugin, it only occurred to me now I could use it to play around with building things I don't know how to code myself — like a pizza price calculator. <a href="https://t.co/q7Xz6YIK8O">https://t.co/q7Xz6YIK8O</a> <a href="https://t.co/onMtu6gxsc">pic.twitter.com/onMtu6gxsc</a></p>— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/1659781433408516097?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 20, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">OK, last <a href="https://twitter.com/noteable_io?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@noteable_io</a> ChatGPT plugin experiment of the day: Using it to build a simple web scraper. Weirdly, it wouldn't do it at first. Had to ask a second time. <a href="https://t.co/Y7Rv2LfmG5">https://t.co/Y7Rv2LfmG5</a> 🧵 <a href="https://t.co/92B5lnRaem">pic.twitter.com/92B5lnRaem</a></p>— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/1659792218058805248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 20, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Been having a lot of fun analyzing datasets using ChatGPT and the <a href="https://twitter.com/noteable_io?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@noteable_io</a> plugin. Just discovered that if you've got a question but no data, it can find the data for you! The main thing is reminding ChatGPT that it can do this — at first it just explains how you can. 🧵 <a href="https://t.co/NYUNSUHmzB">pic.twitter.com/NYUNSUHmzB</a></p>— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/1660342677001629696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 21, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><p></p>Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-63707268138893142342019-12-03T18:36:00.000-08:002019-12-10T09:09:29.473-08:00Tableau Training in Vancouver this February<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My next <a href="https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-82284714797?aff=bp">two-day public Tableau training workshop</a> will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 18th and Wednesday, Feb. 19th at SFU Harbour Centre. You can buy tickets <a href="https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-82284714797?aff=bp">here</a> or by clicking the button below:</div>
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Here are some <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/workshops.html">testimonials</a> from people who've attended my earlier training sessions.</div>
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If you can't make this workshop but would like to be alerted when the next one is scheduled, just <a href="http://chadskelton.us14.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=f77761916f1d313badb1dc5da&id=7b3df945be">add your name here</a>.</div>
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If you have several people at your organization who need training in Tableau, I'm also available for <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/excel-and-tableau-training-in-vancouver.html">onsite training</a>.</div>
<br />Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-72700174722067610152019-11-29T09:54:00.001-08:002019-12-10T09:09:46.807-08:00Video: "How to Teach Data Viz to Skeptics" by Chad SkeltonI had the pleasure of speaking at <a href="https://visinpractice.github.io/">VisInPractice</a>, part of the <a href="http://ieeevis.org/year/2019/welcome">IEEE VIS 2019 conference</a> in Vancouver this fall on the topic of how to teach data visualization to students who aren't that interested in data visualization.<br />
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The video of my talk is below. You can check out all the great VisInPractice talks <a href="https://visinpractice.github.io/program.html">here</a>.<br />
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<iframe allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/375245707" width="640"></iframe>
<a href="https://vimeo.com/375245707">VIS in Practice 2019: How to Teach Data Viz to Skeptics</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/vgtcommunity">VGTCommunity</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-62408024532231757572019-03-14T15:49:00.002-07:002019-03-14T15:51:12.299-07:00Online Tableau Training this April<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My next <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/online-tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-58402191527?aff=bp">online Tableau training workshop</a> will be held this April over three Thursdays: <b>April 11, 18</b> and <b>25</b>. You can buy tickets <a href="https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/online-tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-58402191527?aff=bp">here</a> or by clicking the button below:</div>
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Here are some <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/workshops.html">testimonials</a> from people who've attended my earlier training sessions.</div>
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If you can't make this workshop but would like to be alerted when the next one is scheduled, just <a href="http://chadskelton.us14.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=f77761916f1d313badb1dc5da&id=7b3df945be">add your name here</a>.</div>
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If you have several people at your organization who need training in Tableau, I'm also available for <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/excel-and-tableau-training-in-vancouver.html">onsite training</a>.</div>
<br />Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-86193508544850379592019-01-10T09:04:00.000-08:002019-12-10T09:11:04.944-08:00Five ways to get your students to participate more in class<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TL;DR">TL;DR</a>:</b><br />
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Over the years I've stumbled across a number of techniques for improving student participation in my classes that have worked really well. Here are the five key ones (you can click on each one to be taken to a more detailed description):<br />
<ol>
<li><a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2019/01/five-ways-to-get-your-students-to.html#point1">Explain why participation is important.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2019/01/five-ways-to-get-your-students-to.html#point2">Make sure students are prepared for weekly discussions.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2019/01/five-ways-to-get-your-students-to.html#point3">Have students self-report their participation marks.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2019/01/five-ways-to-get-your-students-to.html#point4">Get students to discuss a question in small groups first.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2019/01/five-ways-to-get-your-students-to.html#point5">Call on students at random.</a></li>
</ol>
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<b>Full post:</b><br />
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About five years ago, I was asked to take over a new course at <a href="http://www.kpu.ca/arts/journalism/faculty/chad-skelton">KPU</a>, the university where I teach: Introduction to Journalism.<br />
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I was worried.<br />
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Not because I didn't know the subject matter. I'd been a working journalist for more than 15 years.<br />
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And not because I didn't know how to teach. At that point, I'd already been teaching for several years.<br />
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The problem was that the Intro course had been designed by its previous instructor as a discussion course. Each week, students came to class and — facilitated by the instructor — discussed issues like journalism ethics and the business model for news.<br />
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I had no idea how to teach such a course.<br />
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In my many years of teaching, both at the university and my own private workshops, I always taught people how to <b><i>do</i></b> things. Whether it was how to build an interactive chart, or how to do a court search, my classes were always very hands-on and practical.<br />
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Class participation was always a part of my other classes, but it wasn't the <b><i>point</i></b> of the class.<br />
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I worried about how I would get my students engaged enough in discussions about journalism to fill up a three-hour class each week.<br />
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Unfortunately, the first couple of times I taught the class, many of my worst fears were realized.<br />
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I'd throw a discussion question out to the class — "So, when is it OK to use anonymous sources in a news story?" — and be met with stony silence. Sometimes, the one or two keeners in class would share their thoughts, but getting the rest of the students to take part was like pulling teeth.<br />
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I'd occasionally pull the classic instructor trick of calling on a student who wasn't participating to share their thoughts. But doing that always seemed slightly mean — putting a student on the spot who wasn't prepared — and, regardless, it rarely elicited more than a shrug and a poorly thought out answer.<br />
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I started to dread the days that I taught the Intro course. I suspect my students did too.<br />
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But then things started to change.<br />
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Almost by accident — an article here, a podcast there — I picked up a few ideas for how to improve student participation and gave them a test-run in my class. After some initial success, I got brave enough to experiment with some ideas of my own.<br />
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Over time, the participation levels in my Intro class started to increase, gradually at first and then quite dramatically.<br />
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What had once been three hours of painful, awkward silence became a spirited weekly discussion with students who were engaged and interested in the topic.<br />
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Intro to Journalism is now one of my favourite classes to teach, one I look forward to every week.<br />
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In the hopes it might be of some assistance to other instructors out there, below I share the five things I think made the biggest difference in improving participation in my class.<br />
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While my experience is at the university level, I think most of these techniques could be easily applied to high-school classes and (with some modification) even lower grades.<br />
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One big caveat: I'm a data guy so I feel it's important to note that I haven't subjected any of these techniques to rigorous analysis like a randomized controlled trial. My evidence in support of all of them is purely anecdotal and based entirely on a single course. Your results may vary.<br />
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But getting students to participate more is such a common challenge in teaching that I thought these ideas were worth sharing.<br />
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So, without further ado, here are my five tips for getting your students to participate more in class.<br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="point1"></a>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">1. Explain why participation is important.</span></b><br />
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If participation is a key part of your course (and especially if it's a component in a student's final grade), I think it helps to explain to your students <b><i>why</i></b>.<br />
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Part of that explanation, of course, is personal: Participation is an important part of their own learning, to help them understand the course material better.<br />
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But I also impress on students that we're all in this together: We're going to be together in this room for three hours every week and a lot of that time is going to be taken up by class discussion. If people don't participate, those three hours are going to go by <b><i>really</i></b> slowly. In contrast, if everyone participates and does their part, the hours will fly by and we'll all have fun. I find students really respond to that sense of common purpose.<br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="point2"></a>
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null"></a>2. Make sure students are prepared for weekly discussions.</span></b><br />
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A common problem in teaching is the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge">curse of knowledge</a>": Teachers are such experts in their field that they have trouble remembering how daunting a topic can be to complete beginners.<br />
<br />
I was often guilty of this when it came to class discussions. Some topics are so commonly discussed among working journalists — the use of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_(journalism)#Anonymous_sources">anonymous sources</a>, <a href="https://gigaom.com/2012/08/22/no-metered-content-walls-wont-save-journalism/">newspaper paywalls</a> — that I expected students to already have opinions about them, or to be able to come up with an opinion on the spot.<br />
<br />
But, of course, a first-year student taking an introductory journalism course has, in most cases, never thought about these topics at all.<br />
<br />
If you want to have a meaningful class discussion about a topic, you need to make sure students have had some time to learn about the topic and reflect on it <b><i>before</i></b> class begins.<br />
<br />
The typical way to deal with this challenge is with weekly readings: Have students read an article or two on the topic before class so they're ready to discuss it.<br />
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The problem, of course, is that many students won't do the assigned readings or, even if they do, will skim them in a way that doesn't prepare them to think deeply about the discussion topic.<br />
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I use a couple of strategies to address that.<br />
<br />
First, each week, along with the assigned readings, I give students a single question about the readings. For example, I'll have them read <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/nov/15/toronto-star-was-right-to-pay-for-video-of-mayors-drunken-rant?CMP=twt_fd">an article</a> or <a href="http://j-source.ca/article/should-media-pay-for-news/">two</a> about paying sources for stories and then pose the question: "Under what conditions is it OK for a news organization to pay money to a source for a story?"<br />
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Each week, students have to email me a very brief "weekly report" in which they answer — in at least two sentences — that week's question. I don't make the reports worth a lot of marks, but it's worth enough that students won't blow them off.<br />
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The other technique I use are quizzes. Each week, I give students a brief, three-question multiple-choice quiz on that week's readings. The quizzes are designed to be super easy for students who've done the readings (i.e. "What is this reading about?") and super hard for those who haven't.<br />
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Together, the report and the quiz make it hard to do well in the class without doing the readings. And it ensures students are adequately prepared to participate fully in class discussions.<br />
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I often still spring some new questions on students in class — or get them to respond to a video or audio clip that they're seeing in class for the first time. But at least students are well prepared for that one, main question every week.<br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="point3"></a>
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null"></a>3. Have students self-report their participation marks.</span></b><br />
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This idea I stole from the instructor who taught the Intro class before me, and it's a great one.<br />
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Instead of the instructor being responsible for keeping track of each student's participation marks, students report their own participation each week on a sheet of paper (<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JlNx-5HogcLTYHuNgt0IaXvoxO5fpNbE/view?usp=sharing">here's an example</a>).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaVL-RmErEYfQcsymbBaZDf7Jt2AhdgbKytZb2hBEKg_H362FYM9JtykvvvBJ2ouekmeerTzQB5awxdluVFPA2BLWSznfyLYlyVTAkb-sw25ftq1_15BQrWUSG8zZHjEfLUP0FPgP7EIU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-09-07+at+10.14.17+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="357" data-original-width="659" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaVL-RmErEYfQcsymbBaZDf7Jt2AhdgbKytZb2hBEKg_H362FYM9JtykvvvBJ2ouekmeerTzQB5awxdluVFPA2BLWSznfyLYlyVTAkb-sw25ftq1_15BQrWUSG8zZHjEfLUP0FPgP7EIU/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-09-07+at+10.14.17+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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I tell students they're expected to speak at least twice each class. They then give themselves a checkmark for each time they speak (up to a maximum of two).<br />
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This idea was meant to solve one problem: In a large class, it's really hard to know every student's name at the start of the course.<br />
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But I think it also solves another problem: It makes participation marks simple and transparent.<br />
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Participation marks that are assigned by the instructor can often be a bit ambiguous. Are students being marked on how much they participated in class? On the quality of their in-class contributions?<br />
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Worst of all, I think that very ambiguity can discourage some students from participating. Many students don't participate because they don't think they have anything valuable to say. If an instructor is going to ultimately decide whether your participation is "good" or "bad", it's too easy to convince yourself that you don't have anything "good" to say and not participate at all.<br />
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And, from the instructor's perspective, even if some students have "better" things to say in class than others, you want all students to participate, not just the keeners.<br />
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A self-reported checkmark system removes that ambiguity. Attend every class and speak twice each class? You're going to get 100% for participation. Simple.<br />
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To avoid abuse, I put some basic parameters on what qualifies for a checkmark: It needs to be a contribution of at least a couple of sentences (ie. "I agree with what she said" doesn't count). I also remind students that there is nothing more obvious in class than someone who says nothing, so if they cheat and give themselves checkmarks when they don't deserve them, I'll notice.<br />
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Finally, I recommend putting out the checkmark sheet at the end of class. If you bring it out at the break, some students will give themselves two checkmarks and then skip the second half of class.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null"></a>4. Get students to discuss a question in small groups first. </span></b><br />
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It took awhile before I tried this one, but I've found it makes a big difference.<br />
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Before we discuss a topic, or question, as a whole class, I have students discuss the question in smaller groups first.<br />
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Using <a href="http://chir.ag/projects/team-maker/">this simple "team maker" tool</a>, I break the class into four or five groups and then give them 5 to 10 minutes to discuss the topic in their small groups. Then I open it up to a discussion of the whole class.<br />
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This isn't typical "group work". Students aren't asked to present on behalf of their group or anything like that. The small-group discussions are simply meant as a warm up for the main event. But it works wonders.<br />
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Shy students may think what they have to say isn't very interesting and so are reluctant to say it in front of 30 or more of their fellow classmates. But put them in a group of just five or six fellow students, and it's not nearly so intimidating to share their thoughts.<br />
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And when that small group finds what they have to say interesting, it gives them the confidence to share their thoughts with the whole class later.<br />
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The key, I think, is not to overdo it with the small group discussions. Five minutes is often plenty to get the ball rolling. It's also important to stress to students that just saying something in their small group doesn't count for a participation checkmark. They need to share it with the whole class for it to count.<br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="point5"></a>
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null"></a>5. Call on students at random.</span></b><br />
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This idea came from a <a href="http://www.econtalk.org/doug-lemov-on-teaching/">interview</a> with education expert Doug Lemov on the EconTalk podcast. At about the 18:00 mark, Lemov talks about using "cold calling" in an elementary-school class. Instead of asking a question and waiting for students to raises their hand, Lemov encourages teachers to just call on any student at random.<br />
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The genius of cold-calling, according to Lemov, is that it forces all students, <i>even those not called upon</i>, to think about their answer. It's also a lot faster, because you don't have to wait for students to raise their hand before calling on them or — even worse – have no students raise their hand and then basically plead with your class for someone to answer the question.<br />
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What's interesting about cold-calling is that it's a technique that's already used by most instructors, but poorly: Either out of desperation, when no one raises their hand. Or (somewhat) cruelly, to put a student who never participates on the spot.<br />
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The key to making it work, I think, is consistency: To use it all the time, for every question.<br />
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I jokingly tell my students that, instead of picking on the one or two students who never raise their hand, I instead pick on <b><i>everybody</i></b>.<br />
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I'm also a bit more systematic in my approach.<br />
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Partly because it takes me awhile to learn my students' names and partly because I don't trust myself to be completely fair in calling on students, each class I randomize the class list. (I <a href="https://support.office.com/en-us/article/rand-function-4cbfa695-8869-4788-8d90-021ea9f5be73">randomly</a> <a href="https://support.office.com/en-us/article/sort-data-in-a-range-or-table-62d0b95d-2a90-4610-a6ae-2e545c4a4654">sort</a> an Excel spreadsheet but this <a href="https://www.random.org/lists/">online list randomizer</a> works just as well.)<br />
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Then — for every question — I start by calling on the three students whose names are at the top of the randomized list. Then, for the next question, I call on the next three. And so on. The first time I do this, I show students how I randomize the list on screen. Every time after that, it's secret, so students never know when they might be called on.<br />
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While I start each class discussion by calling on students at random, after the first three students have been called on, any student can raise their hand and talk. And, in my experience, many do.<br />
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I think that's because, fearing they might be called on, most students have prepared a response in their head. So, then, when they're not called on, they figure they might as well share their thought anyways and get their participation checkmark.<br />
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Those are my five suggestions for how to get students to participate more.<br />
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If you've got a trick to share, please add it in the comments. Note: To avoid spam comments, all comments on this site are moderated, so it may take awhile for your comment to show up.<br />
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<br />Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-82688889560714051872018-07-24T09:58:00.004-07:002018-09-05T15:26:17.712-07:00My next Online Tableau Training workshop is this September<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My next <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/online-tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-47776156771?aff=bp">online Tableau training workshop</a> will be held this September over three Thursdays: <b>Sept. 13, 20</b> and <b>27</b>. You can buy tickets <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/online-tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-47776156771?aff=bp">here</a> or by clicking the button below:</div>
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Here are some <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/workshops.html">testimonials</a> from people who've attended my earlier training sessions.</div>
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If you can't make this workshop but would like to be alerted when the next one is scheduled, just <a href="http://chadskelton.us14.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=f77761916f1d313badb1dc5da&id=7b3df945be">add your name here</a>.</div>
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If you have several people at your organization who need training in Tableau, I'm also available for <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/excel-and-tableau-training-in-vancouver.html">onsite training</a>.</div>
<br />Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-51506744744265551572018-06-07T09:45:00.002-07:002018-09-05T15:25:26.287-07:00How much evidence do we need for a data visualization "rule"?In a <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2018/06/bar-charts-should-always-start-at-zero.html">separate post</a>, I laid out some of my arguments for why I think most line charts should start at zero. I posted some of my initial thoughts on that topic on Twitter, which generated some really thoughtful replies.<br />
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One of them, from Steve Haroz, noted that he knew of know evidence that people read non-zero-baseline bar charts any differently than non-zero-baseline line charts. And, furthermore, that we should be careful in talking about data visualization "rules" when our evidence for them is weak or nonexistent.<br />
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Rely on evidence. When there is little or none, don't claim that some absolute or universal rule exists. It's fine to say "maybe" or "I prefer".</div>
— Steve Haroz (@sharoz) <a href="https://twitter.com/sharoz/status/999734337078812675?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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This led to a quite spirited discussion about whether data-visualization "guidelines" or "rules of thumb" that don't have any empirical research to back them up can still be valuable, or if we should stick primarily to those things that we have solid evidence for.<br />
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Speaking personally, I didn't fully appreciate the gaps in data visualization research until I watched Robert Kosara's <a href="https://eagereyes.org/talk/how-do-we-know-that">excellent talk at the University of Washington</a>, "How Do We Know That?"<br />
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The talk is based on Kosara's paper, <a href="https://eagereyes.org/papers/an-empire-built-on-sand">Empire of Sand</a>, which I now <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2017/04/data-visualization-reading-list.html">assign to my students</a> at the University of Florida.<br />
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As Kosara points out, many of the things we think we know about data visualization have little empirical evidence to back them up. And other well-accepted "rules" may actually be wrong (for example, "chartjunk" may <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7141r6QQ2A">not be so bad after all</a>).<br />
<br />
Some rules are based on nothing more than the strong opinions of influential early writers in the field (like <a href="https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/">Edward Tufte</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Bertin">Jacques Bertin</a>) and have not actually been subject to peer-reviewed research.<br />
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So where does that leave us as data visualization practitioners and teachers?<br />
<br />
It would seem obvious that we shouldn't teach "rules" that we know to be wrong. But what about the many areas for which there is little or no empirical evidence at all? Can theory replace research in some cases? Is a common practice worth teaching our students even if we don't know it to be true?<br />
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Below, I've tried to collect some of my own thoughts on the matter as well as those of others who took part in the Twitter discussion.<br />
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First, though, a big caveat about my own tweets: While I teach at a university and have (strong) opinions on how to teach data visualization, I'm an "instructor" not a "professor". I don't have a PhD and I'm not engaged in academic research myself.<br />
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Let's get to the tweets!<br />
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My argument is based more on encoding consistency, though, and prudence: if encoding is height, then it may be safer if height is proportional to numbers</div>
— Alberto Cairo (@albertocairo) <a href="https://twitter.com/albertocairo/status/999740531193376769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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We don't know what visual cue people use or how they reason with it. Could be length. Could be area. Could be position of the top of the bar. And not clear why a point's distance from the x-axis is different from the length of a bar. There are plausible options, but no evidence.</div>
— Steve Haroz (@sharoz) <a href="https://twitter.com/sharoz/status/999742358777458689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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That’s the key point! There’s elegance, Bertin-style retinal variables, etc., and then there’s the actual psychology, cognition, etc., and there are still big gaps in our knowledge of the latter.</div>
— Robert Kosara 👀 (@eagereyes) <a href="https://twitter.com/eagereyes/status/999743497128169472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Why give credence to the former?</div>
— Steve Haroz (@sharoz) <a href="https://twitter.com/sharoz/status/999743854231343104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Cause we don’t have enough of the latter?</div>
— Robert Kosara 👀 (@eagereyes) <a href="https://twitter.com/eagereyes/status/999744205801979906?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Medicine doesn't know how to cure every cancer. That doesn't mean that shamans and witch doctors are worth anyone's time.</div>
— Steve Haroz (@sharoz) <a href="https://twitter.com/sharoz/status/999744592533704711?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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It strikes me that both these statements can be true:<br />
1. We need more research on how people interpret charts to ensure our guidelines are backed by actual evidence.<br />
2. In the meantime, guidelines can still be helpful, even if they're not based on peer-reviewed research</div>
— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/999753835169099776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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I'd say that would be a big improvement over the field 5-10 years ago, which basically was 1. We need to always do what it says to do in a couple really popular books on this topic, and 2. Anyone who doesn't is an idiot.</div>
— Ben Jones (@DataRemixed) <a href="https://twitter.com/DataRemixed/status/999756004408541184?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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I think the key, which to be fair I think <a href="https://twitter.com/sharoz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@sharoz</a> agrees with, is that we should be upfront about the nature of our advice:<br />
- This is backed by peer-reviewed research<br />
- This is based on best practices in the field<br />
- This is based on a hunch I had this morning</div>
— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/999757190155067392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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I agree it's good advice. Just call it "common practice" instead of best.</div>
— Steve Haroz (@sharoz) <a href="https://twitter.com/sharoz/status/999760005623664643?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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I tend to be a bit conservative ideologically, at least in some areas. I think that traditions and customs often have good reasons to exist (until they are solidly refuted)</div>
— Alberto Cairo (@albertocairo) <a href="https://twitter.com/albertocairo/status/999765508693086209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Tufte has strong opinions that are largely unburdened by evidence. That’s a huge problem for the field. Bertin at least gave us a good framework to think in, even if some of his ideas might prove to be wrong.</div>
— Robert Kosara 👀 (@eagereyes) <a href="https://twitter.com/eagereyes/status/999766571227660288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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I value internal consistency (more visible in Bertin's work) and how it translates into a style. The more it overlaps scientific evidence the better, but it's not a requirement.<br />
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Heresy, I know.</div>
— Jorge Camoes (@wisevis) <a href="https://twitter.com/wisevis/status/999779191020310528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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I like <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@chadskelton</a>'s "have it both ways" framing - there's value in both. Attempts to reason about best practices based on what we think we understand now are useful since if we waited until we had empirical studies answering every question, we'd wait a zillion years!</div>
— Tamara Munzner (@tamaramunzner) <a href="https://twitter.com/tamaramunzner/status/999843124611506176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 25, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Of course empirical studies are worth doing to refine our understanding. But the combinatorial explosion of questions will outstrip the number of answers, especially since every answer leads to so many followup questions. We'll never be done. So we continue to need both.</div>
— Tamara Munzner (@tamaramunzner) <a href="https://twitter.com/tamaramunzner/status/999843532130013185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 25, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Hmm. Maybe a rating & review system for rules of thumb would be interesting. X% of practitioners follow Rule A virtually always, Y follow it often, Z follow it rarely, etc, with comments & links to examples & studies...</div>
— Ben Jones (@DataRemixed) <a href="https://twitter.com/DataRemixed/status/1000025500025176065?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 25, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Great idea! Sounds similar to the University of Chicago economist survey. Interestingly, that survey is *not* anonymous, which I think makes it better as people have to stand by their views. <a href="https://t.co/CjyD8sqoHC">https://t.co/CjyD8sqoHC</a></div>
— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/1000042018574233600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 25, 2018</a></blockquote>
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I believe Min Chen at Oxford is doing something along these lines ...</div>
— Enrico Bertini (@FILWD) <a href="https://twitter.com/FILWD/status/1000059422331240449?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 25, 2018</a></blockquote>
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<br />
I was curious about the project Enrico mentioned but Chen didn't appear to be on Twitter, so I sent him an email.<br />
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Chen sent me a very nice email back directing me to the <a href="http://visguides.repo.dbvis.de/">Visualization Guidelines Repository</a>.<br />
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The repository is still a work in progress, but an example on "chartjunk" suggests it could eventually be similar to what Ben Jones was suggesting: Links to where guidelines come from and studies that support or refute them.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOg2cTSAvja-kzOak3QfTBYEwrLcIfCPyUGKRVyInv2Vdusn3Ecj4j9L_EGs7Pah8Og0rrW5FTKImEeS9zo_vFL2YPABZmpRoEt4ZAKNOjMPZ7vUW0YrIikT7neJHvB7l9kdRacartydo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-06-05+at+11.09.20+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="442" data-original-width="976" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOg2cTSAvja-kzOak3QfTBYEwrLcIfCPyUGKRVyInv2Vdusn3Ecj4j9L_EGs7Pah8Og0rrW5FTKImEeS9zo_vFL2YPABZmpRoEt4ZAKNOjMPZ7vUW0YrIikT7neJHvB7l9kdRacartydo/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-06-05+at+11.09.20+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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There is also a related project, <a href="https://visguides.dbvis.de/">VisGuides</a>, which is a platform to discuss visualization guidelines. (VisGuides was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UaLpADZvVw&feature=youtu.be">presented</a> at Eurovis this week.)<br />
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Chen told me the two projects were setup by four visualization scientists: <a href="https://twitter.com/alediehl">Alexandra Diehl</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/thisisalfie">Alfie Abdul-Rahman</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/manunna_91">Menna El-Assady</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/benjbach">Benjamin Bach</a>.<br />
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It will be interesting to see how the Repository and VisGuides develops.<br />
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But I wonder if there isn't also a space for something more like the University of Chicago economists survey, but for data visualization: A place where people can see at a glance what leading practitioners in the field think about different guidelines.<br />
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I think this would provide useful information about which guidelines are universally accepted (i.e. "95% of practitioners think bar charts should start at zero") and which are more contested (i.e. "30% of practitioners think line charts should usually start at zero").<br />
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With sufficient buy-in, it could also provide a one-stop shop for people to check in with their favourite thinkers in the field when struggling with a chart decision. ("I want to make a pie chart with eight slices. What would Alberto Cairo think about that?" "Would Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic approve of me truncating this axis?")<br />
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<i>If you've got thoughts on this topic, please post a comment below or hit me up on <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton">Twitter</a>. Because of spam comments, my comments are moderated so don't be alarmed if yours doesn't show up right away. It will within a few hours.</i><br />
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<br />Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-31397104140688842892018-06-07T09:45:00.000-07:002020-06-01T11:14:08.661-07:00Bar charts should always start at zero. But what about line charts?If there's one thing almost everyone agrees on in data visualization, it's that <a href="https://flowingdata.com/2015/08/31/bar-chart-baselines-start-at-zero/">bar charts should start at zero</a>.<br />
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Starting them anywhere else — truncating the y-axis — risks misleading your audience by making a small difference look like a big one.<br />
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Yet many experts agree that while the baseline zero rule is pretty much ironclad for bar charts, it doesn't necessarily apply to other chart types. And, in particular, it doesn't always apply to line charts.<br />
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The argument is that because bar charts encode data by length, truncating the axis naturally misleads your audience. In contrast, line charts encode by slope or position, so baseline zero <a href="https://twitter.com/albertocairo/status/999654499563245570">isn't as important</a>.<br />
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But I'm not so sure about that.<br />
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Here's an example.<br />
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When people talk about how how truncating the y-axis can make a bar chart misleading, it usually doesn't take too long before this infamous chart from Fox News comes up.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7YVZ-ft8ww-fcbelBxu8AK6wY1TFjozHm-2hvwemNEM6N__p8ep6A6PqBmXcYnZGK4gWsFXr5wXOuqlwNB77W2hNxtG8mrPMhPKrRyvN2KbUMomT4OEXdxBmV3CPhtXpGNW44ECpW-EI/s1600/Bush-cuts.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="458" data-original-width="620" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7YVZ-ft8ww-fcbelBxu8AK6wY1TFjozHm-2hvwemNEM6N__p8ep6A6PqBmXcYnZGK4gWsFXr5wXOuqlwNB77W2hNxtG8mrPMhPKrRyvN2KbUMomT4OEXdxBmV3CPhtXpGNW44ECpW-EI/s400/Bush-cuts.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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But let's imagine that, instead of a bar chart, Fox had used a line chart instead.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZzmkQNPLJCojuP7cxyu_u2f83g-lVv9gEKiy8yMXNYO-Tk6TxI12mnXOIkyHGbMeNxKUHHIb9RXwdKZDLUA-8W7keOB96P7HRF1EdumWhRnnb722-x_StBkKRESSCPIB_WhufJNojdiE/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+9.55.29+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="573" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZzmkQNPLJCojuP7cxyu_u2f83g-lVv9gEKiy8yMXNYO-Tk6TxI12mnXOIkyHGbMeNxKUHHIb9RXwdKZDLUA-8W7keOB96P7HRF1EdumWhRnnb722-x_StBkKRESSCPIB_WhufJNojdiE/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+9.55.29+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Isn't that chart misleading, too? I would say yes. And I think it's because — while bar charts and line charts are clearly different — I'm not sure that the average reader interprets them that differently.<br />
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In my personal experience, and what I've observed in others, people "decode" a line chart in much the same way they decode a bar chart: By the distance of the mark from the baseline. Which means a line chart with a non-zero baseline poses a similar risk of misleading people as a non-zero bar chart.<br />
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This isn't an original idea. In a <a href="https://eagereyes.org/basics/baselines">2013 blog post on baselines</a>, Robert Kosara said he thinks baselines can be important on both bar charts and line charts:<br />
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Some people suggest that in contrast to bar charts, line charts are not sensitive to the baseline problem. However, I disagree. Look at the same data as before, this time shown as a line chart.</blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKLj_XhhDIxRKDshQvh_e_oJRtJmTtoL1ivLgTtF7QOu8iaXzbaqHKtIq9kq04gwkux-06K1b1IcVrbY1mG15fEL91UsMU3VZoejJSieukdPV8sfdT7MMx0A-fGUTiTu6snFXKBvrmKeM/s1600/baseline-lines.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="190" data-original-width="600" height="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKLj_XhhDIxRKDshQvh_e_oJRtJmTtoL1ivLgTtF7QOu8iaXzbaqHKtIq9kq04gwkux-06K1b1IcVrbY1mG15fEL91UsMU3VZoejJSieukdPV8sfdT7MMx0A-fGUTiTu6snFXKBvrmKeM/s400/baseline-lines.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Is the change not much more dramatic in the right-hand part of this image? The line chart maps the value to vertical position rather than length, which is less obviously connected to the axis [than bar charts]. But when the points are connected, we tend to think in terms of the distance from the axis, not in terms of a few points floating in space. </blockquote>
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Line charts with a non-zero baseline are very common. They are still problematic, however, because the apparent change can be deceiving. Having to look at the numbers on the axis to figure out the amount of change requires a lot more mental work and partly defeats the point of the chart.</blockquote>
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And, indeed, there's some preliminary empirical evidence to back up the idea that truncating the axis is a problem on line charts, too.</div>
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A <a href="http://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1506&context=nyu_plltwp">2015 research paper</a> looked at how various "deceptive" charts affected the way people perceived the message in a data visualization.<br />
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For example, people were shown two bar charts and asked how much bigger one bar was than the other on a 5-item Likert scale from "slightly better" to "substantially better". (The charts shown here are examples from the paper; the actual ones tested were somewhat different.)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1BvtTgXNu5UWO9ElxCmZ9CUycUouqS_Kyli81KphmJrPBr8CHswTE9LbQtEs0ccd6OXTebMPXQJHRBzi0v3Q2ITvbZ52WwDjQyJpTBJTvQKXox6I58b5zjfKNn7Twi-l34nyCf_TYvp4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+10.01.52+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="595" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1BvtTgXNu5UWO9ElxCmZ9CUycUouqS_Kyli81KphmJrPBr8CHswTE9LbQtEs0ccd6OXTebMPXQJHRBzi0v3Q2ITvbZ52WwDjQyJpTBJTvQKXox6I58b5zjfKNn7Twi-l34nyCf_TYvp4/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+10.01.52+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Not surprisingly, people were more likely to say the difference was substantial when the y-axis was truncated.<br />
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The study didn't specifically look at truncated y-axes for line charts. But it did look at line charts with a distorted aspect ratio, which has a very similar effect (as changing the aspect ratio, like truncating the axis, can make a line look more or less steep).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJWgLl13VXTCqmJpifkVoAwMoYHpY1hf0z7tkmTsaLaSGnoIurt_VZ51fzY8y95eJI6yexnDoIUgdKObMelgctDZL22pg7StaK2DRsY6THt97iI2n1E547PNa9dehyphenhyphen-MnEmQF9wyjP6I0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+10.08.55+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="603" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJWgLl13VXTCqmJpifkVoAwMoYHpY1hf0z7tkmTsaLaSGnoIurt_VZ51fzY8y95eJI6yexnDoIUgdKObMelgctDZL22pg7StaK2DRsY6THt97iI2n1E547PNa9dehyphenhyphen-MnEmQF9wyjP6I0/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+10.08.55+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Interestingly, the study found readers were also misled by the distorted line chart. And, in fact, the gap between the control and the deceptive line chart was greater than it was for the bar charts.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxQtC1ZeTGM_jjYK6k9D2jTGCnZVpzGb5ptchcUSpte2bCVZnckr4nKOuFYruX6bzVxd-aCcbIlE_cDM6MHXWyYazxJO5CLFpEpksgSnxWvNEDAVymjxJ9_pd_eDkcx0d0GpmINK9tqFE/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+10.12.44+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="260" data-original-width="580" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxQtC1ZeTGM_jjYK6k9D2jTGCnZVpzGb5ptchcUSpte2bCVZnckr4nKOuFYruX6bzVxd-aCcbIlE_cDM6MHXWyYazxJO5CLFpEpksgSnxWvNEDAVymjxJ9_pd_eDkcx0d0GpmINK9tqFE/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+10.12.44+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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As Enrico Bertini, one of the paper's authors notes, the values used in the bar and line charts were not the same, and so we <a href="https://twitter.com/FILWD/status/999784130673086464">can't really compare them directly to each other</a>.<br />
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But this provides at least some evidence that the concerns we have about bar charts — that truncating the y-axis can mislead people — could also apply to line charts.<br />
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It's important to note that, for all the charts used in the "deceptive" charts study, the actual numbers were visible on the charts (as in the examples above). So participants were misled <b>even though the axes were properly labelled</b>. This is an important point, I think, as people often dismiss concerns about truncated axes (on bar charts or line charts) by arguing a chart is honest as long as the axes are labelled. As David Yanofsky <a href="https://qz.com/418083/its-ok-not-to-start-your-y-axis-at-zero/">wrote in Quartz</a>:<br />
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Blaming a chart’s creator for a reader who doesn’t look at clearly labeled axes is like blaming a supermarket for selling someone food he’s allergic to.</blockquote>
It's an interesting analogy as, when it comes to food allergies, schools, restaurants and stores now go out of their way to alert people to possible allergens, believing their moral duty to prevent harm is greater than just listing "peanuts" in tiny type on the ingredients list.<br />
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While the stakes are (thankfully) not nearly as high when it comes to charts, I think chart creators should also go out of their way to avoid harm. We don't want our charts to mislead people, including those who don't look carefully at the axis.<br />
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Visualization researcher <a href="http://steveharoz.com/">Steve Haroz</a> also notes he's aware of no research to back up the claim that non-zero baselines are more problematic with bar charts than line charts.<br />
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I know of no evidence to suggest that non-zero bar graphs are interpreted any differently than non-zero line graphs or dot plots. Every argument that could be made about the height of a bar could be made about the vertical position of a point.</div>
— Steve Haroz (@sharoz) <a href="https://twitter.com/sharoz/status/999730893278339072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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We don't know what visual cue people use or how they reason with it. Could be length. Could be area. Could be position of the top of the bar. And not clear why a point's distance from the x-axis is different from the length of a bar. There are plausible options, but no evidence.</div>
— Steve Haroz (@sharoz) <a href="https://twitter.com/sharoz/status/999742358777458689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
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So does that mean line charts, like bar charts, should always start at zero?<br />
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I don't think that's right, either.<br />
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Because it's not hard to find examples where a rigid baseline-zero rule for line charts leads to data visualizations that are totally useless.<br />
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You can make global warming look like no big deal if you stick to baseline zero (as the <a href="https://twitter.com/nro/status/676516015078039556">National Review did</a>).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS2NbSmIUxDZc6ZPysYShUXpFZAweDdJo5PIVqSrEVbrrSLa6uAg_IbGZ6t0OcHN7oNYrk1-ReFvli7-uSnoFcAiNo9W1BAA6DTgSGtRNT2d0bXW5ZRUXFpT2VDlP_PSNEGMrZgsiNMVE/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+10.27.58+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="587" data-original-width="608" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS2NbSmIUxDZc6ZPysYShUXpFZAweDdJo5PIVqSrEVbrrSLa6uAg_IbGZ6t0OcHN7oNYrk1-ReFvli7-uSnoFcAiNo9W1BAA6DTgSGtRNT2d0bXW5ZRUXFpT2VDlP_PSNEGMrZgsiNMVE/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+10.27.58+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Intraday stock charts are another good example. A very small change in a stock price (i.e. up or down a few percent) may be very meaningful if it's meant to show how the market reacted to news about a company. Like this chart showing what happened to Apple stock after the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/04/apple-stock-plunges-amid-celebrity-hacking-ahead-of-purported-iwatch-announcement/?utm_term=.2c5ea9964e97">celebrity photo hacking scandal</a>:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1768Ji1gUFmjFSYvrwGuUUYqdOehPkWAUgWHmkQDV-TTlWNFBV6QMl7sqfrPj3YgyNX4NumcCkMwzJWTVyvdd0pJc2e_Z-VidMG-Ecj6GWmuB7IP8zAdz7UK376osvqipBFmbkCU9zQ/s1600/applestock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="490" data-original-width="600" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1768Ji1gUFmjFSYvrwGuUUYqdOehPkWAUgWHmkQDV-TTlWNFBV6QMl7sqfrPj3YgyNX4NumcCkMwzJWTVyvdd0pJc2e_Z-VidMG-Ecj6GWmuB7IP8zAdz7UK376osvqipBFmbkCU9zQ/s400/applestock.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
Or let's say you have an expensive diagnostic machine in a hospital that will break down if a certain fluid goes above or below a given level. A "control chart" that shows if operations are within a narrow acceptable range is clearly the right answer. Should we risk letting the machine break down just so the baseline-zero crowd are happy?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgejYinLQO1-24Vy7as-rhuIgHwqt5x9rE_sZP_sbFsdQI0d2P8ZlRxSEN-Iws8J_AkG7vZGNce_lLlYdwWNx_JKz01piYX2svZ0798qwdOhnpfevSt1Krt_bsLXK_50vFY6tDH2tRHoYo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+10.29.58+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="282" data-original-width="541" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgejYinLQO1-24Vy7as-rhuIgHwqt5x9rE_sZP_sbFsdQI0d2P8ZlRxSEN-Iws8J_AkG7vZGNce_lLlYdwWNx_JKz01piYX2svZ0798qwdOhnpfevSt1Krt_bsLXK_50vFY6tDH2tRHoYo/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+10.29.58+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The bottom line is that <b>sometimes small changes are really important</b>. And if baseline zero makes those small changes invisible, or really hard to see, that's not ideal.<br />
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But in many other cases, the important changes are of <b>large</b> or <b>medium</b> size and are easy enough to see using baseline zero. All truncating the axis does in those cases is make those changes look (misleadingly) much bigger than they really are.<br />
<br />
For example, this line chart of "Breaking Bad" star Aaron Paul's Twitter followers clearly shows there was a spike in followers during the final season.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-osD_UML_4gqmdwpo6ssrlL6rxPpMjgGZtWF17fi9sGV9Q_ahLp2dkafgsEzqU620GYwv2e5QClhRBR4d3_kAZUK-3VCYBnpq62cEE-eSLElgDoIpAT8qUOTI9BgGcZ1zLPgOjz-8g9A/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+10.34.06+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="881" data-original-width="961" height="366" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-osD_UML_4gqmdwpo6ssrlL6rxPpMjgGZtWF17fi9sGV9Q_ahLp2dkafgsEzqU620GYwv2e5QClhRBR4d3_kAZUK-3VCYBnpq62cEE-eSLElgDoIpAT8qUOTI9BgGcZ1zLPgOjz-8g9A/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+10.34.06+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Using baseline zero doesn't make the trend hard to see and, I would argue, makes the chart more informative as it gives both a sense of when his followers started to spike and an accurate picture of how big that recent growth in followers really is (~40% increase).<br />
<br />
All <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterData/status/369611131502854144">truncating the y-axis does</a> is make that growth look much, much more dramatic than it really is. It provides the reader with less information, not more.<br />
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<br />
It strikes me that line charts are communicating (at least) two things.<br />
<br />
One is the rate of increase/decrease relative to earlier points on the chart. For example, a big shift in a stock's price immediately following a major news event. Or how crime went up faster between November and December than between July and August. For these types of comparisons, baseline zero is irrelevant.<br />
<br />
But a line chart is also often communicating the <b><i>actual</i></b> rate of increase/decrease (ie. up 25%, down 50%). And for this, baseline zero can be very important (and its absence potentially misleading).<br />
<br />
While more research in this area would be helpful, I'm inclined to think that both these things are probably true:<br />
<ol>
<li>Truncating the y-axis on a line chart, like on a bar chart, risks misleading your audience into thinking a change is bigger than it really is.</li>
<li>Sometimes that risk is worth it to make sure your audience is able to see small, but meaningful, changes in the data.</li>
</ol>
Which leads me to think this may be a good rough guideline for whether line charts should use baseline zero:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Most line charts should start at zero.<br />
BUT not using baseline zero is OK if:<br />
a) Zero on your scale is completely arbitrary (ie. temperature) OR<br />
b) A small, but important, change is difficult or impossible to see using baseline zero.</blockquote>
When I floated this idea on Twitter, Alberto Cairo came up with a <a href="https://twitter.com/albertocairo/status/999718394613125120">slightly different rule of thumb</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Here's how I approach this:<br />
1. If you can include 0 and there's a natural 0, include 0.<br />
2. If by including 0 your line becomes so flat that you barely see differences, then it's wrong and misleading<br />
3. The main purpose of a line chart is to see differences, not to tell how far it is from 0 as a whole (that can be a purpose, too, but a secondary one, and subject to fulfilling the former.)<br />
4. All these depend on the nature of the data</blockquote>
<div>
These are good guidelines. And certainly better, in my view, than "the baseline doesn't matter at all on a line chart". But I take issue with a couple of Alberto's points.<br />
<br />
First, to Point 3, I'm not sure the fundamental purpose of a line chart and a bar chart are necessarily that different.<br />
<br />
Indeed, when I encounter charts in the wild (in news stories or business reports), the main thing that sets the two apart is just the type of data being represented: categorical data is usually shown on a bar charts, time-series data is usually shown on a line chart.<br />
<br />
For example, homicide rates between major cities would typically be shown on a bar chart, while the change over time in the homicide rate for a particular city would be shown on a line chart. But what's being compared — the homicide rate — is the same in both cases. And what defines a meaningful difference (between a violent city and a safe one, or how much safer a city has become over time) is the same, too.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPjQkaRsSBM0ZvOznpKSR8GdyOlOhsu04A3J73UahxG3sTDKc113DblqVkX2v5O7SfEgijcABRyARc1zqwOTI9Iti__3FIeSwehBprqfb4iW9OwTI5Q2_Gf6JHsB4wPEPPDTPt9UzHKWU/s1600/Homicide.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="943" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPjQkaRsSBM0ZvOznpKSR8GdyOlOhsu04A3J73UahxG3sTDKc113DblqVkX2v5O7SfEgijcABRyARc1zqwOTI9Iti__3FIeSwehBprqfb4iW9OwTI5Q2_Gf6JHsB4wPEPPDTPt9UzHKWU/s640/Homicide.jpg" width="376" /></a></div>
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</div>
On Point 2, I'm also not sure I'm completely sold on the idea of a "natural 0". I've asked Alberto what he would consider an "unnatural zero" — meaning baseline zero isn't required — and <a href="https://twitter.com/albertocairo/status/983100861252620288">he has said</a> he defines it as situations where the data being visualized is unlikely to ever hit zero. Unemployment will never be at 0%. A nation's life expectancy will never be 0 years.<br />
<br />
Yanofsky made a similar point in his a <a href="https://qz.com/418083/its-ok-not-to-start-your-y-axis-at-zero/">Quartz piece</a>, arguing baseline zero is "worth omitting when the implication that [the data] might reach zero is preposterous".<br />
<br />
And Stephanie Evergreen made a similar argument in a <a href="http://stephanieevergreen.com/y-axis/">post last year</a>.</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Other than for bar charts, I advocate for a y-axis that is based on something reasonable for your data. Maybe the minimum of the axis is your historically lowest point. Maybe the minimum should be the point at which you’d have to alert your superiors. Maybe the minimum is the trigger point where your team has decided a different course of action is needed. Whatever you pick, just pick. Make it meaningful and intentional. Not something the software automatically decides for you (though that’s a place to start your thought process).</blockquote>
And, indeed, Alberto used the "natural 0" argument to make a case for why my hypothetical Fox News line chart above is misleading even though many line charts with a non-zero baseline aren't:<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
No. See the other tweets where I explain how to choose a reasonable baseline: historical minimum in this case, for instance: 0% (before 1913 there was no income tax in the U.S.)</div>
— Alberto Cairo (@albertocairo) <a href="https://twitter.com/albertocairo/status/999715646282895360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<br />
The idea of a meaningful, natural baseline for a line chart is appealing. But I'm not sure it makes sense in practice.<br />
<br />
If most of your audience doesn't know that the U.S. had no income tax prior to 1913 — and I would hazard a guess that most of them don't — then how can that fact be relevant to whether a chart is misleading or not?<br />
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<br />
<br />
Or, to put it another way, if this was a chart of income taxes in a country that had always had high income-tax rates (Norway, maybe?) would that suddenly make it OK to have the y-axis start at 34%? Would the line chart no longer be misleading? I don't think so.<br />
<br />
I think Alberto and Stephanie's argument for a "natural" baseline other than zero — whether a historical minimum, or "trigger point" where action needs to be taken — only makes sense if the baseline is <b>annotated</b> with that contextual information. Then, the "natural" baseline is providing useful context.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD-_BJ4lgHQvf9yCgO8W67tKgiKx8FI_Ae1SmJFFTMHmVtalqOLXMj3Sr6X-QxeoEQDjnZP8_xST10YKiBvHWMwLKAwdtdxB0cOSSX9ndPsHX-lzaUEzIjpEiSTRu6o48HKRi8_g2KyiU/s1600/historic+low.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="555" data-original-width="954" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD-_BJ4lgHQvf9yCgO8W67tKgiKx8FI_Ae1SmJFFTMHmVtalqOLXMj3Sr6X-QxeoEQDjnZP8_xST10YKiBvHWMwLKAwdtdxB0cOSSX9ndPsHX-lzaUEzIjpEiSTRu6o48HKRi8_g2KyiU/s400/historic+low.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
But a line chart that uses a "natural" baseline with which the audience is unfamiliar won't be any less misleading, in my view, than one that uses an arbitrary cut-off.<br />
<br />
Also, even in situations where zero is never reached, it's a useful benchmark to be able to see what the real rate of change is.<br />
<br />
An increase in unemployment from 4% to 8% is a doubling of unemployment, even if unemployment will never reach zero. And a drop in mortgage rates from 8.5% to 5% is not quite as dramatic as <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/982751928844091392">this chart</a> makes it look, even if banks will never loan out money for nothing.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkwA9tu3VHRoCASlezabRCv1gocSRh-4X5IrISl1KvyujZxcCagaThQDpnu5FAQfI3SC-RZxAuvCjnDNYqut7Afv8xIoy8HVrPI57bsxFDJESjfvqjdQCSiQvwEiPMb7E_f2vtAZTWyt4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+11.48.04+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="593" data-original-width="843" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkwA9tu3VHRoCASlezabRCv1gocSRh-4X5IrISl1KvyujZxcCagaThQDpnu5FAQfI3SC-RZxAuvCjnDNYqut7Afv8xIoy8HVrPI57bsxFDJESjfvqjdQCSiQvwEiPMb7E_f2vtAZTWyt4/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-05-30+at+11.48.04+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
All of which, in my view, supports the argument that most line charts should probably start at zero unless doing so makes small, but important, changes hard to see.<br />
<br />
It's worth noting there are also workarounds, like showing percent change from a 0% starting point or, as <a href="https://twitter.com/DataRemixed/status/999728141147897856">Ben Jones points out</a>, inset charts that show both the big picture and then zoom into the area of interest.<br />
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<br />
As part of her excellent series on what to consider when using different chart types, Datawrapper's Lisa Rost wrote a post on <a href="https://blog.datawrapper.de/line-charts/">line charts</a> that argues that, while baseline-zero isn't a rule for line charts, it's worth considering when your data is close to zero (a view shared by <a href="https://twitter.com/infowetrust/status/974522153512026113">Dona Wong</a>):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Consider extending your y-axis to zero. Line charts have the big advantage that they don’t need to start from zero. If your data comes close to zero, however, consider adding the zero baseline. Readers then will be able to compare not just the vertical distance between two values with each other, but also the distance between these values and the zero baseline.</blockquote>
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<br />
<br />
While I think this is good advice, it strikes me as insufficient. The argument here is essentially the same as the one I made above: Using baseline zero on a line chart is better, as it allows you to see both the <b>relative</b> and <b>actual</b> rate of change. But it seems odd to me that that advice should be limited only to those situations where the baseline is already close to zero (and so the amount of distortion is relatively small) and not those situations where the baseline is far from zero (and the amount of distortion is potentially much greater).<br />
<br />
The more I look at this issue, the more convinced I become that most line charts should start at zero. But if it's true that line charts have as much potential to mislead as bar charts, that raises another intriguing question: <b>Why shouldn't there be exceptions to the zero-baseline rule for bar charts, too?</b><br />
<br />
After all, small changes can exist for categorical data as much as for time-series data.<br />
<br />
If it's OK to truncate the y axis to show small (but important) changes in a country's life expectancy over time, why must we stick with a zero baseline to show small (but important) differences between countries?<br />
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<br />
<br />
If Iceland is doing something right that gives its people two more years of life than those in Denmark, does this chart really let us see that clearly? I realize there are alternatives to bar charts (like dot plots). But is there actual evidence to suggest the zero-baseline rule should be hard-and-fast with bar charts or is it just a convention?<br />
<br />
(For what it's worth, I'll continue to advise my students to make all bar charts zero baseline, if only because it's such a convention in the field that doing otherwise would make them look like they don't know what they're doing.)<br />
<br />
While I teach at a university, I don't have a PhD and I'm not an academic researcher. But if any researchers are looking for ideas, I think a study that directly compared truncated bar charts and line charts would be great.<br />
<br />
Because while the study on <a href="http://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1506&context=nyu_plltwp">"deceptive" data visualizations</a> provides some initial evidence, it's limited by the fact that it studied aspect ratio on line charts, not specifically truncated axes. And the bar charts and line charts weren't directly comparable.<br />
<br />
I think it would be useful to compare the exact same data using bar charts and line charts — both with and without truncated axes. We'd then be able to see how truncating the y-axis affects people's perception of the data and, crucially, whether the impact on people's perception is any different for line charts and bar charts.<br />
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<br />
I'll leave it to the experts, but I think a study like this would also require some careful thought about how to measure perception.<br />
<br />
I think one of the strengths of the "deceptive" data visualizations study is that the axes were labelled, as that more closely approximates the way such charts exist in the wild.<br />
<br />
But that means it's probably not useful to ask people to estimate the specific values in the charts, as many will just look at the axes and rely on the labels rather than the visual.<br />
<br />
The earlier study tried to get around this by asking participants whether they thought the differences in the chart were "substantial" or not. But as Enrico Bertini, one of that study's authors <a href="https://twitter.com/FILWD/status/1001880685982994444">notes</a>, it's hard to separate the semantic meaning of the data from the visualization.<br />
<br />
For example, a 1% increase in the unemployment rate <b><i>is</i></b> substantial. So is a truncated line chart that makes the reader see that increase as a "big deal" more misleading than one with baseline zero — or less?<br />
<br />
It strikes me there might be a couple ways around this problem. One would be to ask imprecise questions of magnitude. "Looking at this chart, do you think the number of incidents has a) gone up about a third, b) gone up about 50%, c) doubled, d) more than doubled". Some participants might look at the axes and try to do the math in their head. But I suspect many wouldn't. And if study participants get the magnitudes wrong <i><b>even with the axes labelled</b></i>, that would be strong evidence that truncation can be seriously misleading.<br />
<br />
The other possible solution I see would be mixing up the datasets: Visualize mortgage rates on some charts, immigration numbers on others. That would perhaps provide some insight about whether the context of the dataset affects how people interpret the charts.<br />
<br />
I think a study like this might provide some guidance on when and how we should truncate line charts and also whether baseline zero is any more important for bar charts than line charts (something we all assume but which it appears we have little empirical evidence for).<br />
<br />
Two final points.<br />
<br />
First, some will say any "rules" about data visualization are counter productive, as every situation is different. While I think there's some truth to that, I think rules of thumb are useful, especially for beginners to the field. (I have a <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2015/12/in-defence-of-data-visualization-rules.html">whole argument about that</a> if you want to read it.)<br />
<br />
Second, I think in all of these debates audience is really important.<br />
<br />
If you're building an internal Dashboard for your organization measuring, say, whether sales are up or down from week to week, whatever axis scale you use will likely become familiar to your users over time. That means the risk of misleading your audience is probably low, and so truncating the y-axis may make sense to make small differences easier to see.<br />
<br />
In contrast, if you're producing charts for the general public (like in data journalism or for a public report), I think the risk of misleading people with a truncated y-axis is much higher.<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE</b>: In Spring 2020, <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.02035.pdf">a really interesting paper</a> came out that found that — contrary to conventional wisdom — truncating line charts appeared to have the same effect on a reader's subjective perception as truncating bar charts. I encourage you to check it out. There's also a <a href="https://engineering.tableau.com/truncating-the-y-axis-threat-or-menace-d0bce66d4d08">blog post</a> that accompanies the paper.<br />
<br />
<i>This post is an expansion of a <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/999712728963956736">Twitter thread</a> on the topic and the many thoughtful replies I received in response.</i><br />
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<i>That discussion also went off into a separate, but quite interesting, tangent on the limits of our knowledge in data visualization and what that means about how we should teach "rules" and "guidelines" in the field. I've collected some of the best tweets from that discussion in a <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2018/06/how-much-evidence-do-we-need-for-data.html">separate post</a>.</i><br />
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<i>If you've got thoughts on this topic, please post a comment below or hit me up on <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton">Twitter</a>. Because of spam comments, my comments are moderated so don't be alarmed if yours doesn't show up right away. It will within a few hours.</i></div>
Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-67989459866223903642018-03-15T09:22:00.000-07:002018-03-15T09:22:12.182-07:00My next Tableau Training workshop is Apr. 18-19, 2018 in Vancouver<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My next <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-44192806875?aff=bp">two-day public Tableau training workshop</a> will be held on Wednesday, Apr. 18th and Thursday, Apr. 19th at SFU Harbour Centre. You can buy tickets <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-44192806875?aff=bp">here</a> or by clicking the button below:</div>
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Here are some <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/workshops.html">testimonials</a> from people who've attended my earlier training sessions.</div>
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If you can't make this workshop but would like to be alerted when the next one is scheduled, just <a href="http://chadskelton.us14.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=f77761916f1d313badb1dc5da&id=7b3df945be">add your name here</a>.</div>
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If you have several people at your organization who need training in Tableau, I'm also available for <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/excel-and-tableau-training-in-vancouver.html">onsite training</a>.</div>
<br />Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-32871682244494129712018-02-21T09:30:00.002-08:002022-12-30T12:43:42.745-08:00There are fewer journalists in Canada than 15 years ago. But not as few as you might think.<br />
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<br /><b><u>NOTE</u>: Data from the 2021 Census is now out, showing a further drop to 10,555 journalists. Christopher Cheung of The Tyee wrote a <a href="https://thetyee.ca/News/2022/12/16/Losing-Journalists-PR-Jobs-Rising/">good summary</a> of the new data.</b><br /><br /><div>
There are fewer journalists in Canada today than 15 years ago — but not as few as you might think, according to data from the 2016 census.<br />
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Indeed, between 2001 and 2016 — a time of mass layoffs at daily newspapers across the country — the total number of journalists in the country declined by only 7%.<br />
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As the chart above shows, there were just under 13,000 journalists in Canada in 2001, according to the census. That went up to 13,320 in 2006, stayed relatively flat in 2011, then dropped a bit in 2016.<br />
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Over the whole period, the decline was just 7%. And even if you measure the decline from the very top — the 13,320 journalists recorded in 2006 — the number of journalists is down by just 10%.<br />
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Absolute figures can be a bit misleading, of course. The size of the overall labour force in Canada has risen 18% since 2001, so the <b>relative</b> decline in journalists is greater than it might first appear. Indeed, as a proportion of all working Canadians, the <b>relative</b> <b>share</b> of journalists is down by 20%.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEUzZyEABvHVWrStlBDIFmBKFbfRw-pgiSKgJT0OBKKq4n10OEOUr94Xgzeouz1MJM8vuherzhmEPI2AIA5cIzhKW3HQNvgc3f4FNzBtToH7N6zVWRmxQTK4XzITQGTe2ISV25CQriYHQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-02-15+at+2.57.58+PM.png"><img border="0" height="345" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEUzZyEABvHVWrStlBDIFmBKFbfRw-pgiSKgJT0OBKKq4n10OEOUr94Xgzeouz1MJM8vuherzhmEPI2AIA5cIzhKW3HQNvgc3f4FNzBtToH7N6zVWRmxQTK4XzITQGTe2ISV25CQriYHQ/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-02-15+at+2.57.58+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Still, when people talk about how much smaller newsrooms are today than a decade ago, they're usually talking in absolute terms: They look around at cubicles and count heads.<br />
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It's also interesting to compare the decline in journalists to other "dying professions", which have seen much steeper declines.<br />
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In the interests of not boring readers, I've tried to save the really nerdy stuff to the very end. But, before we go any further, it's important to make note of one important thing: What Statistics Canada considers a "<a href="http://noc.esdc.gc.ca/English/noc/ProfileQuickSearch.aspx?val=5&val1=5123&ver=16&val65=journalist">Journalist</a>" and what they don't.<br />
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Specifically, the way StatsCan defines "<a href="http://noc.esdc.gc.ca/English/noc/ProfileQuickSearch.aspx?val=5&val1=5123&ver=16&val65=journalist">Journalist</a>" specifically excludes two groups that most people would consider journalists: <b>photojournalists</b> and <b>editors </b>(they are instead lumped in with the broader categories for "<a href="http://noc.esdc.gc.ca/English/noc/ProfileQuickSearch.aspx?val=5&val1=5221&ver=16&val65=journalist">Photographers</a>" and "<a href="http://noc.esdc.gc.ca/English/noc/ProfileQuickSearch.aspx?val=5&val1=5122&ver=16&val65=journalist">Editors</a>").<br />
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The degree to which this matters for figuring out what's going on with journalism jobs is explained in (a lot) more detail in the Methodology section below.<br />
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The bottom line, though, is that it may be more helpful to think of the "Journalist" numbers as really just showing us the numbers for "Reporters" or other journalists whose main job is writing: columnists, critics, etc.<br />
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Even viewed in that limited way, though, the numbers are surprising. Ask anyone working at a newspaper, radio or TV station how many reporters they've lost in their newsroom over the past 15 years and I doubt many would say it's only 10%.<br />
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So what's going on?<br />
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First, let's start with the obvious: Journalists <b>are</b> losing their jobs.</div>
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Annual layoffs and buyouts have been a fact of life at newspapers across the country for at least a decade. I took a <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2015/09/farewell-to-vancouver-sun.html">buyout</a> from The Vancouver Sun in September 2015, and when I left that paper's newsroom was a fraction of its size when I joined it in 1998.</div>
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Last year's <a href="https://shatteredmirror.ca/wp-content/uploads/theShatteredMirror.pdf">Shattered Mirror report</a> into the state of Canadian journalism came up with some sobering estimates based on data from unions (emphasis added):<br />
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The Canadian Media Guild has tracked layoffs and buyouts for the past few decades. When non-news companies are excluded, the total is in the order of <b>12,000 positions lost</b>, more than 1,000 of them in the last year alone. Unifor’s 46 media bargaining units had <b>1,583 members in 2010</b> but only <b>1,125 by early 2016</b>. The CWA estimates it had about <b>400 editorial members in 2016</b>, a <b>decline of about one-third</b> from 2010 and more than two-thirds since the early 1990s.</blockquote>
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<a href="https://mediaunion.ca/your-contract/">Unifor Local 2000</a> — which represents various newspaper employees in B.C., including those at The Vancouver Sun and Province — told me their membership has dropped from around <b>2,300 in 2010</b> to just <b>800</b> today (a drop of more than two-thirds).<br />
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Some of those union figures include people who work for news companies but aren't journalists, like those working in circulation or advertising. Still, these figures suggest mainstream newsrooms may have seen job losses in the order of 30% or more in just the past few years.</div>
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If that's true, that means there's only one way to explain an overall drop in journalists of just 10%.</div>
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Someone has to be <b>hiring</b> journalists. And some are.</div>
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At the same time as Google and Facebook have <a href="https://nmc-mic.ca/news/research/google-facebook-dominate-canadian-digital-advertising-market/">gobbled up ad revenue</a> that used to go to newspapers, the Internet has also made it easier to create new media outlets and for niche publications to find an audience.<br />
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There are several news organizations in Canada today that didn't even exist 15 years ago, like <a href="https://ipolitics.ca/">iPolitics</a>, <a href="https://thetyee.ca/">The Tyee</a>, <a href="http://discoursemedia.org/">Discourse</a>, <a href="https://www.nationalobserver.com/about">National Observer</a> and <a href="http://www.canadalandshow.com/">Canadaland</a>. Each has its own unique business model: grant funding, subscriptions, donations.</div>
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Here in B.C., <a href="https://www.castanet.net/">Castanet</a>, a very successful online-only news site in the Okanagan, has 13 reporters and editors. Metro, the free weekly, has plans to <a href="https://twitter.com/JenStDen/status/953779432862441472">hire a bunch of reporters</a> in Vancouver. And, after a rather brutal round of <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/2488301/here-are-all-the-newspapers-in-b-c-that-have-shut-down-this-decade/">consolidation</a> and closures, it appears some community papers in the Lower Mainland have started <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/959174634997350400">hiring journalists</a> again.<br />
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There are also all sorts of niche publications that, while small, do employ actual journalists. Like <a href="https://moderndogmagazine.com/">Modern Dog magazine</a> (based in Vancouver) or <a href="https://www.thegrowler.ca/about-us/">The Growler</a>, a quarterly magazine all about B.C. craft beer.<br />
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An <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/liberals-pledge-675-million-in-cbc-funding/article29354285/">increase in funding to the CBC</a> hasn't hurt either, with many ex-newspaper employees now doing stellar reporting for the public broadcaster.</div>
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The good news doesn't completely outweigh the bad, of course (indeed, statistically, it falls short by about 10%). But there <b><i>is</i></b> good news out there. It just tends to come in lots of small doses that may go unnoticed when compared against the big layoffs at big newsrooms.</div>
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Does that mean we don't need to worry about the state of journalism in Canada? Of course not.<br />
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For one thing, I suspect some of these new journalism jobs don't pay that well. I wasn't able to find salary data for journalists for 2016, but a unionized job at a big-city newspaper almost certainly pays a lot better than being a blogger for some online-only publication.<br />
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Also, because of that pay gap, a lot of incredibly talented senior reporters and editors at mainstream news organizations who've lost their jobs are probably more likely to move into Public Relations or communications than take a low-paid job at a digital upstart. That's bad for them, as they had to leave a job they loved and were really good at. And it's bad for the rest of us, as we lose their wealth of experience.</div>
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Not all journalism jobs are equally important to society, either.<br />
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Losing a city hall reporter at The Province and gaining a blogger at a Hollywood North gossip site is probably not a fair trade in terms of the public good.</div>
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That said, I don't think we know enough about what all these new journalism jobs are to fully understand what's going on. For example, trading one movie critic at The Vancouver Sun for one dogged reporter at Castanet probably <i>is</i> a good trade, democracy wise.</div>
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My loyalties and biases on this are all over the place.<br />
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As a citizen, I want to be able to get reliable information about my community.<br />
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As a former journalist at a big-city paper, I think big-city papers do important work and I hope they survive (also, a lot of my good friends still work for them).</div>
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And as a <a href="http://www.kpu.ca/arts/journalism/faculty/chad-skelton">journalism instructor</a>, I want my students to get good jobs when they graduate.</div>
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On that last one, I think I have the most reason for optimism.</div>
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Because at the same time as journalism jobs have declined slightly, jobs that require similar skills — like public relations and photography — have grown substantially.</div>
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Indeed, for every job lost in journalism since 2011, there have been <b>17</b> jobs added in public relations and advertising (-1,230 vs. +21,320).</div>
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That's probably not great for democracy — I'd rather have more watchdogs than spin doctors — but it should soften the blow for journalism students looking for work.</div>
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The surge in jobs in related fields like PR should also be good news for journalists who have been laid off (or fear being laid off): Rest assured, there is ample demand out there for your research and writing skills.</div>
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I still think we should worry about the decline of newspapers, and other "legacy" news organizations, which serve an important role in democracy.</div>
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But these figures at least give me some hope that it's not all bad news in the news business. And that there's at least a chance that new business models will help us figure out a way for journalists to continue to do important work in our communities.</div>
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In the interest of keeping my main post concise, I've dumped a lot of background information and methodology stuff here at the bottom. Read on if you want to nerd out some more on census data. But if you just wanted the big picture — and don't get excited by arcane discussions of occupation classifications — you may want to close your browser tab now.<br />
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<b><u>SOME BACKGROUND</u></b><br />
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In 2013, while a data journalist at The Vancouver Sun, I stumbled across data on occupations in the 2011 National Household Survey and was surprised to find the number of journalists had stayed relatively flat over the past decade.<br />
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I wrote up my findings in a <a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/no-fewer-journalists-today-than-10-years-ago-statistics-canada">blog post</a>, trying to understand how it was possible — during a time of such doom and gloom in the news business — that the data didn't show a drop in the overall number of journalists.<br />
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As I noted in that original blog post, however, I was always a bit cautious about drawing too many conclusions from the data as the NHS, rather infamously, had serious data-quality issues as a result of the Conservative government's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_2011_Census#Voluntary_long-form_survey_controversy">controversial decision</a> to kill the mandatory long-form census.<br />
<br />
So I was eager to see what the 2016 Census — a return to the mandatory long-form census with <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/best-census-ever-stats-can-1.3739857">record rates of participation</a> — would show about the number of journalists in the country. Especially since, if anything, the last five years have been even doomier and gloomier for journalism jobs than the previous five. While this occupation data isn't perfect (see the methodology section below), I think we can have a lot more confidence in it than the 2011 NHS data.<br />
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The occupation data for the 2016 Census actually came out <a href="http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/ref/release-dates-diffusion-eng.cfm">at the end of November</a>. I meant to write something up then. But, unfortunately, I had various other projects on my plate so wasn't able to find time to get to the data right away. The data was also trickier to work with than I expected — especially since I wanted to compare journalists to other job categories over the same period.<br />
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<b><u>COMMON QUESTIONS</u></b></div>
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As I did in my <a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/no-fewer-journalists-today-than-10-years-ago-statistics-canada">2013 blog post</a>, I thought it might be helpful to address some of the common questions people often have when presented with this data:</div>
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<b>Are more people just calling themselves journalists?</b> This is the idea that people who blog about politics or post YouTube videos reviewing video games, are somehow calling themselves journalists now and that might be throwing off the numbers. It's possible. But they'd have to be making a living doing it. The questions about occupation on the <a href="http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2016/ref/questionnaires/questions-eng.cfm">long-form census questionnaire</a> (Questions 36 on) are pretty darn specific and instruct people — if they have more than one job — to list the one they spend the most hours at. So someone who has a day job as a roofer and a side gig reviewing video games on YouTube would (or should) put down their job as "roofer". Or to use a personal example, in May 2016, I would have listed by job as "university instructor" not journalist, even though I was still doing the odd freelance gig. Statistics Canada also has <a href="http://noc.esdc.gc.ca/English/noc/ProfileQuickSearch.aspx?val=5&val1=5123&ver=16&val65=journalist">pretty strict rules</a> about what counts as a journalist and what doesn't (more on that below).</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr-C9BQyOk6rzWOEO-t6wLB4xx1K5Yid98_KLOzjBkwrs9BLAwT92dP5wkC6_8pP0xH3BYQSUY2u5jt_wiBgMUWXSSHkcIlw2BHby7iKLcNX8MeVkNjXTiGGaZ9lZt36FmVH40POD9EoA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-02-15+at+4.11.40+PM.png"><img border="0" height="47" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr-C9BQyOk6rzWOEO-t6wLB4xx1K5Yid98_KLOzjBkwrs9BLAwT92dP5wkC6_8pP0xH3BYQSUY2u5jt_wiBgMUWXSSHkcIlw2BHby7iKLcNX8MeVkNjXTiGGaZ9lZt36FmVH40POD9EoA/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-02-15+at+4.11.40+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Aren't some of these journalists unemployed?</b> So the short answer is: Yes. But the slightly longer answer is: It shouldn't matter that much to the overall trend. The <a href="http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/dt-td/Rp-eng.cfm?LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=0&DIM=0&FL=A&FREE=0&GC=0&GID=0&GK=0&GRP=1&PID=110696&PRID=10&PTYPE=109445&S=0&SHOWALL=0&SUB=0&Temporal=2017&THEME=124&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=">2016 data</a> actually shows that 560 of the 12,050 journalists (or 5%) were unemployed at the time of the census. That's actually lower than the unemployed share for all workers in Canada, which is 7.7%. Also, as noted above, you only list an occupation at all if you've had some kind of job since January 1, 2015. Otherwise, you leave the occupation section blank. And if you've found <b>another</b> job — any job, even a barista at Starbucks — you should be listing that as your occupation, not "journalist". Which means that while there could be a bit of a lag in the data, for journalists who've just lost their job and haven't found another one yet, it shouldn't make that much difference to the analysis. (I tried finding the number of unemployed journalists for previous Census years but was unable to.)</div>
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<b>Are more journalists working freelance?</b> When I looked at the data in 2013, there didn't appear to be any change in the number of journalists who identified themselves as self-employed. Indeed, the figure had gone down from 16.2% in 2011 to 14.8% in 2011. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any data on the rate of self-employment for journalists in 2016.<br />
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<b>Are journalists making less money?</b> As noted above, I haven't been able to find any data on journalist incomes from the 2016 Census. <a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/no-fewer-journalists-today-than-10-years-ago-statistics-canada">In 2011</a>, journalists incomes were up 4.8% since the 2006 census. Still, that was less than the average increase for all workers for that period (15%) and less than the rate of inflation. If I had to guess, I would imagine that trend has gotten even worse in 2016 — especially since, anecdotally, I know many newspaper newsrooms have seen 0% wage increases for several years. And journalists in some newsrooms have admirably taken pay cuts and reduced hours to <a href="http://business.financialpost.com/news/postmedia-and-its-union-reach-an-agreement-to-save-21-jobs-at-vancouver-sun-and-province">help save the jobs of more junior colleagues</a>.</div>
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<b><u>METHODOLOGY</u></b></div>
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For people who really want to nerd out, here's the nitty gritty details on how I pulled this data together and some of the caveats that accompany it.<br />
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I started with Census/NHS tables breaking down the number of people in each occupational category for <a href="http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/English/census01/products/standard/themes/Rp-eng.cfm?LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=1&DIM=0&FL=A&FREE=1&GC=0&GID=0&GK=0&GRP=1&PID=60362&PRID=0&PTYPE=55440&S=0&SHOWALL=No&SUB=0&Temporal=2006&THEME=46&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=">2001</a>, <a href="http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/tbt/Rp-eng.cfm?LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=1&DIM=0&FL=A&FREE=1&GC=0&GID=0&GK=0&GRP=1&PID=92104&PRID=0&PTYPE=88971&S=0&SHOWALL=No&SUB=0&Temporal=2006&THEME=74&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=">2006</a>, <a href="http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/dp-pd/dt-td/Rp-eng.cfm?LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=0&DIM=0&FL=A&FREE=0&GC=0&GID=0&GK=0&GRP=1&PID=106327&PRID=0&PTYPE=105277&S=0&SHOWALL=0&SUB=0&Temporal=2013&THEME=96&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=">2011</a> and <a href="http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/dt-td/Rp-eng.cfm?LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=0&DIM=0&FL=A&FREE=0&GC=0&GID=0&GK=0&GRP=1&PID=110696&PRID=10&PTYPE=109445&S=0&SHOWALL=0&SUB=0&Temporal=2017&THEME=124&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=">2016</a>.</div>
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I then copy and pasted all that data into one spreadsheet.<br />
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The occupational data from the census is based on how people answered two census questions on the long-form census: "<b>What was this person's work or occupation?</b>" and "<b>In this work, what were this person's main activities?</b>" You can fill in whatever you want in response to those two questions and then, based on what you write down, StatsCan assigns you to one of 500+ different job categories.<br />
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All sorts of written job descriptions — <a href="http://noc.esdc.gc.ca/English/noc/ViewAllTitlesQuickSearch.aspx?val=5&val1=5123&ver=16&val65=journalist">from "reporter" to "cyberjournalist"</a> — are treated as "<a href="http://noc.esdc.gc.ca/English/noc/ProfileQuickSearch.aspx?val=5&val1=5123&ver=16&val65=journalist">Journalist</a>".<br />
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As noted above, though, the category of <a href="http://noc.esdc.gc.ca/English/noc/ProfileQuickSearch.aspx?val=5&val1=5123&ver=16&val65=journalist">Journalist</a> specifically excludes two groups that most people would consider journalists: <b>photojournalists</b> and <b>editors</b>. Photojournalists are, instead, included under the broader category of "<a href="http://noc.esdc.gc.ca/English/noc/ProfileQuickSearch.aspx?val=5&val1=5221&ver=16&val65=journalist">Photographers</a>". And editors — which includes copyeditors, news editors and sports editor — are counted under the broader category of "<a href="http://noc.esdc.gc.ca/English/noc/ProfileQuickSearch.aspx?val=5&val1=5122&ver=16&val65=journalist">Editors</a>".<br />
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By definition, this means StatsCan is undercounting what most people would consider "journalists". But for the purposes of this post, what's more important is whether that might give us a misleading picture of the <b>rate of job losses</b>.<br />
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If the job loss trends are the same for those excluded jobs — if photojournalists and copyeditors have lost their jobs at the same rate as reporters (7-10%) — it shouldn't make a difference that they aren't included in the "Journalist" category. The overall trend would still be the same.<br />
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But if photojournalists and/or copyeditors are losing their jobs at a <b>faster</b> rate than reporters, things might be worse than they appear in the charts above. And that seems at least possible.<br />
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Anecdotally, copyeditors were one of the first groups to be cut at many newspaper newsrooms. Many papers went from having an army of copyeditors to just a handful. (If you've noticed more typos in your newspaper recently, now you know why.) By not having editors in the "Journalist" category, we may be getting a misleadingly rosy picture of what's really going on. I have less of a sense of whether photojournalists lost their jobs at a faster rate than reporters but I suspect that should have less impact on the overall numbers as, at least in the newsrooms I've worked in, there were a lot more reporters and copyeditors than photographers.<br />
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Complicating the analysis is that — as you can see above — the overall categories of "Editors" and "Photographers" have both grown pretty steadily over the past 15 years. But that's probably because the job losses of photojournalists and copyeditors have been outweighed by non-journalism jobs like wedding photographers and technical editors.<br />
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As noted above, perhaps the best way to think of the "Journalist" numbers is that it counts those who do reporting or writing. For that group of people, the numbers should be pretty reliable and, I think, still give us a good sense of what's going on.<br />
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("<a href="http://noc.esdc.gc.ca/English/noc/ProfileQuickSearch.aspx?val=5&val1=5123&ver=16&val65=journalist">Journalist</a>" also excludes "<a href="http://noc.esdc.gc.ca/English/noc/ProfileQuickSearch.aspx?val=5&val1=5231&ver=16&val65=journalist">Announcers and other broadcasters</a>" but my read of that category suggests that shouldn't make as big a difference to the overall figures. While "Announcers" includes "news reader", "anchorman/woman" is still explicitly included under the "Journalist" category.)<br />
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The other tricky issue with analyzing the data was that occupational categories and codes sometimes change between Census years.</div>
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Luckily, the category for <b>Journalist</b> has stayed relatively stable over the entire period, as have most of the other categories compared in this blog post.</div>
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The trickiest job category was <b>Public Relations</b>, which had a major shift in definition between 2006 and 2011. After referring to the <a href="http://noc.esdc.gc.ca/English/noc/Concordance.aspx?ver=11">2011 Concordance tables</a> provided by StatsCan, I originally settled on using the F024 code for 2001 and 2006 and the 1123 code for 2011 and 2016, as the categories sounded pretty similar:</div>
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<ul>
<li>2006: F024 Professional occupations in public relations and communications</li>
<li>2011: 1123 Professional occupations in advertising, marketing and public relations</li>
</ul>
However, the more I looked at the chart that created, the more I had second thoughts.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKrIJHtT6ERlviuq9rLsUeQB2AaKVKUitq-5pIGlZwRm6fjinpJHXhohl_QNcF3LiwX3-PR11mQggU75BNNGb8uKZZvp3uuzmYUnTuqLon09PiTHQbrNYhPQAr1LZaTo5M143SQQzG42s/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-02-15+at+5.40.25+PM.png"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKrIJHtT6ERlviuq9rLsUeQB2AaKVKUitq-5pIGlZwRm6fjinpJHXhohl_QNcF3LiwX3-PR11mQggU75BNNGb8uKZZvp3uuzmYUnTuqLon09PiTHQbrNYhPQAr1LZaTo5M143SQQzG42s/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-02-15+at+5.40.25+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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As you can see, the number of people in the job category basically doubled between 2006 and 2011 (when the definition changed), compared to a 34% increase from 2001 to 2006 and a 29% increase from 2011 to 2016. That struck me as suspicious and a sign that I might be comparing apples and oranges.<br />
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So I ended up deciding to just show the 2011 and 2016 data above, as the occupation code remained stable between those two years. Not ideal, but probably more accurate.</div>
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I really, <i>really</i> wish that StatsCan had kept the PR category alone for all four census years, as I'm more interested in comparing PR jobs with journalism, as the skills for those two occupations are so similar. Having advertising folks included after 2011 muddies the waters a bit. But I had to work with the data available.<br />
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If you'd like to play around with the data yourself, you can find the raw data <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kIc0G0v2aQwx6OeDH0KolySR3JSc7d2UbPmZhrW59vI/edit?usp=sharing">here</a> and my Tableau workbook <a href="https://public.tableau.com/views/OccupationData-ForSharing/Journalists?:embed=y&:display_count=yes&publish=yes">here</a>. If you notice any errors in my analysis or you have any ideas or suggestions, please comment below your can drop me a line on <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton">Twitter</a>.</div>
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</div>Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-19458026554884257762018-02-13T10:51:00.001-08:002018-09-19T20:02:26.378-07:00On the housing debate, ask yourself: "What if I'm wrong?"<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoHO28gj1dYP7lSc-9ME3S3Kyb-qAIACnRka54mYqIKwyEHcgQLPk2-wu43po99Sx4t1gJnXPfOh3-fYxPhjaiGtsFyWiIa_l8yQu6WMuVOU4L1haym-0nuqLzibysJ_GY7qP53ahHZx8/s1600/wrongway.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoHO28gj1dYP7lSc-9ME3S3Kyb-qAIACnRka54mYqIKwyEHcgQLPk2-wu43po99Sx4t1gJnXPfOh3-fYxPhjaiGtsFyWiIa_l8yQu6WMuVOU4L1haym-0nuqLzibysJ_GY7qP53ahHZx8/s400/wrongway.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Photo by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/myeye/155460846/in/photolist-eJM6q-MRa56-9xvGX-nyxCW-623zFe-4Ttr7M-o63adT-nLcXA4-38Mo7-UJQHGp-RQyvrU-f63mjK-rDNkzo-gAzPh9-89fpZv-pC72Rm-b57yqB-vtv6SJ-4WvgDZ-dH9MGE-4FqDFx-eFPU43-6xZF6y-8GQdvY-dCrh7Q-8VXipY-8ZhPrt-eKXeP1-nYtvWT-SXVdcF-72jwcs-f5vz6f-5QbNZH-72fx5n-ZyzifH-72fwdV-72juVh-5U6Rei-72fwKt-9Citkt-72jvE1-pnwo8x-Qnr4EZ-7jajft-5HZjj9-eb8e2n-8TqeZM-78QDQG-5izpud-72fwap">MyEyeSees</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>I'm trying to follow <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2017/09/the-case-against-tweetstorms.html">my own advice</a> to jot down ideas on my blog and not just in tweetstorms. Below is the full text of a <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/963477293644488704">tweet thread</a> of mine on Vancouver's housing debate.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
As with so many debates, I think it would be helpful if those arguing over the impact of foreign buyers on Vancouver’s housing market asked themselves a simple question:<br />
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<b>“What if I’m wrong?”</b><br />
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I’ll start. I suspect foreign buyers are much less of a factor than many believe. What evidence we have suggests they are maybe 5% of the market. I think other factors — like domestic speculation and housing supply — are a much bigger cause of high prices.<br />
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But: What if I’m wrong?<br />
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Maybe the tools we have for measuring foreign buyers aren’t good enough, understating their true numbers. Maybe foreign buyers, while small in percentage terms, create “spillover effects” that inflate the market. What if foreign buyers *are* a huge part of the problem? What then?<br />
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Well, then, a solution that focuses only on supply — even a whole lot of supply — probably won’t be enough to make Vancouver housing affordable. Because a big chunk of that new supply will just get snapped up by foreign buyers and prices will continue to rise.<br />
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So the best approach, even for a foreign-buyer skeptic like me, is to support smart measures to address foreign demand (like <a href="https://twitter.com/HousingBC">@HousingBC</a>'s tax proposal). At worst, they should still help a little bit. And they may be essential to solving the problem.<br />
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But the same logic applies to those on the other side. What if foreign buyers *aren’t* the main factor driving Vancouver’s housing crisis? What if, for all the stories about offshore buyers, there just aren’t enough of them to make that big of a difference?<br />
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What then? Well, then, even the most extreme restrictions — like banning foreign buyers outright — won’t be enough to bring down prices.<br />
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Which means those folks who think the problem is mostly foreign buyers should still support smart measures to address housing supply, such as rental-only zoning and more density. At worst, they should still help a little bit. And they may be essential to solving the problem.<br />
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Now, some will say: “Let’s try my thing first. Then, if that doesn’t work, we can try your thing.” There are a couple problems with this. The first, and most obvious, is we then have to wait even longer for things to get better.<br />
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The second is that the policies being proposed are probably a good idea even if they DON’T bring down prices. While NIMBY’s hate it, more density in single-family areas should make our communities better: less car dependent, more inclusive and with fewer carbon emissions.<br />
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And even if the <a href="https://twitter.com/HousingBC">@HousingBC</a> tax proposal does nothing to bring down prices, it will force rich property owners who don’t pay income tax (whether foreign buyers or drug dealers) to pay their fair share towards government services. That’s a good thing!<br />
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Exactly what impact foreign buyers are having on Vancouver’s housing market is unknown. And, more than that — given the limited tools we have for measuring it and the complexities of housing markets — it may be, in a very real sense, *unknowable*.<br />
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We know supply and demand are the two factors that determine prices.<br />
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We have no way of knowing, for sure, how much of Vancouver’s housing crisis is one or the other.<br />
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Should we keep arguing about it? Or get to work addressing both, as quickly as possible?<br />
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Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-30751350755814267562018-02-08T09:59:00.000-08:002018-09-19T20:02:07.625-07:00What do we mean when we talk about Vancouver's housing "crisis?"<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX4hWM0PMhAWR3YmdGxLGFZPqM45pWOTdf9BUOLfhFuFlDxDOJVYDNvR7zWasMWqj6p256HcIehM6F0favhfqQJN4kxWT0mHtca-OL3CSibi3THtv56uo_RGC2Xjlr-sLcCXwqKF42UKI/s1600/houses-adrian-farcas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX4hWM0PMhAWR3YmdGxLGFZPqM45pWOTdf9BUOLfhFuFlDxDOJVYDNvR7zWasMWqj6p256HcIehM6F0favhfqQJN4kxWT0mHtca-OL3CSibi3THtv56uo_RGC2Xjlr-sLcCXwqKF42UKI/s400/houses-adrian-farcas.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Photo by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/24secunde/15986330753/in/photolist-qmE8bi-EixuC-vx6uE-aJoydM-ogoZm-fJb7SZ-cLf5o-ogp3M-4D9sXv-dU3LW2-5fCCpH-5fH5hW-4GrS7J-a2eThf-6kC19d-kscMoE-hbrG3o-CdrmF-nEJucj-dCmG6U-9Jzqwh-5LKnUQ-4GTRPc-8SL9f5-E6b5U-7SwaiJ-83NLLS-ijM7Po-DshWp-5cTvVE-2qPBe-rNnkV-4reFUu-pZFSRX-4FbLfN-e3mU5-rDceXR-bwm668-2yWyn-h8DzD-hySPGt-7HYxvs-5AZvD5-a3FHxo-8yfBSW-3n8Nh-GLdzSc-9QkHZH-mV4LEm-nzEAef">Adrian Farcas</a></td></tr>
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<i>I'm trying to follow <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2017/09/the-case-against-tweetstorms.html">my own advice</a> to jot down ideas on my blog and not just in tweetstorms. Below is the full text of a <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/961648343729324033">tweet thread</a> of mine on Vancouver's housing crisis.</i><br />
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I think one reason people can’t agree on what to do about Vancouver’s housing crisis is because they can’t agree on what the crisis actually *is*. In particular, for many, the crisis is: “Upper middle class people can’t afford detached homes in Vancouver.”<br />
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You see evidence of this in news coverage. Vancouver homes have been unaffordable for most families since the early 2000s, if not before. But it became a “crisis” when well-paid professionals (like newspaper columnists) got priced out. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.<br />
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You see it in the stories people tell. “When my doctor friend moved here from Alberta, he could only afford a place in New West!” “My cousin has an MBA and lives in a condo!” The “crisis”, for many, is that well-off professionals can’t have the lifestyle they feel entitled to.<br />
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Expensive housing hurts everyone who isn't already an owner. But not all hardship is morally equivalent. Someone who has to commute 2hrs to their minimum wage job, or a single mom living with 3 kids in a basement suite, is *worse off* than a lawyer who can only afford a townhome.<br />
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Housing markets are complex. And anything that reduces demand or increases supply could plausibly help everyone. But I think how one defines the problem affects which solutions they think should take priority. For example...<br />
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Cracking down on foreign and speculative demand might soften the market enough to make it easier for well-off professionals to buy a house. But it probably won’t do much to bring up vacancy rates. And an $800k house isn’t any more “affordable” for most families than a $1.6m one.<br />
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Similarly, more rental-only zoning and purpose-built rental in single-family neighborhoods should bring down rents and allow renters to live closer to work. But it may not have much immediate impact on the price of detached homes.<br />
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I think it would be helpful if those engaged in the housing debate took a moment to ask themselves:<br />
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<ul>
<li>What do you mean when you talk about the housing “crisis”?</li>
<li>What problem are you most trying to solve?</li>
<li>What group of people are you most trying to help?</li>
</ul>
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My take: It’s nice to own your own home. And if we can make that easier for middle-class families, great. But it’s far more important that everyone has a secure, affordable roof over their head. And more rental is a big part of the solution to that problem.<br />
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Luckily, we don’t have to choose. We can do it all: Crack down on foreign/speculative demand (ie <a href="https://twitter.com/HousingBC">@HousingBC</a>), allow more density in single-family neighbourhoods AND build more purpose-built rental. However, doing just one likely won’t help everyone.<br />
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Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-67063762152068935452018-02-08T09:34:00.001-08:002018-02-08T09:35:42.853-08:00Analysis of the 2018 BC Liberal leadership race<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQJJFt5xHOXASg7mmgNBFWd61bgJjRJvX4qUTL04VmHmYI7pygbAuRuYAbM6boKD-2TifLXIKRzWKn48T1-EQXT5tpoY4dJFtk7fCg3wF25BQ6yHwOxhTCpBsH970DmA6E-L5XTqAKFzA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-02-08+at+9.20.31+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="543" data-original-width="787" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQJJFt5xHOXASg7mmgNBFWd61bgJjRJvX4qUTL04VmHmYI7pygbAuRuYAbM6boKD-2TifLXIKRzWKn48T1-EQXT5tpoY4dJFtk7fCg3wF25BQ6yHwOxhTCpBsH970DmA6E-L5XTqAKFzA/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-02-08+at+9.20.31+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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On Monday afternoon, I noticed a tweet from CBC reporter Justin McElroy that the BC Liberals had released riding-by-riding vote totals for their leadership race.<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
The detailed results, riding by riding and ballot by ballot of the B.C. Liberal leadership race are out: <a href="https://t.co/KMEdeosSLr">https://t.co/KMEdeosSLr</a></div>
— Justin McElroy (@j_mcelroy) <a href="https://twitter.com/j_mcelroy/status/960659660360601602?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 5, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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While the Liberals deserve kudos for releasing this data (the BC NDP famously <a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/bc-ndp-wont-provide-detailed-leadership-race-results">didn't</a> in 2011), it was annoying that the data was released as a PDF rather than a spreadsheet. PDFs are fine for looking up individual results for individual ridings. But spreadsheets are best for really analyzing the patterns in the data.<br />
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From dealing with PDFs in the past, I knew there were actually some pretty decent tools out there for extracting data from them. Chief among them: <a href="http://tabula.technology/">Tabula</a>, a great little program designed by journalists, for journalists.<br />
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My first attempts to extract the data using Tabula didn't work: When it tried to automatically detect the tables, it misjudged and ended up leaving off some rows of data. Not good! But after some fiddling, I was able to successfully grab the data and then, with a little bit of fiddling in Excel, create a <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m-n2k1j9TyiFgVsUpF6Oh19vsaNcIlzZj3TES7NlcBc/edit?usp=sharing">nice, clean spreadsheet for analysis</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivyBK-U2-c70xyeOkBu5O9PBgqCiKmjgsZ3X5x8cnyEjixiroNDapKLAPJCLZNXjiG0QgGRk0OgyQcdkUKgLSjeEBztKRiZOXDGgd408s5e2Pik1e7PFc59qEurbrC3r4zSvRI4v0VE-w/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-02-08+at+9.21.08+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="614" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivyBK-U2-c70xyeOkBu5O9PBgqCiKmjgsZ3X5x8cnyEjixiroNDapKLAPJCLZNXjiG0QgGRk0OgyQcdkUKgLSjeEBztKRiZOXDGgd408s5e2Pik1e7PFc59qEurbrC3r4zSvRI4v0VE-w/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-02-08+at+9.21.08+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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My original plan was just to get the data into a nice format and make it public so other folks could play around with it. But then once I had the data I figured: What the heck. I want to play with it!<br />
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So my next few hours — with a short break for dinner — were spent crunching the numbers and looking for interesting patterns in the data.<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Alrightee then. Now that we've got the data, let's have some fun! DATA NERD THREAD! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/bcpoli?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#bcpoli</a> <a href="https://t.co/yH6WgA21Ov">https://t.co/yH6WgA21Ov</a></div>
— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/960685047035478017?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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The most interesting finding (and the one that seemed to generate the most retweets): Andrew Wilkinson <b>really</b> benefited from the point system used by the Liberals, in which every riding got 100 points regardless of how many members it had. Indeed, looking at the raw vote totals for each round, Michael Lee was ahead in every single round he participated in. And, indeed, in Round 4, when Wilkinson knocked Lee out by points, Wilkinson was actually in third place by raw votes.<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Seems pretty clear there's no way <a href="https://twitter.com/Wilkinson4BC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Wilkinson4BC</a> would have won the <a href="https://twitter.com/bcliberals?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@bcliberals</a> leadership if the party had used "one member, one vote". Most notably, in Round 4, <a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelLeeBC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MichaelLeeBC</a> had *2,000* more votes than Wilkinson (and more than Watts!) but got dropped. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/bcpoli?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#bcpoli</a> <a href="https://t.co/AWACnieKBT">pic.twitter.com/AWACnieKBT</a></div>
— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/960695474549284864?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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My analysis even got a <a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/b-c-liberal-leadership-race-data-shows-wilkinson-either-lucky-or-smart">nice little write-up in my former paper</a>.<br />
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I pulled all my charts and maps into a Tableau workbook. It's too big to embed in this blog post, but you can see it by <a href="https://public.tableau.com/views/BCLiberalLeadership2018-VoteAnalysis/Story1?:embed=y&:display_count=yes">clicking here</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://public.tableau.com/views/BCLiberalLeadership2018-VoteAnalysis/Story1?:embed=y&:display_count=yes"><img border="0" data-original-height="611" data-original-width="744" height="327" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL_2SaFUrdXL57Ja4cbRZFvO9PE4MUFRbnMEi5UtQOaEPDnxWD5OWGHDBlvG-pwsd_Vujcy9a6zG1fE3KnVaCs_aW5QrJxvVE0aDICgh98x03AixXWF3n4cYmLAbXqgR2Am5nbJDOK3ig/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-02-08+at+9.33.52+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-4647031070881352262017-12-18T09:01:00.004-08:002017-12-18T09:04:45.083-08:00Coming this January: A special "Extended Edition" of my Tableau training<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTHzFkv5Vuto9ErW1_gaYr_AkX7c9H2lgH3XC1z8GnQhdJOLtR4sVq3x8OYD9a9vIA3ov5_NeqZ2qyVtU6eNkiHwkZsmUzBUnsI9meXkVUKQm2P7t1-SeYbqnexoj3Le9w4mcLGRKk158/s1600/map.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="400" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTHzFkv5Vuto9ErW1_gaYr_AkX7c9H2lgH3XC1z8GnQhdJOLtR4sVq3x8OYD9a9vIA3ov5_NeqZ2qyVtU6eNkiHwkZsmUzBUnsI9meXkVUKQm2P7t1-SeYbqnexoj3Le9w4mcLGRKk158/s400/map.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
I've been doing Tableau training workshops for a few years now and the feedback I get from the people who take it is often the same: They <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/workshops.html">loved it</a>, but wished there was even more of it.<br />
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Many have expressed interest in a second, "Intermediate", training workshop that would cover more advanced Tableau skills. I hope to offer such a workshop at some point in the future.<br />
<br />
But in the meantime, I thought I could easily expand my current workshop from three days to four to give participants even more Tableau goodness: to move beyond the basics into some of Tableau's more advanced (and really cool!) features like reshaping data, joining datasets and using calculations in your visualizations.<br />
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So next month, for the first time, I'm offering a special <b><i>Extended Edition</i></b> of my online Tableau training with four days of training instead of the usual three. For the math nerds, that's <b>33% more Tableau goodness</b>.<br />
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The training will run for four hours on two Wednesdays and Thursdays in a row: <b>Jan. 17-18</b> & <b>Jan. 24-25, 2018</b>.<br />
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You can buy tickets on Eventbrite right <a href="https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/online-tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-39027631697?aff=blogpost">here</a>:<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/goog_1711055713"><br /></a>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/online-tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-39027631697?aff=blogpost"><img border="0" data-original-height="44" data-original-width="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVM0xjgizZFIEFJMENsMJxocNwNoji8zAGm9LVi-tva4yDDF-dmKtcY7nOlK-3-K1M0tFkH6AbV7mMfUK70SnCi9Uc9XnShCkqGRIYjIJO8K1VVISplyEQcWGvfMV21mEQqAprrW5ehS0/s1600/button.png" /></a></div>
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If you can't make this workshop but would like to be alerted when the next one is scheduled, just add your name <a href="http://chadskelton.us14.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=f77761916f1d313badb1dc5da&id=7b3df945be">here</a>.<br />
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And if you have several people at your organization who need training in Tableau, I'm also available for <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/excel-and-tableau-training-in-vancouver.html">onsite training</a>.<br />
<br />Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-72240499629553786822017-10-17T21:54:00.000-07:002017-10-18T08:48:39.163-07:00Infographic: How the way we vote makes B.C.'s "urban/rural divide" seem much worse than it really is<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I made a little infographic in Tableau Public on B.C.'s "urban/rural divide" and electoral reform. The interactive version is below. You can view the static version <a href="https://github.com/chadskelton/chadskelton.github.io/blob/master/urbanrural.png">here</a> or download it from <a href="http://chadskelton.github.io/urbanrural.png">here</a>.<br />
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<div class="tableauPlaceholder" id="viz1508303963086" style="position: relative;">
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I'm a bit of a B.C. politics junkie (if you are too, I highly recommend <a href="https://soundcloud.com/shane-woodford">CHNL's "Inside Politics" podcast</a>). And since the 2017 election, there's been a lot of talk about the province's "urban/rural divide". Specifically, how few seats the NDP got outside of Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island.<br />
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There's also been some talk lately about electoral reform, as the new NDP/Green government is planning a referendum on proportional representation next fall.<br />
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Which, weirdly, got me thinking of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election,_1993">1993 Canadian federal election</a>. That's the one where the separatist Bloc Quebecois became the Official Opposition with 54 seats and Kim Campbell's Progressive Conservatives government was completely humiliated, winning only <b>2</b> (!) seats.<br />
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But the <b><i>really</i></b> weird thing about the 1993 election was that the Progressive Conservatives actually got <b><i>more</i></b> votes (2.2 million) than the BQ (1.8 million) did.<br />
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But because the BQ's votes were geographically concentrated in Quebec, while the PC's were scattered across the country, the BQ got way more seats. The way Canada voted rewarded a party with regional, rather than national, ambitions.<br />
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I wondered if something similar might have happened in B.C.: Whether the way we elect MLAs might make our regional divisions seem more severe than they really are.<br />
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So I did a bit of number crunching using Elections BC <a href="http://elections.bc.ca/resources/voting-results/provincial-general-elections-results/">data</a> and <a href="http://elections.bc.ca/resources/maps/">map files</a>.<br />
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The situation isn't anywhere near as severe as the 1993 election, but the First Past The Post electoral system does definitely exaggerate the BC Liberals' popularity in rural B.C. (and, to a lesser extent, the NDP's popularity in urban areas).<br />
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The biggest decision I had to make was where to draw the boundaries for the purpose of my analysis. I've seen some pundits refer to how the NDP didn't get many seats outside the "Lower Mainland" and "Southern Vancouver Island". But those are slightly fuzzy concepts. Where does one divide Vancouver Island between north and south? And while many people think of the Lower Mainland as the same thing as Metro Vancouver, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Mainland">it's not</a>.<br />
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So, instead, I decided to lump Metro Vancouver (a well-defined <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Vancouver_Regional_District">regional district</a>) together with all of Vancouver Island. That seemed to fit the electoral patterns of the province best. After all, the NDP is pretty popular up and down the Island and the Liberals are still pretty strong in Fraser Valley communities like Abbotsford and Chilliwack.<br />
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If you don't agree with my choices, though, you're more than welcome to download the Tableau workbook yourself and choose different regions.<br />
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<br />Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-37546183384649277082017-10-12T14:44:00.000-07:002017-10-12T14:46:34.862-07:00My Missing Maps from The Vancouver Sun<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyxG_5Gr-BqZ3amt0ijhnWp4g-qXQEJRAkG-AyU4ZP25nQgEHy1p0NLAjsL3XZHo7ItMEg53MC3rSWHLlC30EbarsC2kTzdZOUm3DcW6JYK-KMldzZSEBOw2a4EOM6eIEVTCr4UAHtliA/s1600/broken-globe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="640" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyxG_5Gr-BqZ3amt0ijhnWp4g-qXQEJRAkG-AyU4ZP25nQgEHy1p0NLAjsL3XZHo7ItMEg53MC3rSWHLlC30EbarsC2kTzdZOUm3DcW6JYK-KMldzZSEBOw2a4EOM6eIEVTCr4UAHtliA/s400/broken-globe.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I haven't been a data journalist at The Vancouver Sun for <a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/today-is-my-last-day-at-the-vancouver-sun">more than two years now</a>. But still, every couple months or so, I get an email from someone saying they're having trouble finding an old map or chart from my Sun days and wondering if I could help them track it down.<br />
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That's because dozens of maps and charts that I created when I was at The Sun have disappeared from the site since I left.<br />
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My articles and blog posts are <a href="http://vancouversun.com/author/chadskeltonvansun">still there</a>. But in many cases, when they refer to an interactive chart or map, there either isn't anything there at all, or there's a weird error message saying a file can't be found.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAcH0rmsGJZR9IMjq4XalWCHH0r6o32KLkGLI3RWm6a_eol9SxxE7enfJuLfnr7jRflUzUfoo8l_QNPJ5kprdZLKXgXYYNPigvAd1ZQADsqR5BYHrlsXQMnwZMa9si8hrPC_2V2OHgy4k/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-09-29+at+6.03.46+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="257" data-original-width="496" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAcH0rmsGJZR9IMjq4XalWCHH0r6o32KLkGLI3RWm6a_eol9SxxE7enfJuLfnr7jRflUzUfoo8l_QNPJ5kprdZLKXgXYYNPigvAd1ZQADsqR5BYHrlsXQMnwZMa9si8hrPC_2V2OHgy4k/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-09-29+at+6.03.46+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The problem of old data journalism gradually disappearing from the web is <a href="https://eagereyes.org/blog/2016/the-bits-are-rotting-in-the-state-of-data-journalism">widespread</a>.<br />
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In this case, the blame lies half with The Vancouver Sun and half with me.<br />
<br />
First, The Sun's share of the blame. Or, more accurately, Postmedia's.<br />
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Every so often, Postmedia, the company that owns The Sun and most other major papers in Canada, updates its websites, often adopting a whole new platform (like Wordpress). This never goes smoothly.<br />
<br />
I still remember the first time The Sun transitioned to a new blogging platform. We were assured all the old posts would show up in the new system. That was technically true, but in the process many of the URLs changed, so none of the posts could be found in their old spot (and if someone else had linked to a post in the past, readers now got a 404 Error).<br />
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The latest updates to The Sun's website seems to have kept all the blog posts in the same spot. But it stripped out all of the "embed codes" — the stuff that makes sure that maps and charts appear in the blog post properly. The result is that all of the blog posts I wrote that had maps or charts in them no longer do. (For some reason, embed codes in articles seem to have survived in most cases.)<br />
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Luckily, in most cases, this problem is easy to fix.<br />
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Above most of those embed codes, I put a little note that said something along the lines of: "For the mobile version, click here".<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVX_qQ6AXblnWw53DRA3mu_eTSSeNtXL_2eHcxIDm2HlMBIlqZwkhQ_i-lXzh_Q9WUx1GI-mX2ZQ-S5CIjPN2-nBXo3uoM9mM3m3wTYb-4qJo7XzqEIPfTs4sG2u0RRU-Zlokf95N_mgs/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-10-12+at+2.39.17+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="121" data-original-width="702" height="67" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVX_qQ6AXblnWw53DRA3mu_eTSSeNtXL_2eHcxIDm2HlMBIlqZwkhQ_i-lXzh_Q9WUx1GI-mX2ZQ-S5CIjPN2-nBXo3uoM9mM3m3wTYb-4qJo7XzqEIPfTs4sG2u0RRU-Zlokf95N_mgs/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-10-12+at+2.39.17+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The "mobile version" of all those maps and charts are actually not mobile versions at all, but rather the exact same chart, just in a different spot. This was because of issues we had with embed codes not working on our mobile site. The result, though, is that if you click on the "mobile version" of a chart, you'll be taken to a separate website where you can usually find the missing chart (but not the maps; more on that in a moment).<br />
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OK, now for the part that's my fault.<br />
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Without getting too much into the technical weeds, many of the maps I made while at The Sun were built using <a href="https://support.google.com/fusiontables/answer/2571232?hl=en">Google Fusion Tables</a>. And in order to add extra features to those maps, like colour legends and search boxes, I needed to do a bit of basic HTML. That raised the problem of where to host those HTML files.<br />
<br />
For awhile, I hosted them on Postmedia's servers. But uploading files to those servers was a huge pain, requiring me to fill in IT request forms and other nonsense (not great on deadline) and at least once someone in IT, not knowing what the files were for, decided to go ahead and delete them.<br />
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What I should have done at that point is gotten some cheap hosting space on Amazon Web Services: something reliable that I knew would be there for the long term.<br />
<br />
Instead, I used a slightly hacky technique to host the files for free on Google Drive. I actually had data journalism colleagues at other papers warn me that this was a dumb idea. "What happens if Google stops allowing free HTML hosting?" they'd say.<br />
<br />
Which is exactly <a href="https://lunarpages.com/end-road-google-drive-web-hosting-service/">what Google did last year</a>.<br />
<br />
And the result is that dozens of maps I created for The Sun in Fusion Tables are no longer accessible online.<br />
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I actually alerted The Sun to this problem last year and, to its credit, they were working with me to figure out a way to get at least some of the missing content onto a Postmedia server and back on The Sun's website. Unfortunately, the two folks I was working with most closely to fix the problem have since left the paper, too, and so things went into limbo.<br />
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The problem is that restoring all these broken links and embed codes is a tedious, time-consuming job and most of it involves old stories that most people never see.<br />
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In the end, I figured I'd see if there was a way I could revive the content myself without bugging anyone else at the paper.<br />
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In preparing this post, I thought the best thing to do was to upload the old HTML files to <a href="https://pages.github.com/">GitHub Pages</a> (another free, but arguably more trustworthy hosting solution). But when I tried that I got some weird JavaScript errors and the maps didn't load properly.<br />
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That said, for reasons I don't fully understand, the HTML files still seem to work fine when loaded up on your own computer. So what I've done is taken the HTML files for several of the maps that are no longer on The Vancouver Sun site and put them in a single ZIP file called <b>SunHTMLFiles.zip</b> which you can <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4yUkVI3Ewbbb2h6bm5td3JaNEE/view?usp=sharing">download here</a>.<br />
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Just open the ZIP file on your own computer and double click on any of the HTML files. The map should then open in your web browser (in most cases you'll still need an Internet connection as the map data is being pulled from a Fusion Table source online).<br />
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Most of the maps are just single HTML files and most of the HTML files names are pretty obvious so you should be able to find what you're looking for.<br />
<br />
But there are a couple maps that are a bit more complex.<br />
<br />
The Unsolved Homicide Map which accompanied a <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/news/topic.html?t=topic&q=Unsolved+Murders">Sun series on the topic</a> requires you to open the <b>UnsolvedHomicide</b> folder and then click on the <b>index.html</b> file. One thing that doesn't work with that map anymore is the photos of the victims (as they, too, were loaded from a Google Drive folder).<br />
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You need to follow the same process for one of the Auto Crime maps that accompanied a <a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/auto-theft-crime-map">Sun series I wrote</a>. Open the <b>AutoCrime folder</b> and then click on <b>index.html</b>. The other auto crime maps can be launched from the main directory.<br />
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I haven't had time to grab everything I ever made at The Sun so prioritized content that I know got a lot of traffic when it was first posted and which I think may still be interesting to folks today. My main source was looking through <a href="http://vancouversun.com/author/chadskeltonvansun">my old blog posts</a> and digging into those that seemed to have interesting content.<br />
<br />
To make things a bit easier, I've included below the titles of all the blog posts and articles for which I've added maps to the ZIP file, along with links to the original posts:<br />
<ul>
<li>Interactive map shows you how your Vancouver neighbourhood voted (<a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/interactive-map-shows-you-how-your-vancouver-neighbourhood-voted">original blog post</a>)</li>
<li>East Vancouver voters least likely to fill in their whole ballot (<a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/east-vancouver-voters-least-likely-to-fill-in-their-whole-ballot-map">original blog post</a>)</li>
<li>Which Vancouver neighbourhoods have the highest voter turnout? (<a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/which-vancouver-neighbourhoods-have-the-highest-voter-turnout-map">original blog post</a>)</li>
<li>B.C.'s organ donations: it depends on where you live (<a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/health/organ+donations+depends+where+live/9978438/story.html">original article</a>)</li>
<li>Interactive map: B.C. neighbourhoods with the most blood donors (<a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/interactive-map-b-c-neighbourhoods-with-the-most-blood-donors">original blog post</a>)</li>
<li>Streets, Roads and Avenues: A colour-coded map of Metro Vancouver (<a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/streets-roads-and-avenues-a-colour-coded-map-of-metro-vancouver">original blog post</a>)</li>
<li>Interactive maps show payday loan locations in Vancouver and Surrey (<a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/interactive-maps-show-payday-loan-locations-in-vancouver-and-surrey">original blog post</a>)</li>
<li>400+ Vancouver snow photos on one interactive map (<a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/400-vancouver-snow-photos-on-one-interactive-map">original blog post</a>)</li>
<li>See 700+ Christmas Instagram photos on our interactive Vancouver map (<a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/see-christmas-instagram-photos-on-our-interactive-map-of-vancouver">original blog post</a>)</li>
<li>Interactive B.C. map shows you where cars are stolen near you (<a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/auto-theft-crime-map">original blog post</a>)</li>
<li>Interactive map shows where different occupations live in Metro Vancouver (<a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/occupation-nhs-data">original blog post</a>)</li>
<li>And Metro Vancouver's most educated neighbourhood is... (<a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/and-metro-vancouvers-most-educated-neighbourhood-is">original blog post</a>)</li>
<li>There’s ‘diversity,’ then there’s ‘super-diversity,’ Burnaby style (<a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/life/there+diversity+then+there+super+diversity+burnaby+style/11482044/story.html">original article</a>)</li>
<li>Check out our new interactive maps of ethnicity in Metro Vancouver (<a href="http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/check-out-our-new-interactive-maps-of-ethnicity-in-metro-vancouver">original blog post</a>)</li>
</ul>
For what it's worth, I've since moved away from Google Fusion Tables for mapping and I <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/890671256671928320">don't bother teaching it</a> to my students anymore.<br />
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Instead, if you've got data to map, I highly recommend <a href="https://public.tableau.com/s/">Tableau Public</a>, which now has robust support for spatial files like KML and SHP.</div>
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And if you're still having trouble finding something I did while at The Sun, I recommend you check out my <a href="https://public.tableau.com/profile/cskelton#!/">Tableau Public profile</a>. It contains more than 120 interactive charts I created both during my time at The Vancouver and since I left. My favourites are in the "My Tableau Portfolio" workbook (the first link on the page).</div>
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Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-43251289972612596702017-09-02T17:57:00.000-07:002018-11-29T05:46:10.129-08:00The case against tweetstorms<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgybPV4olcApYJ8F-c9FZn6vzJDj0Try4Efb327qLudZR9o4TYn7EDuSAED8oz3qMd8ZnewAWOQLxJP7ShMwXjgwTeyLGyFdq72twsnwpUdWt5fJLhNQGl99YizdJg8J42vjw47RpFvN_0/s1600/Port_and_lighthouse_overnight_storm_with_lightning_in_Port-la-Nouvelle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgybPV4olcApYJ8F-c9FZn6vzJDj0Try4Efb327qLudZR9o4TYn7EDuSAED8oz3qMd8ZnewAWOQLxJP7ShMwXjgwTeyLGyFdq72twsnwpUdWt5fJLhNQGl99YizdJg8J42vjw47RpFvN_0/s400/Port_and_lighthouse_overnight_storm_with_lightning_in_Port-la-Nouvelle.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Credit: Wikimedia Commons</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Proposed: Tweet storms are a bad way to communicate complex ideas. Blog posts are much better and easier to discover in future.<br />
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As an example, Kevin Milligan is doing great analysis on tax reforms but reading <a href="https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan">his feed</a> means some arguments appear backwards or disjointed.<br />
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On the other hand, only nerds like me still use RSS, so perhaps tweet storms are the best way to reach a large audience?<br />
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I'm also curious: Why have tweetstorms become more popular for writers than blog posts? Even when arguments are really long? Are tweetstorms easier to dash off on a smartphone? Less work to write? Is there less expectation for writing to be polished? Are they more appropriate for "ideas in progress"?<br />
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Are tweet storms more likely to go viral than blog posts? I doubt it. Lots of links to articles go viral on Twitter.<br />
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My biggest concern about tweetstorms is they're not easily discoverable. For example, someone <a href="https://www.google.ca/search?q=ccpc+reforms&oq=ccpc+reforms&aqs=chrome..69i57.1186j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">Googling CCPC reforms</a> won't find Milligan's tweets.<br />
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Twitter is also less popular by far than Facebook. Tweetstorms bypass Facebook's audience (blog posts, meanwhile, can be shared on Facebook and Twitter).<br />
<br />
That said, if tweet storms are a way to work out ideas for a later blog post/article, I'm less concerned.<br />
<br />
My bigger worry is when people with great ideas share them only in a tweetstorm and never crystallize their ideas in an article or blog post. I think that both limits the audience for their ideas and makes those ideas harder to digest.<br />
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NOTE: This blog post was adapted from a <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/904058350052052992">tweetstorm about tweetstorms</a>. Given the topic, I thought it was appropriate to adapt it into a blog post as well. The text above is almost identical except for cleaning up the language a bit and adding a conclusion that the tweetstorm lacked. This is also an experiment with writing shorter, less polished, blog posts as I think one reason some writers default to tweetstorms is because of the expectation they place on themselves when writing blog posts rather than tweets: both in terms of length and quality. Blogs should be a safe place to dash off rough ideas.<br />
<br />
Kevin Milligan, whose tweetstorms on tax policy inspired by tweetstorm, wrote a thoughtful <a href="https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/904068434480082944">tweetstorm of his own</a> on why sometimes he tweets rather than writing longer pieces.Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-1731886408309834772017-07-18T08:36:00.000-07:002017-07-18T08:36:02.426-07:00Hands-on Tableau Training: Now available online!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmSHXtHmgRPFTKetTFaBlg8tsdyRCzNhg8VXQVmioWX61q80PJT6IFVecC_yOiUA9ZfH-_lQ9HhhkJLRMqntmN8zO1q4TBJckPhTrIGZFb1trHhDCln2FocoExgj685mb8K4Anpw6r0O8/s1600/map.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="800" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmSHXtHmgRPFTKetTFaBlg8tsdyRCzNhg8VXQVmioWX61q80PJT6IFVecC_yOiUA9ZfH-_lQ9HhhkJLRMqntmN8zO1q4TBJckPhTrIGZFb1trHhDCln2FocoExgj685mb8K4Anpw6r0O8/s400/map.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
I'm pleased to announce that after several years running <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/workshops.html">in-person Tableau training workshops</a> in Vancouver, I'm now offering the same acclaimed hands-on training online!<br />
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My first online training workshop is this September over three Thursdays: <b>Sept. 14</b>, <b>21</b> and <b>28</b>. You can buy tickets and get more information <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/online-tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-35437030111?aff=blogpost">here</a> or by clicking the button below:<br />
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<a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/online-tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-35437030111?aff=blogpostbutton" target="_blank"><img alt="Eventbrite - Online Tableau Training: Telling stories with data" src="https://www.eventbrite.ca/custombutton?eid=35437030111" /></a>
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This is a great opportunity for those outside Vancouver to learn Tableau. And for those in Vancouver, spreading the training out over three weeks should make it easier to fit into your busy schedule and to absorb the information.<br />
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While this is my first online workshop available to the public, it's not my first experience teaching Tableau online. I've done private online training in the past and am currently teaching an online <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2017/04/data-visualization-reading-list.html">Data Storytelling and Visualization</a> course at the University of Florida.<br />
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Here are some <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/workshops.html">testimonials</a> from people who've attended my earlier training sessions.</div>
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If you can't make this workshop but would like to be alerted when the next one is scheduled, just <a href="http://chadskelton.us14.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=f77761916f1d313badb1dc5da&id=7b3df945be">add your name here</a>.</div>
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If you have several people at your organization who need training in Tableau, I'm also available for <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/excel-and-tableau-training-in-vancouver.html">onsite training</a>.
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Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-39558092323406076952017-06-22T09:26:00.001-07:002019-12-10T09:10:15.203-08:00Beyond the Basics: The Big Book of Dashboards<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLaegzEsT9K6UOTns5qwiYwLaAC0MK41ZhmJeRpX_f5Q5rOSxL5Ti9nEIMn4VyEhNXEwNE0jqrlg5J8l5tXh8VYrgsCGqhnG7wVOKerCR9qSKrzTn6b-7VrjYi7fBfNuXP-DyosMrLgnA/s1600/Book-Cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="631" data-original-width="633" height="397" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLaegzEsT9K6UOTns5qwiYwLaAC0MK41ZhmJeRpX_f5Q5rOSxL5Ti9nEIMn4VyEhNXEwNE0jqrlg5J8l5tXh8VYrgsCGqhnG7wVOKerCR9qSKrzTn6b-7VrjYi7fBfNuXP-DyosMrLgnA/s400/Book-Cover.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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On the very first page of <i>The Big Book of Dashboards</i>, the authors go out of their way to give their readers a warning: "This book is not about the fundamentals of data visualization."<br />
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I agree. If you're brand new to data visualization, <i>The</i> <i>Big Book of Dashboards</i> is probably not the book for you.<br />
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Instead you should probably pick up Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic's <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Storytelling-Data-Visualization-Business-Professionals/dp/1119002257/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498065209&sr=8-1&keywords=storytelling+with+data">Storytelling with Data</a></i> or Alberto Cairo's <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Functional-Art-introduction-information-visualization/dp/0321834739/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498065227&sr=8-1&keywords=the+functional+art">The Functional Art</a></i>. Two titles, incidentally, that the authors of the <i>Big Book</i> themselves list in a section where they offer suggestions for great books on data viz basics (they also include titles by Stephen Few and Colin Ware).<br />
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But let's say you've already read one of those books on data viz fundamentals. Let's say you already know that <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2015/12/in-defence-of-data-visualization-rules.html">pie charts are dangerous</a> and bar charts should start at zero. You've gotten the memo on how colour should be used sparingly and chart titles should be descriptive. What then?<br />
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Well, then you really owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of the <i>Big Book of Dashboards</i>.<br />
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I've read a number of books on data visualization and the <i>Big Book</i> is one of the best I've come across in that sweet spot between books for beginners and books for experts (or academics).<br />
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In particular, the book's focus on Dashboards means it has a lot of helpful advice about a topic many books for beginners largely ignore: <b>interactivity</b>.<br />
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A lot of the fundamental principles of data visualization are focused on how to create static charts.<br />
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But in the real world, people are increasingly being asked to make interactive Dashboards for their organization, which requires careful thought about things like how filters should behave, where dropdowns should be placed and how to make sure that your users understand how everything works.<br />
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The Dashboards featured in <i>The</i> <i>Big Book of Dashboards </i>are almost all interactive, and there is a constant discussion throughout the book on how to anticipate your user's needs through careful use of interactivity.<br />
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The <i>Big Book</i> is broken into three parts.<br />
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Part 1 is a primer on data visualization basics. This is a pretty good refresher on data visualization principles but, like the authors, if this is what you really need I'd suggest you read another book first.<br />
<br />
Part 2, by far the largest section of the book, is a series of nearly 30 chapters: each one focused on a different Dashboard that solves a particular real-world problem.<br />
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Part 3 is a series of essays that cover interesting topics like how to personalize your Dashboards and different ways to visualize time.<br />
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I found the most enjoyable way to read the book was to read Parts 1 and 3 all the way through first, and then dip into the Dashboards in Part 2 a little bit at a time.<br />
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Each chapter in Part 2 follows more-or-less the same structure: An image of a Dashboard, a brief description of the real-world scenario the Dashboard is trying to solve, a discussion of how people use the Dashboard and then a discussion of the Dashboard's strengths and weaknesses (including, in some cases, suggestions for alternative ways of visualizing the same data).<br />
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Not surprisingly, I found I was most interested in those chapters that featured Dashboards on topics that interested me or projects similar to those I've tackled myself as a consultant. I spent a lot of time poring over the chapter on how to visualize student satisfaction surveys, while largely skimming the chapters on sports statistics. That said, as the authors point out, solutions to one problem can often be applied to another (for example, product ratings can be visualized in a similar way to teacher ratings).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhISuXf2xMzcfmiInq0cXxNLOhqOzYEmM4bINy8Dj0tWMxhvddTIIawFVDhvGjDA64WgLSp6olq-d84TZ3qiqR-VB0TBi3Gzl17__jlpSt_VNUdQo3GusymGdfoSIKk4uP52B4jolO-Wk0/s1600/course-metrics.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1323" data-original-width="1600" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhISuXf2xMzcfmiInq0cXxNLOhqOzYEmM4bINy8Dj0tWMxhvddTIIawFVDhvGjDA64WgLSp6olq-d84TZ3qiqR-VB0TBi3Gzl17__jlpSt_VNUdQo3GusymGdfoSIKk4uP52B4jolO-Wk0/s400/course-metrics.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
I suspect other readers will find the same thing I did: You'll be drawn first to the chapters most applicable to your day-to-day work, but will be surprised how, later on, you'll be inspired by examples of data visualization solutions from other subject areas. The nice thing about the way the book is structured is you can make your way through the scenario chapters in pretty much any order you like.<br />
<br />
It's pretty easy to flip through the chapters to find the ones that interest you the most. But if I had a suggestion for the 2nd edition, I think a "visual Table of Contents" — showing thumbnail sketches of each Dashboard along with the chapter title — would make such skimming even easier.<br />
<br />
While one of the book's authors (<a href="https://twitter.com/acotgreave">Andy Cotgreave</a>) works at Tableau and the other two (<a href="https://twitter.com/VizBizWiz">Steve Wexler</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/HighVizAbility">Jeffrey Shaffer</a>) are Tableau Zen Masters, the book is platform agnostic: Tableau is barely mentioned.<br />
<br />
And, yet, I found one of the other major strengths of this book is that pretty much every Dashboard featured can be built using Tableau. Which means the solutions you find in <i>The</i> <i>Big Book of Dashboards</i> are ones you can put to use almost right away in your day-to-day work.<br />
<br />
I think that could also make the <i>Big Book</i> a great resource for data visualization practitioners to share Dashboard ideas with others in their organization.<br />
<br />
I suspect many data visualization practitioners live in fear of their boss coming to them one day and asking them to recreate some New York Times masterpiece like the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/19/upshot/3d-yield-curve-economic-growth.html?_r=0">3D yield curve</a> or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/18/climate/antarctica-ice-melt-climate-change-flood.html">floating map of Antarctica</a>. Visualizations that, frankly, can't be built without D3 and some serious coding chops.<br />
<br />
In contrast, any moderately skilled Tableau user could hand their boss a chapter or two from <i>The</i> <i>Big Book of Dashboards</i> as an example of what's possible, confident that if they said, "I want something like that!", they could build it. (A job made considerably easier by the fact the authors have posted Tableau workbook files for many of the featured Dashboards <a href="http://bigbookofdashboards.com/dashboards.html">online</a>.)<br />
<br />
If you make interactive Dashboards in your day-to-day work, or often have to explain what a Dashboard is to others in your organization, I highly recommend <i>The Big Book of Dashboards</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>Disclosure: I know all three authors of </i>The Big Book of Dashboards<i> and, even worse, I like and respect all three of them. I also got a brief shout-out in the book for my <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2015/03/video-of-chad-skeltons-talk-at-tapestry.html">Tapestry talk</a> on personalizing data viz. And I got a free copy.</i><br />
<br />Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-70126249394762296072017-04-26T15:28:00.002-07:002017-04-26T15:30:06.708-07:00I'm on the PolicyViz podcast this week!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3FsKKXR6zq-u5UNKGcBDT_j6mqRmM14_OaR1iKY-qz-0No-HH9sL7glqk7U9xqQNRstGlUbD2SUW-XxppUqw0LINgJwUBxXkvWKmmH5v7QBekivPjmdn4MS22Z0h3niq9xYx2g-WorSI/s1600/policyviz-podcast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3FsKKXR6zq-u5UNKGcBDT_j6mqRmM14_OaR1iKY-qz-0No-HH9sL7glqk7U9xqQNRstGlUbD2SUW-XxppUqw0LINgJwUBxXkvWKmmH5v7QBekivPjmdn4MS22Z0h3niq9xYx2g-WorSI/s400/policyviz-podcast.jpg" width="235" /></a></div>
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The <a href="https://policyviz.com/podcast/episode-83-chad-skelton/">PolicyViz podcast</a>, hosted by <a href="https://twitter.com/jschwabish">Jon Schwabish</a>, is one of my favourite podcasts: illuminating 30-minute conversations with various people in the data visualization field.</div>
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So it was a particular thrill went I loaded it up in Overcast this morning and saw my own name in the episode list.</div>
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Jon and I had a great chat about <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2017/04/data-visualization-reading-list.html">teaching data visualization</a> and <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2017/03/a-different-way-to-think-about-data.html">data storytelling</a>. You can find the episode in your favourite podcast app or <a href="https://policyviz.com/podcast/episode-83-chad-skelton/">right here</a>.</div>
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Also, at the risk of logrolling, I highly recommend you make the PolicyViz podcast part of your regular podcast lineup. Jon's a great interviewer and the episodes are always concise and focused. If this data visualization thing doesn't work out, Jon could switch careers and go into radio.</div>
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Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-20566755250532450552017-04-10T09:23:00.000-07:002017-05-25T17:44:00.337-07:00Finally revealed! The numbers BCLC spent six years trying to keep secret<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg6Pcz-dqRd20uzEZDzjCpTEw0tXYDf9GoZeBVgZI7_8kXox7cxFi4GZHo8eaNYONYj7LG9xvHqx3lHb56GMP6qYVi7mU41EwUvZyQbZcBplWatMRVEbhy6MyhBgjAXq3LRUjRwnf6I2Y/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-04-06+at+11.35.07+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg6Pcz-dqRd20uzEZDzjCpTEw0tXYDf9GoZeBVgZI7_8kXox7cxFi4GZHo8eaNYONYj7LG9xvHqx3lHb56GMP6qYVi7mU41EwUvZyQbZcBplWatMRVEbhy6MyhBgjAXq3LRUjRwnf6I2Y/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-04-06+at+11.35.07+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
OK. So I need to make an admission right out of the gate here: The climax of this story is a bit underwhelming.<br />
<br />
The story I'm about to tell you is interesting, and my sensationalist headline is 100% true: BCLC did try to keep something secret for six years and I'm about to make it public right here for the first time.<br />
<br />
But the actual "reveal" at the end of it all is, well, kind of a letdown. The upside is that the most interesting part of this story may still be to come. And that's where you come in.<br />
<br />
But I'm getting ahead of myself.<br />
<br />
The story begins seven years ago on April 9, 2010. That's when I sent BCLC a Freedom of Information request asking for a breakdown of where the users of its <a href="https://www.playnow.com/">PlayNow online gambling site</a> lived. Specifically, I asked for the total value of all PlayNow sales in each "Forward Sortation Area", or FSA. An FSA is the first three digits of your postal code and it corresponds to different areas of the province.<br />
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<div style="display: block; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 12px auto 6px auto;">
<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/344716855/BCLC-FOI#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View BCLC FOI on Scribd">BCLC FOI</a> by <a href="https://www.scribd.com/user/354288331/Chad-Skelton#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View Chad Skelton's profile on Scribd">Chad Skelton</a> on Scribd</div>
<iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" data-aspect-ratio="0.7729220222793488" data-auto-height="false" frameborder="0" height="600" id="doc_31609" scrolling="no" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/344716855/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-nq5kC9T8TuETt9VSJBWK&show_recommendations=true" width="100%"></iframe>
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<br />
The motivation behind my request was several data journalism stories I'd seen from the U.S. that showed that poorer neighbourhoods were more likely to play the lottery than richer ones. (<a href="http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/1/13/10763268/lottery-poor-prey">This story</a> is from 2016 but similar stories have been done dozens of times over the years by U.S. newspapers.) With PlayNow sales by neighbourhood, and income data from Statistics Canada, I figured I could see if there was a similar pattern in B.C.<br />
<br />
I'd actually tried doing this story once before, by filing a Freedom of Information request to BCLC for a breakdown of <b><i>paper</i></b> lottery ticket sales at retail outlets by FSA. BCLC actually coughed up that data without a fight. But I found no correlation between an FSA's median income and its lottery sales. The problem with that data, I realized, was that people buy their lottery tickets all over the place — on their way to work, while doing their groceries — and so the areas with the highest "per capita" lottery sales tended to be those with low populations but a big mall.<br />
<br />
PlayNow data would be different, I figured, as the postal code associated with each sale would be that of the gambler themselves. With that data in hand, I could actually figure out if poorer neighbourhoods were more likely to gamble — and the topic seemed timely, as BCLC was just starting to expand beyond selling lottery tickets online to offering more addictive online casino games, too.<br />
<br />
So off the request went.<br />
<br />
On May 18, BCLC wrote back saying it had a four-page document responsive to my request but that it wasn't going to give it to me. It argued that releasing the information could harm BCLC's finances because its online gambling competitors could use it to their advantage. I asked them to reconsider but they refused. The full correspondence is below:<br />
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<div style="display: block; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 12px auto 6px auto;">
<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/344716648/BCLC-FOI-Correspondence#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View BCLC FOI Correspondence on Scribd">BCLC FOI Correspondence</a> by <a href="https://www.scribd.com/user/354288331/Chad-Skelton#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View Chad Skelton's profile on Scribd">Chad Skelton</a> on Scribd</div>
<iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" data-aspect-ratio="0.7727272727272727" data-auto-height="false" frameborder="0" height="600" id="doc_48905" scrolling="no" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/344716648/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-X4d5zmHrC7WdQ5ACVeAo&show_recommendations=true" width="100%"></iframe>
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<br />
My next step was filing a complaint with the <a href="https://www.oipc.bc.ca/">Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner</a>, the independent agency that oversees the FOI process in B.C. The OIPC does good work but it doesn't do it very fast. So it wasn't until a year later, in the spring of 2011, that the case went to a formal hearing where both sides submitted their written arguments for why the sales data should or should not be made public.<br />
<br />
And then, on August 25, 2011, the OIPC released its <a href="https://www.oipc.bc.ca/orders/1067">decision</a>, finding in my favour and ordering BCLC to release the records. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNMPSqtn5ADz5y4c4CHM2_zyX6gG_cmXRsDsoNlCyLLhbalki_cmRoFKWJ7sRMLFrnH2trGMHpieplNLifiFSMA1xBHCdAEDLrf0bWuV2WJ5PnVq9OEIxEd3vufs2Xs3gA_CyrjfZoPHk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-04-06+at+12.05.58+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNMPSqtn5ADz5y4c4CHM2_zyX6gG_cmXRsDsoNlCyLLhbalki_cmRoFKWJ7sRMLFrnH2trGMHpieplNLifiFSMA1xBHCdAEDLrf0bWuV2WJ5PnVq9OEIxEd3vufs2Xs3gA_CyrjfZoPHk/s640/Screen+Shot+2017-04-06+at+12.05.58+PM.png" width="600" /></a></div>
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(An aside: I notice now the ruling said to provide it within 30 days, which doesn't seem to match up with an Oct. 5 deadline. I can't recall why.)<br />
<br />
Now, one of the great things about B.C.'s Information Commissioner — unlike her federal counterpart — is that she has what's called <b><i>order power</i></b>. That means that the decisions of her office are legal orders that need to be complied with immediately (unlike the federal Commissioner's orders, which are more like recommendations). So that meant that, with this ruling, BCLC was legally required to provide me with the sales data.<br />
<br />
Every other time I won a case before the OIPC, that was the end of the story: The documents would arrive a few weeks later and that would be that.<br />
<br />
Except that agencies actually do have one other option available to them: Take the Information Commissioner to court. Which is what BCLC did, seeking a judicial review of the Commissioner's decision in front of the B.C. Supreme Court. Specifically, BCLC argued, among other things, that the Commissioner didn't properly treat one of its "expert witnesses" as an expert.<br />
<br />
A bunch of court proceedings followed over the next couple of years (The Vancouver Sun could have taken part but we decided to let the OIPC handle it). Then, on January 8, 2013 — almost three years after my original request — the B.C. Supreme Court <a href="https://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bcsc/doc/2013/2013bcsc12/2013bcsc12.html?searchUrlHash=AAAAAQAMY2hhZCBza2VsdG9uAAAAAAE&resultIndex=1">ruled in BCLC's favour</a>.<br />
<br />
BCLC had asked the B.C. Supreme Court to just overturn the OIPC's ruling and let it keep the information secret. But, instead, the judge sent the case back to the OIPC for another ruling.<br />
<br />
Which meant doing the whole hearing thing all over again. So fast forward another couple of years and we're at October 13, 2015 — five and a half years after my original request and <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2015/09/farewell-to-vancouver-sun.html">after I've taken a buyout from The Sun</a> — and the OIPC releases its <a href="https://www.oipc.bc.ca/orders/1871">second ruling in the matter</a>, finding once again that I was entitled to the records.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK5MJI1FIpt58147WlQJcIhUHJit-2F_to1qkwdmkO4GL6idNMhKd4SNV_9QAoDjv7mbqwnO7kFCbxjeLpcIfqXiDCnXuowWouSuSunGlvW6ctjMYGRZ_lGnYwc28EXLb3xn2w-iIn5iQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-04-06+at+12.22.22+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK5MJI1FIpt58147WlQJcIhUHJit-2F_to1qkwdmkO4GL6idNMhKd4SNV_9QAoDjv7mbqwnO7kFCbxjeLpcIfqXiDCnXuowWouSuSunGlvW6ctjMYGRZ_lGnYwc28EXLb3xn2w-iIn5iQ/s640/Screen+Shot+2017-04-06+at+12.22.22+PM.png" width="600" /></a></div>
<br />
If you think really hard, you can probably see what comes next.<br />
<br />
Yep: BCLC took the Information Commissioner to court <b><i>again</i></b>.<br />
<br />
Once again, I didn't have much to do with the court case, except for getting occasional emails from BCLC's lawyers making sure I was properly served with all the documents in the case.<br />
<br />
The following fall, on Sept. 14, 2016, the B.C. Supreme Court made its decision — this time upholding the OIPC's second ruling. According to one of BCLC's lawyers who emailed me, the decision was made orally from the bench and I haven't been able to find a transcript published anywhere online.<br />
<br />
Was that the end of the story? Not quite.<br />
<br />
On October 13, 2016, BCLC sent me a notice that they intended to appeal the court's decision to the B.C. Court of Appeal.<br />
<br />
But then, mysteriously, a month later on November 29, they sent me another notice that they were abandoning their appeal.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWjTDgFvCaAu1Ciq2znaTOd7ENXlDW8DbIRCVJ40iG8WsW3Mhz7O3PGk-9V-QFaHDbmDbuVmR9QmJ3YE_Kmkz63WyGiNYWwbUSUg-1j0VA8l0gPa7p4GOBjjcjxjlqdnF1R1GFgyVtirU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-04-06+at+12.34.23+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="342" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWjTDgFvCaAu1Ciq2znaTOd7ENXlDW8DbIRCVJ40iG8WsW3Mhz7O3PGk-9V-QFaHDbmDbuVmR9QmJ3YE_Kmkz63WyGiNYWwbUSUg-1j0VA8l0gPa7p4GOBjjcjxjlqdnF1R1GFgyVtirU/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-04-06+at+12.34.23+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The next day, November 30, 2016, BCLC finally mailed me the requested records — <b>2,427 days</b> after I had originally asked for them.<br />
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<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/344716497/BCLC-FOI-response#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View BCLC FOI response on Scribd">BCLC FOI response</a> by <a href="https://www.scribd.com/user/354288331/Chad-Skelton#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View Chad Skelton's profile on Scribd">Chad Skelton</a> on Scribd</div>
<iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" data-aspect-ratio="0.7729220222793488" data-auto-height="false" frameborder="0" height="600" id="doc_34311" scrolling="no" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/344716497/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-X5o1ijwiLZyGn7bb7czo&show_recommendations=true" width="100%"></iframe>
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<br />
But they still had one more trick up their sleeves. While my original request clearly asked for the records in spreadsheet format, so I could more easily analyze the figures, BCLC instead sent me four badly photocopied, barely legible pages.<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
FOI equivalent of a fuck you: Ask for Excel. Get a print out so bad they must have put it through the copier 30 times <a href="https://t.co/JRbUwFzzci">pic.twitter.com/JRbUwFzzci</a></div>
— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/847855510506176512">March 31, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<br />
And this, dear reader, is where I need to confess that while the vast majority of the delay in making these records public is BCLC's fault, the last 130 days or so are on me.<br />
<br />
It's hard enough getting motivated to analyze six-year-old data. It's even harder when you know it's going to start with a good hour or two of manual data entry. I also had a lot of other stuff on my plate this winter, like developing my <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2017/04/data-visualization-reading-list.html">new course</a> at the University of Florida.<br />
<br />
So the BCLC envelope stayed on my desk for a few months. Then, finally, I found some time a couple of weeks ago to type in the numbers by hand and start doing some basic analysis on the figures.<br />
<br />
And what I found, as I warned you at the start, was pretty underwhelming.<br />
<br />
I could find no evidence that poorer neighbourhoods are more likely to gamble online than richer ones. Indeed, what weak correlation exists actually runs in the opposite direction (the richer your neighbourhood, the more it gambles online).<br />
<br />
I tried comparing a few other demographic characteristics from the 2011 National Household Service but came up empty.<br />
<br />
Mapping the data, the best I can come up with is that it appears rural areas may be more likely to gamble online than urban areas, which kind of makes sense: Those in rural areas may not have easy access to a casino.<br />
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<br />
If you'd like to look at the data yourself, you can find it <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17iDG7t_N9gnA5MEXXXl0sWWcXPZcvHeQJMbnzBTXgIc/edit?usp=sharing">here</a> (to download an Excel file, just click on File/Download in the top left corner). The first sheet is the data provided by BCLC itself, manually entered by yours truly. The second includes the data I added in for analysis (population, per capita spending and median income).<br />
<br />
So is that the end of the story?<br />
<br />
Well, not quite.<br />
<br />
There's a bit of a mystery here.<br />
<br />
If this data was so innocuous, why did BCLC fight so hard to keep it secret? It's possible I'm missing something in the data (which is why I'm <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17iDG7t_N9gnA5MEXXXl0sWWcXPZcvHeQJMbnzBTXgIc/edit">making it public</a>). But I suspect what BCLC was really worried about was not this data, per se, but the precedent it would set if it was forced to release it.<br />
<br />
And that's because, since this request was filed, PlayNow has become a much bigger business for BCLC. Based on a review of a <a href="http://corporate.bclc.com/content/dam/bclc/corporate/documents/corporate-reports/bclc-annual-report-0910.pdf">couple</a> of <a href="http://corporate.bclc.com/content/dam/bclc/corporate/documents/bclc-2015-2016-annual-report.pdf">BCLC's annual reports</a>, "eGaming" brought in $135 million in revenue last year, more than <b><i>five times</i></b> the $23.5 million in revenues for 2008/09, the year my request was for.<br />
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<a 1em="" 275="" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbRHPYry1YrlY6kduPL8UlzCrbMUq30md7BcbBN1vCR1kLvnd7Yyc_P8JcrZbMFhb1W7c0qHDn-xMLCkqEyqKv_qGpApRnfF1kW7qOc-4ZXVVpiyKfmOZQqPwGAGCX_Q4i8rU2jOxVolc/s1600/Dashboard+1-1.png" imageanchor="1" margin-right:="" style="margin-left: height=;"><img border="0" height="448" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbRHPYry1YrlY6kduPL8UlzCrbMUq30md7BcbBN1vCR1kLvnd7Yyc_P8JcrZbMFhb1W7c0qHDn-xMLCkqEyqKv_qGpApRnfF1kW7qOc-4ZXVVpiyKfmOZQqPwGAGCX_Q4i8rU2jOxVolc/s640/Dashb4ard+1-1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Furthermore, looking closely at the PlayNow numbers I was provided with, there are some odd figures for some areas.<br />
<br />
For instance, while most postal code areas had totals in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, V2C, a postal code area in Kamloops with more than 20,000 residents, had a total spend on PlayNow for 2008-09 of just <b>$157</b>.<br />
<br />
On the other side, V0S, a remote area of Vancouver Island with just 125 residents had a total spend of <b>$48,412</b>. That gives V0S by far the highest per capita PlayNow spending in the province ($387, the second highest is V6C at $16). It's hard to know for sure, but I suspect that may just be one guy with a really bad gambling habit.<br />
<br />
The point is, with just one year of data from a time when PlayNow was still in its infancy, the data is too noisy to make any meaningful conclusions about where B.C.'s online gamblers live and whether there's any correlation between gambling and other factors like income.<br />
<br />
To do that, we'd need to know what the regional patterns in PlayNow gambling have been <b><i>since</i></b> 2008/09. Which is where you (maybe) come in.<br />
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As I'm sure you can imagine, I'm not eager to take another kick at the can here. Especially because I no longer work in a newsroom and so don't have an outlet to publish the results of whatever I find.<br />
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But I <b><i>do</i></b> think there's a story here, and I'd like to make it as easy as possible for someone else to find it — whether that's another journalist out there or an advocacy group with an interest in gambling.<br />
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As it happens, BCLC has an <a href="http://corporate.bclc.com/customer-support/freedom-of-information/freedom-of-information-requests.html">online form</a> you can use to file a Freedom of Information request without having to draft a letter or buy a stamp (you can also <a href="http://corporate.bclc.com/customer-support/freedom-of-information.html">fax or mail in your request</a>).<br />
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You can fill it out with your own contact information. But I'd suggest copying and pasting the following wording into the section that asks for "Details of Requested Information":<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In electronic database format, the total value of products purchased through BCLC's PlayNow website in each fiscal year from 2009-10 to 2016-17 in each Forward Sortation Area (FSA) in British Columbia. Please provide me with a list of total sales by FSA for the entire period and a breakdown by year. I draw your attention to OIPC order F15-58, upheld by the B.C. Supreme Court in September 2016, which found BCLC was legally required to provide such records for an earlier time period. I am asking for these records in spreadsheet format (Excel or CSV) NOT on paper or as a PDF. I draw your attention to OIPC order F10-16 which found that government agencies are required to provide records in spreadsheet format when they are technically able to do so.</blockquote>
[ NOTE: My original suggested request wording, rather stupidly, left out the part about breaking down the sales figures by Forward Sortation Area. So it was only asking for the total sales figures, which is data that is already available. The new wording, corrected on May 25, 2017, should be more successful. Apologies. ]<br />
<br />
Now, if history is any guide, I doubt BCLC will just release these records without a fight. But given the legal precedent that now exists, I don't think BCLC will have much of a legal leg to stand on and hopefully it should take fewer than six years to get the records.<br />
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Also, if anyone takes this up, I'd suggest — while BCLC fights you on your original request —to keep filing a <b><i>new</i></b> request each year to BCLC for the following year's records. That way you've already got those requests in the pipeline. In retrospect, I wish I'd done that.<br />
<br />
I realize this post probably isn't the greatest advertisement for filing an FOI request with BCLC. And I appreciate the hypocrisy of asking someone else to do what I no longer have the patience for.<br />
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But I firmly believe that if government agencies can get away with these kinds of ridiculous delays, transparency suffers. And, frankly, I feel like six years fulfills my duties on this file and it's time to pass it on to someone else.<br />
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That said, if you do file a request and end up in an OIPC hearing with BCLC, <a href="mailto:cskeltondata@gmail.com">drop me a line</a> and I'd be happy to share my written submissions with you so you can copy from them.<br />
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It will literally only take you a minute to go over to <a href="http://corporate.bclc.com/customer-support/freedom-of-information/freedom-of-information-requests.html">BCLC's online form</a> right now and get the ball rolling on your own request.<br />
<br />
And the more of you who do it, the more BCLC will learn they can't get away with this kind of secrecy.Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-68774288589480950852017-04-05T10:14:00.000-07:002019-01-05T11:18:55.924-08:00A data visualization reading (and watching) list<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh315K7IEgbXr9L0iLhqwb1ZzoxJ1u_gCdNSW9NA0pfT2UCt-3W4A6Lkpj05tPAW5ECpQm6G4pQmJf6T496M_DcITjc3FC-jGXzmEebtW1w28pgyHc1rUvjDZV2pInq68iMSePwNp7NQu8/s1600/uf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh315K7IEgbXr9L0iLhqwb1ZzoxJ1u_gCdNSW9NA0pfT2UCt-3W4A6Lkpj05tPAW5ECpQm6G4pQmJf6T496M_DcITjc3FC-jGXzmEebtW1w28pgyHc1rUvjDZV2pInq68iMSePwNp7NQu8/s400/uf.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Century Tower at the University of Florida // by <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Century_Tower_(University_of_Florida).jpg">Kate Haskell</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Starting this summer, I'm teaching a course in <b>Data Storytelling and Visualization</b> at the University of Florida as part of its new online <a href="http://onlinemasters.jou.ufl.edu/audience-analytics/">Master's program in Audience Analytics</a>. After years of teaching data visualization — both at my home university of <a href="http://www.learndataviz.com/">Kwantlen</a> and through my <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/workshops.html">public Tableau workshops</a> — I'm excited to be branching out into online learning.<br />
<br />
In preparing for the course, I asked my Twitter followers for suggestions of what I should add to my reading list.<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
If you could recommend one article/video for someone new to Data Visualization, what would it be? Preparing a reading list for a new course</div>
— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/806188579378446336">December 6, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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I received <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/806188579378446336">a lot of great suggestions</a> and promised that, once my reading list was complete, I'd share it with others. So here it is!
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First, though, a bit of context. My UF course, like my other data visualization training, has a dual focus: Teaching Principles and Teaching Skills.<br />
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I like my students to come away with an understanding of data visualization best practices and how to tell effective data stories. But I also want them to have enough software skills to apply those principles to their own work.<br />
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For my UF class, the software tool I teach is <b>Tableau</b>. Both because it's the tool I'm most comfortable with and also because I genuinely believe it's the tool with the best combination of flexibility and ease-of use. A point illustrated well by Lisa Charlotte Rost in a chart from <a href="https://source.opennews.org/articles/what-i-learned-recreating-one-chart-using-24-tools/">one of the readings</a> (emphasis mine):<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3o4kvjb4VQ4n91fQviygnlVwfMoThgInwkJy2mMdTdUliAU-IdDrxg_-jrqfMkf_KiIP3ODdG3cAa7phgJOFAiG-ry3joKYpPXZ7PzZ31CCirRG9g7sHxCBSJ8nTTGF4sdak8SolVx58/s1600/rost_chart.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3o4kvjb4VQ4n91fQviygnlVwfMoThgInwkJy2mMdTdUliAU-IdDrxg_-jrqfMkf_KiIP3ODdG3cAa7phgJOFAiG-ry3joKYpPXZ7PzZ31CCirRG9g7sHxCBSJ8nTTGF4sdak8SolVx58/s400/rost_chart.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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My course is built around a series of recorded lectures — about an hour's worth each week — in which I teach my students the technical skills of using Tableau while also getting them to think about the fundamentals of data visualization.<br />
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Wherever possible, I try to teach them principles at the same time as I'm teaching them practical skills.<br />
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To use one example, I teach students the technical steps of how to make a stacked bar chart in Tableau. But then I change the order of the segments to illustrate how stacked bar charts can be hard to read. And then I use Tableau to make a grouped column chart, area chart and line chart out of the same data and then point out the pros and cons of each.<br />
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To reflect that dual focus, my UF course has two core textbooks:<br />
<ul>
<li><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Storytelling-Data-Visualization-Business-Professionals/dp/1119002257/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491252721&sr=8-1&keywords=storytelling+with+data">Storytelling with Data</a></b> by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, and</li>
<li><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tableau-Your-Data-Analysis-Software/dp/1119001196/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491252735&sr=8-1&keywords=tableau+your+data">Tableau Your Data!</a></b> by Dan Murray</li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijzHE_dkVV1rzjZKUqylbNV_XBT9_ojL0M0OMzIS45X7R_ZrR_DQ8urKa-alqUHsDy18zBQ0BWYgS0Lhojy3igJMHw6RHmLVYyYFGdaaFI6oEIToUYNaHwv-BA7lzX1rm4I1hNDzDjcJA/s1600/two-books.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijzHE_dkVV1rzjZKUqylbNV_XBT9_ojL0M0OMzIS45X7R_ZrR_DQ8urKa-alqUHsDy18zBQ0BWYgS0Lhojy3igJMHw6RHmLVYyYFGdaaFI6oEIToUYNaHwv-BA7lzX1rm4I1hNDzDjcJA/s400/two-books.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Despite <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2017/03/a-different-way-to-think-about-data.html">disagreeing</a> with her focus on literary storytelling, I really like Cole's book and think it does a great job of providing a lot of clear advice along with solid examples. And Dan Murray's "Tableau Your Data!" provides one of the most comprehensive guides to Tableau that I've come across.</div>
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In addition to those two textbooks, my UF course includes select chapters from some of my other favourite books on data visualization:</div>
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<ul>
<li><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Functional-Art-introduction-information-visualization/dp/0321834739/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491252782&sr=8-1&keywords=functional+art">The Functional Art</a></b> by Alberto Cairo (Chapters 1 and 3)</li>
<li><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Truthful-Art-Data-Charts-Communication/dp/0321934075/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491252814&sr=8-1&keywords=truthful+art">The Truthful Art</a></b> by Alberto Cairo (Chapter 2)</li>
<li><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Data-Points-Visualization-Means-Something/dp/111846219X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491252844&sr=8-1&keywords=data+points+nathan+yau">Data Points</a></b> by Nathan Yau (Chapters 1 and 5)</li>
<li><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Better-Presentations-Guide-Scholars-Researchers/dp/0231175213/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1508282998&sr=8-1&keywords=better+presentations">Better Presentations</a></b> by Jonathan Schwabish (Chapters 1 and 8)</li>
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<div>
As you'll see below, I also included several chapters from the ebook <a href="http://orm-atlas2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/13a07b19e01a397d8855c0463d52f454.pdf">Data + Design</a>.</div>
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Below are links to the rest of my course readings, as well as videos that I recommend my students watch in addition to my lectures. Just to provide a bit of structure to the list, I've broken it down by topic week. Those topics primarily reflect the content of my recorded lectures, which aren't public, so sometimes the readings will match the topic and sometimes they won't.</div>
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Also, full disclosure: I've included a couple of my own pieces in the list below. This is mainly because they covered key topics I wanted to include in the course and having them in the readings saved me from needing to address them in my lectures.</div>
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Finally, if you've come across a great reading or video on data visualization or Tableau that's not listed here, please add it to the comments so others can find it. And if you've got a data visualization reading list of your own, please provide the link.</div>
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So, without further ado, here's the list:</div>
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<b>Week 1: Finding Data</b></div>
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Read:</div>
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<a href="http://orm-atlas2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/13a07b19e01a397d8855c0463d52f454.pdf">Data + Design, Chapter 1: Basic Data Types</a></div>
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<br /></div>
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“<a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/data-visualization-for-human-perception">Data Visualization for Human Perception</a>” by Stephen Few</div>
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“<a href="http://flowingdata.com/2016/11/10/find-the-data-you-need-2016-edition/">Resources to Find the Data You Need, 2016 Edition</a>” by Nathan Yau</div>
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Watch:</div>
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“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xsvGYIxJok">Making data mean more through storytelling</a>” by Ben Wellington [14m]</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.tableau.com/about/blog/2016/11/find-hidden-insights-your-data-ask-why-and-why-62739" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb5ioEB7w4_sPcwpTkHaxxjj2EIqC1Av64Rletdz-P0sUHJwXlhCQ5bLDa5_vVzfnO-1CNvHw4wvTAEbZ-i7QwC2jEHjacEe5nutxDdtgtdpGnH-wiydxa3Anhtt22uLK4FOPP7vWkAwA/s400/why1.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Andy Cotgreave</td></tr>
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<b>Week 2: Basic Data Analysis in Tableau</b></div>
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Read:</div>
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<a href="https://infoactive.co/data-design/ch01.html">Data + Design, Chapter 2: About Data Aggregation</a></div>
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“<a href="https://source.opennews.org/en-US/articles/what-i-learned-recreating-one-chart-using-24-tools/">What I learned recreating one chart using 24 tools</a>” by Lisa Charlotte Rost</div>
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“<a href="http://www.tableau.com/about/blog/2016/11/find-hidden-insights-your-data-ask-why-and-why-62739">Find hidden insights in your data: Ask why and why again</a>” by Andy Cotgreave</div>
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“<a href="http://datadrivenjournalism.net/resources/using_data_visualization_to_find_insights_in_data">Using Data Visualization to Find Insights in Data</a>” by Gregor Aisch</div>
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“<a href="http://flowingdata.com/2016/09/14/shorten-the-visualization-path-back-to-reality/">Shorten the Visualization Path Back to Reality</a>” by Nathan Yau</div>
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Watch:</div>
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“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r1gr04UUJ8">The Visual Design Tricks Behind Great Dashboards</a>” by Andy Cotgreave [56m; <a href="https://public.tableau.com/views/whichshouldiimplement/WhichdesignfeaturesshouldIimplement?:embed=y&:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no">Related chart</a>]</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://flowingdata.com/2016/09/14/shorten-the-visualization-path-back-to-reality/"><img border="0" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvYAnxv7mzMlvv11lYCKg-i5Rlg_IC3dqUj30lj4bh1y93sbAx9MyyPDoqCtmAMWyn0x4iZXVUHg214v6eq5zDnH5rMMNxffX0jy3PH1xbzYoPLWx0H-W0MhThHKTAQRES7KMxI0SHX3k/s400/visualization-process.jpeg" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://flowingdata.com/2016/09/14/shorten-the-visualization-path-back-to-reality/">Nathan Yau</a></td></tr>
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<b>Week 3: Creating Static Charts in Tableau</b></div>
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Read:</div>
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“<a href="http://stephanieevergreen.com/strong-titles/">Strong Titles Are The Biggest Bang for Your Buck</a>” by Stephanie Evergreen</div>
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<b>Week 4: Finding the Most Important Thing</b></div>
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Read:</div>
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“<a href="https://eagereyes.org/basics/spreadsheet-thinking-vs-database-thinking">Spreadsheet Thinking vs. Database Thinking</a>” by Robert Kosara</div>
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Watch:</div>
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“<a href="https://vimeo.com/180922380">How to think like a data journalist</a>” by Chad Skelton [30m]</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://stephanieevergreen.com/strong-titles/"><img border="0" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4SPvBZBwG5Hgud6CLQvNGfEW7dzldZtnxA9rw_UMPUBUsl62kSUXWfRRN9mF2ZG2BSHr4b9rHm5Yt5EOPat792kbuopqMplsznN1vyqxlG6UI7DD92d2QhR_kEJavY0u1eHFHMJ0YciA/s400/Titles.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://stephanieevergreen.com/strong-titles/">Stephanie Evergreen</a></td></tr>
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<b>Week 5: Choosing the Right Chart</b></div>
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Read:</div>
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“<a href="http://extremepresentation.typepad.com/files/choosing-a-good-chart-09.pdf">Chart Suggestions – A Thought-Starter</a>” by Extreme Presentations</div>
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“<a href="http://stephanieevergreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/DataVizChecklist_May2016.pdf">Data Visualization Checklist</a>” by Stephanie Evergreen and Ann Emery</div>
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“<a href="http://flowingdata.com/2015/08/11/real-chart-rules-to-follow/">Real Chart Rules to Follow</a>” by Nathan Yau</div>
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“<a href="http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/2005/10/the_selfsuffici.html">The self-sufficiency test</a>” by Kaiser Fung</div>
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<a href="http://orm-atlas2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/13a07b19e01a397d8855c0463d52f454.pdf">Data + Design, Chapter 14</a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://orm-atlas2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/13a07b19e01a397d8855c0463d52f454.pdf">Data + Design, Chapter 17</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://ft-interactive.github.io/visual-vocabulary/">The Financial Times “Visual Vocabulary”</a> (Click on headers)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
Watch:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
First, <a href="http://bit.ly/roslinggap">load this chart</a>, press play at the bottom left and watch the data change from 1962 to 2015. Then watch <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen#t-144054">this TED Talk</a> by Hans Rosling [20m]:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB7crD_paKQ">The Competent Critic</a>” by Alan Smith [21m]</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDErtRixyc">The Power of Drawing in Storytelling</a>” by Catherine Madden [18m]<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSdGeWMJIDh0ss2JfFNktDjFUPRNWzQAjw6R0TPCGrS2NTEGMj2JKvEuU_YiRYEZasd3p2Eusli6yHp85njrNfJzHS06PUH0nISCqkHOYAiB0R0XO_hnB92NpmWpFdTthbdzRCL8QcVAM/s1600/hqdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSdGeWMJIDh0ss2JfFNktDjFUPRNWzQAjw6R0TPCGrS2NTEGMj2JKvEuU_YiRYEZasd3p2Eusli6yHp85njrNfJzHS06PUH0nISCqkHOYAiB0R0XO_hnB92NpmWpFdTthbdzRCL8QcVAM/s400/hqdefault.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">TED Talks</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Week 6: The Power of Annotation</b></div>
<div>
Read:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://eagereyes.org/basics/putting-data-into-context">Putting Data Into Context</a>” by Robert Kosara</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Watch:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="http://tclive.tableau.com/Library/Video?vCode=BRK53854">Embracing Simplicity in Data Visualization</a>” by Chris Love [45m; free login required; <b>NOTE</b>: This link wasn't working as of August 2017]</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Week 7: More Chart Types</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Read:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/media/whitepaper_visual-analysis-guidebook_0.pdf">Visual Analysis Best Practices</a>” (Tableau Whitepaper)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0003nk">Slopegraphs for comparing gradients: Slopegraph theory and practice</a>” by Edward Tufte (don’t need to read comments)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Watch:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjXsApA5Evs">Using Storytelling Patterns to Make Data Relatable</a>” by Jessica Hullman [52m]</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Week 8: Calculations</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Watch:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="http://www.vizwiz.com/2017/02/table-calcs.html">Tableau Tip Tuesday: Table Calculations Overview</a>” by Andy Kriebel (blog post and video)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha9LA3rYD9g">Opening Keynote</a> at OpenVis 2013 by Amanda Cox [43m]</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://www.ericson.net/content/2011/10/when-maps-shouldnt-be-maps/"><img border="0" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD5Lmx2H6dIJPZmTdLqNlHBrURBUMEKdyFSfKQ344Vx-XoUelcXsMugpNzHc8lw6RuGUbhzMXXdhnV8WsQqmfatBW9uAm5UM7h-IrpmXhCMdRVjAZwjk7sG3oO90b84W5jDmlM5S1VOdI/s400/census-maps.png" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.ericson.net/content/2011/10/when-maps-shouldnt-be-maps/">The New York Times</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Week 9: Maps</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Read:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="http://www.ericson.net/content/2011/10/when-maps-shouldnt-be-maps/">When Maps Shouldn’t Be Maps</a>” by Matthew Ericson</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://eagereyes.org/blog/2016/all-those-misleading-election-maps">All Those Misleading Election Maps</a>” by Robert Kosara</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/01/upshot/many-ways-to-map-election-results.html">There Are Many Ways to Map Election Results. We’ve Tried Most of Them</a>” by The New York Times</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Watch:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="http://tclive.tableau.com/Library/Video?vCode=BRK53709">Mapping Tips from a Cartographer</a>” by Sarah Battersby [53m; free login required / NOTE: This link wasn't working as of August 2017]</div>
<div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://guns.periscopic.com/?year=2013"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG1zgTmJBQhhCxvYXFg6-WMmY_gPNtYEbsfSRIZxu-t_RaVYZpUQWyx09Hrm8adwiRLPwh106bAKlmRN3T_jbwJRZ6jiwnKHx4Di0LrgB83m9WdG9kmgBiRZPl3l3NdqXPullX9RXYbvY/s400/gundeaths.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://guns.periscopic.com/?year=2013">Periscopic</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Week 10: Interactive Dashboards and Data Stories</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Read:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/media/aberdeen-interactive-visualization-report.pdf">Interactive Data Visualization</a>” by Peter Krensky (Tableau Whitepaper)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/media/whitepaper_datastorytelling.pdf">Data Storytelling</a>” by Robert Kosara (Tableau Whitepaper)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2017/03/a-different-way-to-think-about-data.html">A different way to think about ‘Data Storytelling’</a>” by Chad Skelton</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Watch:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMtWFjjVM5E">Storytelling and Data: Why? How? When?</a>” by Robert Kosara [31m]</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R8UOjMy-5k">An Examination of U.S. Gun Murders</a>” [2m] / <a href="http://guns.periscopic.com/?year=2013">Interactive version</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2036558">Emotional Data Visualization: Periscopic's ‘U.S. Gun Deaths’ and the Challenge of Uncertainty</a>” by Alberto Cairo</div>
<div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://www.math.pku.edu.cn/teachers/xirb/Courses/biostatistics/Biostatistics2016/GraphicalPerception_Jasa1984.pdf"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxoN-va04o5z1I0SPrDrs9aiTrfqP7G8HzUsIdm_aIGBZU0sfULATej-mNXVY3W4NShNi0ocRkdNSFUcXeSRUtLvXELDnIaSi9WvSHRfIj2WUuVooLlTNJ-crne_gF1g_cWlN4_H4wpVc/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-04-03+at+2.48.41+PM.png" width="347" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.math.pku.edu.cn/teachers/xirb/Courses/biostatistics/Biostatistics2016/GraphicalPerception_Jasa1984.pdf">Cleveland and McGill</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Week 11: Data Visualization Research</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Read:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
“<a href="http://www.math.pku.edu.cn/teachers/xirb/Courses/biostatistics/Biostatistics2016/GraphicalPerception_Jasa1984.pdf">Graphical Perception: Theory, Experimentation and Application to the Development of Graphical Methods</a>” by William Cleveland and Robert McGill</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="http://kosara.net/papers/2016/Kosara-BELIV-2016.pdf">An Empire Built on Sand</a>” by Robert Kosara</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.28.1.209">An Economist’s Guide to Visualizing Data</a>” by Jon Schwabish</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/junk-charts-trifecta-checkup-the-definitive-guide.html">Junk Charts Trifecta Checkup</a>” by Kaiser Fung</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
Watch:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0J6EDvlN30">Everything we know about how humans interpret graphics</a>” by Kennedy Elliot [23m]</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Week 12: Next Steps and Tips</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
Read:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="http://www.tableau.com/about/blog/2012/04/guest-post-future-data-visualization-16578">The Future of Data Visualization</a>” by Drew Skau</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
Watch:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boJcT-lerFQ">50 Tips in 50 Minutes</a>” by Andy Kriebel and Jeff Shaffer [52m]</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEp8YeMdUX8">Rapid Fire Tips & Tricks (and Bad Data Jokes)</a>” by Daniel Hom and Dustin Smith [60m]</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Some more helpful resources going forward</b></div>
<div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Tableau bloggers worth following:</b></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://gravyanecdote.com/">Andy Cotgreave</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.vizwiz.com/">Andy Kriebel</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.dataplusscience.com/">Jeffrey Shafer</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.datarevelations.com/">Steve Wexler</a> (survey data)</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Data Visualization bloggers worth following:</b></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.thefunctionalart.com/">Alberto Cairo</a></li>
<li><a href="http://annkemery.com/blog/">Ann Emery</a></li>
<li><a href="http://stephanieevergreen.com/category/blog/">Stephanie Evergreen</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.visualisingdata.com/blog/">Andy Kirk</a></li>
<li><a href="https://eagereyes.org/">Robert Kosara</a></li>
<li><a href="http://flowingdata.com/">Nathan Yau</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<b><br /></b>
<b>Podcasts worth listening to:</b></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://datastori.es/">Data Stories</a></li>
<li><a href="https://policyviz.com/podcast/the-policyviz-podcast/">PolicyViz</a></li>
<li><a href="https://soundcloud.com/tableau-wannabe-podcast">Tableau Wannabe</a></li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>A Twitter list of people who provide Tableau and data visualization tips (featuring Ben Jones, Sophie Sparkes and Emily Kund):</b></div>
<div>
<div>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/goog_1136222536"><br /></a></div>
<div>
<a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/lists/dataviz-tips">https://twitter.com/chadskelton/lists/dataviz-tips</a></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-44614602929459394772017-03-30T09:23:00.000-07:002017-03-30T09:37:48.049-07:00A different way to think about "Data Storytelling"<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4E6WnunHC1c3_dQFuN1W7-QHN0KvqQm1KSpwjCO30I7zNEOwM31aOWNQiVbY2-6UziEnQMFxMfzwR_ZLvexN6bESOPQ35r1iPeGR61xBUAciZniJ_tNG_TQtc0RRNceV8lt2UygayeaI/s1600/newsstand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4E6WnunHC1c3_dQFuN1W7-QHN0KvqQm1KSpwjCO30I7zNEOwM31aOWNQiVbY2-6UziEnQMFxMfzwR_ZLvexN6bESOPQ35r1iPeGR61xBUAciZniJ_tNG_TQtc0RRNceV8lt2UygayeaI/s400/newsstand.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2010_newsstand_Seattle_USA_5086852888.jpg">John Henderson</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
John Schwabish wrote an <a href="https://policyviz.com/2017/03/24/more-story-references-and-resources/">interesting series</a> of blog posts last week on data storytelling.<br />
<br />
In the posts, John argues that we in the data visualization community are <a href="https://policyviz.com/2017/03/20/what-is-story/">overusing the term "story"</a> — applying it to all sorts of situations where we aren't really telling stories at all.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>People who work with and communicate data tend to throw around the words “story” and “data” a lot these days. We say all too regularly, “Let’s tell a story with these data” or “What story do these data tell us?” While it sounds good to say that we’re telling stories with our data, I think far too often, far too many of us are not applying the word story to data correctly.</i></blockquote>
In making his case, John defines a "story" the way many people do: as a <b><i>literary</i> <i>story</i></b>, one that follows a familiar <a href="https://policyviz.com/2017/03/21/story-structure/">story arc</a>, is emotional and which has a meaningful climax.<br />
<br />
I agree with John that — defined this way — a "story" is, indeed, a poor way of thinking about how we visualize and present data.<br />
<br />
But there is another type of story that I think <i><b>does</b></i> do a good job of describing the process of data analysis and visualization, and whose conventions and terminology can actually be quite helpful in getting people to think more deeply about how to make their data engaging and interesting.<br />
<br />
A <b><i>news story</i></b>.<br />
<br />
A <b><i>news story</i></b> is what I mean when I talk about telling stories with data — something I do quite a lot, from my blog tagline to my <a href="https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-29682050813?aff=blogpost">Tableau workshops</a> to the <a href="http://onlinemasters.jou.ufl.edu/audience-analytics/">"Data Storytelling" course</a> I'm teaching at the University of Florida this summer.<br />
<h2>
</h2>
<h2>
Why literary stories are a bad model for data visualization? (or where John and I agree)</h2>
John has already made an <a href="https://policyviz.com/2017/03/22/applying-data-story-structure/">excellent argument</a> for why — most of the time — a literary story is a poor model for the process of data analysis and visualization.<br />
<br />
Most data visualizations aren't emotional. They don't follow a typical literary story structure. They rarely have a "character" that we follow on a journey.<br />
<br />
In fact, I'd go one step further than John and argue that, not only is a <b><i>literary story</i></b> a poor model for thinking about data visualization, but that trying to make one's data fit a literary story arc can actually be quite dangerous.<br />
<br />
That's because the conventions of literary stories — cause and effect, climax, resolution, emotion — are often working at cross purposes to good data analysis.<br />
<br />
Let's take just one of the most basic rules given to all first-year stats students: Correlation does not imply causation.<br />
<br />
It's hard enough to remember this rule when looking at a scatterplot of two variables. It's a heck of a lot harder if that relationship is part of a "story" about the journey those two variables are on and the creator of the chart has worked really hard to make sure their visualization has some kind of dramatic "climax" that wows their audience.<br />
<br />
The goals of literary storytelling are also quite different from the goals of data analysis, which can distract us from our primary purpose of making sense of data.<br />
<br />
Fundamentally, the purpose of literary stories is to <b><i>entertain</i></b> and the teller of a fictional story has the luxury of making things up to ensure their story is as entertaining as possible.<br />
<br />
In contrast, the purpose of data analysis is usually to <b><i>inform</i></b> an audience and those visualizing data are limited to plain old facts.<br />
<br />
Those facts may not stir emotions, or fit into a satisfying story arc. And trying to make them fit that pattern — because someone has told you your data should "tell a story" — is often a distraction from figuring out what's most important in your data and communicating that message to others.<br />
<h2>
</h2>
<h2>
A better model: The news story</h2>
While a literary news story is a bad model for most forms of data visualization, thinking about data like a <b><i>news story</i></b> can actually be quite helpful, in my view.<br />
<br />
Like with data analysis, the purpose of a news story is primarily to <b><i>inform</i></b>, not to entertain. And, like with data analysis, the authors of news stories are limited to facts in constructing their story. They can't just make something up to make their story more exciting (or at least they can't without the risk of getting fired; see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Glass">Stephen Glass</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair">Jayson Blair</a>).<br />
<br />
Also, in my experience, the conventions and terminology of news stories can be a helpful way for those who work with data to think through how best to present their findings.<br />
<br />
I explored some of those conventions in a talk I gave last June at the Information Plus conference in Vancouver on "<a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2016/10/how-to-think-like-data-journalist-chad.html">How to think like a data journalist</a>".<br />
<br />
But, briefly, here are some <b><i>news story</i></b> conventions that I think those who work with data could learn from:<br />
<br />
<b>Headlines</b>: People have an annoying habit of giving their charts titles that <i><b>describe</b></i> their data rather than communicate the key takeaway message they want their audience to have. I tell my students to think of their chart titles like a headline: Don't hope your audience figures out what your message is on their own. Just tell them!<br />
<br />
Less:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYZ5zgULI7J_pEdMSpbiSAgj_m2Omq9FvNDIzHHEpfN0FQeRxJIiFbQkUXt9Rz6tsxGIIwb8Dr7CehIKvxSarvyC3jz7t5YXnL02QtN8WBPz8c3i6_TbiGG3aeiwaepzrEJt4_u0LoodI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-03-29+at+2.41.47+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYZ5zgULI7J_pEdMSpbiSAgj_m2Omq9FvNDIzHHEpfN0FQeRxJIiFbQkUXt9Rz6tsxGIIwb8Dr7CehIKvxSarvyC3jz7t5YXnL02QtN8WBPz8c3i6_TbiGG3aeiwaepzrEJt4_u0LoodI/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-03-29+at+2.41.47+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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More:<br />
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<b>Lead</b>: The lead is the first sentence of any news story. It's similar to a headline but serves a dual role. A lead should both communicate the most important information in your data and make the reader want to know more. I think leads are so important that I make all my students, whether journalism students or otherwise, come up with a lead at the earliest stages of their data visualization projects. Condensing one's analysis down to a single sentence forces you to make a choice about what really matters in your data. Once my students have a written lead, I get them to think through how they would translate that sentence into a chart that gets their key message across.<br />
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<b>Inverted Pyramid</b>: The inverted pyramid is the way that almost all journalists first learn how to write a news story. You start with the most important information at the top, and then move on to the next most important, and so on until you end your story with the least important facts. Writing stories in this way makes it easy for editors to chop a story for space at the last minute without needing to dramatically rewrite the whole thing. Inverted pyramid writing can be a bit boring — and most journalists eventually move away from it, at least in part — but it forces journalists to have a clear sense of the relative priority and importance of almost every fact in their story. Data analysts could learn something from this technique: Prioritizing their findings from most important to least important, even if they don't necessarily present their findings in that exact order.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyUa3F7d5yPS2M0SygaGZSYshhqdVbC3lg8QDWm4DSZDRkK7kQxapqdZXwj0aJcXBTBK8WouDDPT055GVrU7jSpKg3YOhOVc6_zKMMCgq3CTy1iFx6S-XeYepl-9Vl16JYTqtz1OS7ViU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-03-29+at+2.47.53+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyUa3F7d5yPS2M0SygaGZSYshhqdVbC3lg8QDWm4DSZDRkK7kQxapqdZXwj0aJcXBTBK8WouDDPT055GVrU7jSpKg3YOhOVc6_zKMMCgq3CTy1iFx6S-XeYepl-9Vl16JYTqtz1OS7ViU/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-03-29+at+2.47.53+PM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Credit: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)">Wikipedia</a></td></tr>
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<b>Making it personal</b>: I did a whole <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2015/03/video-of-chad-skeltons-talk-at-tapestry.html">Tapestry tal</a>k on this one, but in short, journalists are very good at framing a news story so it's directly relevant to the reader. In some cases this as simple as putting the word "you" in a headline but it can also involve charts or maps that allow readers to pinpoint the data that is of specific interest to them. My friend <a href="http://www.datarevelations.com/DR_TC2015_Dashboards.pdf">Steve Wexler has explored</a> how this principle can be applied in a business context: How does my salary compare to others in my organization? How do my store's sales measure up to others in my area?<br />
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<b>Real People</b>: John actually addresses this point quite well in the <a href="https://policyviz.com/2017/03/23/the-storytellers/">last post</a> in his series. For journalists, it's second nature to find the "real people" who help illustrate a data point. When I did a series on parking tickets in Vancouver, I <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/special+Super+keen+parking+officer+writes+tickets/1330700/story.html">profiled a gung-ho parking ticket officer</a> who hands out 60-70 tickets a day. For a series on bike thefts, I told the story of a bike that was stolen not once, but <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/news/More+bikes+stolen+Vancouver+than+cars/9230502/story.html">twice</a>. And for a series on low organ donation rates in immigrant communities, I <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Asian+British+Columbians+less+likely+organ+donors+with+video/9982403/story.html">profiled a South Asian woman</a> who waited a decade for a kidney. Those human stories bring the data to life — helping readers understand that the data is not an abstraction but a reflection of real things going on in the real world to real people. Like John, I think in some cases data analysts can make their data more engaging by finding the human stories that help to illustrate the figures. But in other cases, talking to people is important simply to better understand what's really going on with your data. If your data is showing sales are way down at one store, call up the manager and ask why. Data analysts need to step away from their spreadsheets every now and then and engage with the real world.<br />
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These conventions aside, one other advantage of thinking of data storytelling like a <b><i>news story</i></b> rather than a <b><i>literary story</i></b> is that there are different types of news stories.<br />
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<b>Feature stories</b> can often be quite similar to a literary story, with a clear narrative told from beginning to end, often featuring a key character.<br />
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But there are also <b>breaking news stories</b>, where the important thing is to communicate what's going on as quickly and concisely as possible. What would be the visualization equivalent of a breaking news story be? Maybe a Dashboard showing up-to-the-minute sales data.<br />
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There are also <b>explainers</b>, that pose a question that the journalist then tries to answer (i.e. "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/opinion/why-rural-america-voted-for-trump.html">Why did Rural America vote for Trump</a>?"). Explainers suck the audience in not through a traditional story arc but by posing a question that sparks curiosity. Explainers are perhaps one of the easiest fits for the work of data analysis and visualization, which is often motivated by seeking answers to specific questions ("What are our most profitable products?" "What's the connection between vaccination rates and measles outbreaks?").<br />
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There are other types of news stories. I won't list them all.<br />
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The point is that news stories cover a broader range of story structures than literary stories, which make them a better analogy for the work of data analysis, which has a variety of different purposes.<br />
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</h2>
<h2>
Why bother talking about data storytelling at all?</h2>
I hope I've made the case that, when we want to tell stories with data, thinking of those stories as <b><i>news stories</i></b> is more useful than thinking of them as <b><i>literary stories</i></b>. But why bother talking about data storytelling at all?<br />
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As John <a href="https://policyviz.com/2017/03/20/what-is-story/">argues</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>What I’m primarily focusing on here are the line charts, bar charts, area charts, and other charts that we all make every day to better understand our data, conduct our analysis, and share with the world. Even though we often say we’re telling data stories, with those kinds of charts we are not telling stories, but instead making a point or elucidating an argument.</i></blockquote>
I think there are at least two reasons why the focus on data storytelling can be helpful.<br />
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First, and most simply, the term <b><i>story</i></b> naturally makes one think about the audience: about who that story is being told <b><i>to</i></b>.<br />
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When it comes to data analysis and visualization, I think that's a good thing. Data analysts spent a lot of time with their data and it can be easy to get lost in the weeds and forget how foreign your figures will seem to someone coming to them fresh. Thinking about <b><i>telling stories with data</i></b> reminds you that you need to simplify your message so that it's easier for your audience to digest.<br />
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Even the terms data <b><i>analysis</i></b> and data <b><i>visualization</i></b> keep the focus on the <b><i>process</i></b>: Of analyzing the data or turning the data into charts, rather than explaining your data to others. Or as Jewel Loree said in her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiV7TnOMVWg">Tapestry talk</a> this year:<br />
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Using the term <b><i>story</i></b> is a good reminder that, at the end of the day, you have to communicate your findings to someone else and that will require you to think about who your audience is and what they need.<br />
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Second, I think there is a tendency in data visualization to put <b><i>way</i></b> too much data into your chart.<br />
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This is partly due to our own insecurities. Who hasn't had a boss ask them why this or that wasn't in their chart or presentation. So, just to be safe, we lean towards leaving stuff in so that no one can get mad at us for leaving it out.<br />
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Second, the tools that we use, with all their fancy interactivity and filters, make it easier than ever to show more data rather than less.<br />
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Excel, for all its many flaws, at least forced you to decide which static chart to build. With Tableau, you can create a Dashboard showing a half dozen views and then load it up with a half dozen filters. What I like to call: <b>Show Everything. Filter Everything By Everything.</b><br />
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News stories don't include every possible fact about what happened. The journalist makes a judgment call about which facts are most important and should be emphasized, how much background information is necessary for proper context, and which facts can safely be left out altogether.<br />
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Thinking about data as a <b><i>story</i></b> is an important counterweight to the dangerous tendency to include too much information in our visualizations and presentations.<br />
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<h2>
Final thoughts</h2>
I've tried to avoid dictionary definitions so far in this blog post but I don't think I can any longer.<br />
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John <a href="https://policyviz.com/2017/03/22/applying-data-story-structure/">argues</a> people are using the word <b><i>story</i></b> too broadly:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I think most of us are using the word story as it applies to anything we are trying to communicate with data; we are using that word too flippantly and too carelessly. One could argue that we in the data visualization field can come up with our own definition of story, but that’s simply changing the definition to meet our needs. Plus, I don’t think that’s how many people view it—they see visualizing data as a way to tell a story, but it rarely is a story.</i></blockquote>
I frankly think John's definition is too narrow. And it's not one shared by most dictionary definitions of the word I could find (<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/story">Merriam-Webster</a>, <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/story">Oxford</a>). Indeed, most dictionaries define story in a pretty broad way, encompassing everything from news articles to gossip to novels.<br />
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If people always meant <b><i>literary stories</i></b> when they talked about data storytelling, I'd be worried. As I've already explained, in most cases, I think trying to make your data fit a traditional story arc will be distracting at best and dangerous at worst.<br />
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But, as John rightly points out, people <b><i>aren't</i></b> using the term data storytelling to mean telling a traditional literary story with data. Rather, they're using the term in a much looser, vaguer way. For me, telling a story with data means telling something like a news story. For someone else, it may mean recounting their personal experience with a dataset.<br />
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John seems to think this vagueness is a bad thing. But I disagree.</div>
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I think when people talk about data storytelling they're really being aspirational.</div>
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They know data can be dry and boring and they want to find a way to present their findings in a way that grabs their audience's attention.</div>
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They use the term <b><i>story</i></b> because they know people get excited and engaged by stories and — in a perfect world — that's how they want people to respond to their data, too.</div>
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I get that, for some in the data visualization community, "data storytelling" has become a bit of a cliche: a meaningless phrase that people like to throw around without really thinking it through.</div>
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But I think when most people say they want to <b><i>tell a story with data</i></b>, what they really mean is that they want to find a way for their data to have more meaning and impact.<br />
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And that's something we should all want to encourage.</div>
Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-59830394053663456412016-12-07T11:01:00.000-08:002016-12-07T11:01:06.294-08:00My next Tableau Training workshop is Feb. 22-23, 2017<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My next <a href="https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-29682050813?aff=blogpost">two-day public Tableau training workshop</a> will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 22nd and Thursday, Feb. 23rd at SFU Harbour Centre. You can buy tickets <a href="https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/tableau-training-telling-stories-with-data-tickets-29682050813?aff=blogpost">here</a> or by clicking the button below:</div>
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Here are some <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/workshops.html">testimonials</a> from people who've attended my earlier training sessions.</div>
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If you can't make this workshop but would like to be alerted when the next one is scheduled, just <a href="http://chadskelton.us14.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=f77761916f1d313badb1dc5da&id=7b3df945be">add your name here</a>.</div>
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If you have several people at your organization who need training in Tableau, I'm also available for <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/p/excel-and-tableau-training-in-vancouver.html">onsite training</a>.</div>
<br />Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6083825495664061008.post-67586058360797386822016-11-10T17:14:00.000-08:002016-11-13T08:22:41.588-08:00TC16: My Favourite Tableau Conference 2016 sessions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Well, <a href="http://tc16.tableau.com/">TC16</a> -- my very first Tableau conference -- is now officially over.<br />
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As a bit of an introvert, I frankly found the sheer size of the conference -- and the crazy <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23DataNightOut&src=typd">Data Night Out party</a> -- a little bit intimidating. Before now, the biggest conference I'd ever attended was NICAR at 1,000 attendees. This conference had <b style="font-style: italic;">13,000 </b>people<b style="font-style: italic;">.</b><br />
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But I also learned a lot and got to meet a lot of people who, before now, I only knew through Twitter.<br />
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I also attended some great sessions, which I thought I'd note here since Tableau is going to make <a href="http://tclive.tableau.com/SignUp">recordings of all the sessions</a> available in the coming days.<br />
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I'm also hoping others might share what <i>their</i> favourite sessions were -- either on <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton">Twitter</a> or in the comments -- so I have a cheat sheet when I start making my way through the hundreds of recordings.<br />
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So, in no particular order, here's a list of my favourite sessions, with a couple of notes on each:<br />
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<b><a href="http://tc16.tableau.com/learn/sessions/5711">50 Tips in 50 Minute</a> with Andy Kriebel and Jeffrey Shaffer.</b><br />
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<div>
Exactly what it says on the tin: a load of great Tableau tips in rapid-fire succession. I love sessions like this as, even if one tip isn't helpful to you, the next one will be. This one will require re-watching to catch some of the specifics of how to implement each tip. But I easily came away from this session with dozens of time-saving tricks and ways to make my work in Tableau better.</div>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
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80+ <a href="https://twitter.com/tableau">@Tableau</a> tips for the price of 50! Thanks <a href="https://twitter.com/VizWizBI">@VizWizBI</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/HighVizAbility">@HighVizAbility</a>! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/data16?src=hash">#data16</a> <a href="https://t.co/nIF2UUfEKJ">https://t.co/nIF2UUfEKJ</a></div>
— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/796066892477763584">November 8, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<div>
I was hoping to make the similar-titled <a href="http://tc16.tableau.com/learn/sessions/8442">Rapid Fire Tips & Tricks</a> with Daniel Hom and Dustin Smith but it was the only session of the conference I was turned away from because of lack of space. Will definitely be watching that one on video.<br />
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<a href="http://tc16.tableau.com/learn/sessions/8358"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><b>The Visual Design Tricks Behind Great Dashboard</b></a><b>s with Andy Cotgreave</b><br />
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I was <a href="https://twitter.com/EngageTheo/status/788419947152089088">told</a> Andy Cotgreave's sessions were not to be missed and that was good advice. This was a great conceptual talk about how to think about ways to make your Tableau Dashboards more engaging and easier to read.<br />
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A lot of Andy's advice in the talk is similar to what I tell my students (like making sure your title actually says something interesting). But there was also a lot of advice that hadn't occurred to me that I can put into use. And he had a fun <a href="https://www.perceptualedge.com/about.php">Few</a>-<a href="https://twitter.com/infobeautiful">McCandless</a> data viz continuum with Alberto Cairo right in the sweet spot.<br />
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It wouldn't be a data conference without an <a href="https://twitter.com/albertocairo">@albertocairo</a> reference (from <a href="https://twitter.com/acotgreave">@acotgreave</a>) <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Data16?src=hash">#Data16</a> <a href="https://t.co/pUaatxHrGO">pic.twitter.com/pUaatxHrGO</a></div>
— Chad Skelton (@chadskelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton/status/796094733466664960">November 8, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<b><a href="http://tc16.tableau.com/learn/sessions/3478">Visualizing Survey Data 2.0</a> with Steve Wexler</b><br />
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Steve Wexler has published a <a href="http://www.datarevelations.com/visualizing-survey-data">heap of great resources</a> on how to visualize survey data in Tableau and this talk had some really useful updates on some new tricks he's developed -- including using a "Dual Pivot" to allow you to visualize demographic data more quickly and how to deal with situations where you have too few respondents to a given question. Great stuff.<br />
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<b><a href="http://tc16.tableau.com/learn/speakers/1872">Sealed with a KISS-Embracing Simplicity in Data Visualization</a> with Chris Love</b><br />
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At a conference where a lot of people were showing off all sorts of intricate, complicated graphics, Chris Love's talk was a helpful reminder that the simplest charts can sometimes be the most effective. In one of the talk's more powerful moments, Chris took a beautiful, but hard to read, Sankey diagram and remade it live as a series of simple bar charts that actually told the story of the data much more clearly.
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A great way to start thinking simple is to design for mobile first. <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisLuv">@ChrisLuv</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Data16?src=hash">#Data16</a> <a href="https://t.co/Cr9Va1Mmic">pic.twitter.com/Cr9Va1Mmic</a></div>
— Matt Lee (@ariaofgrace) <a href="https://twitter.com/ariaofgrace/status/796762311071584256">November 10, 2016</a></blockquote>
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I've <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisLuv/status/796776436996698113">asked Chris</a> to please do more of these "Simple Makeovers", starting with a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2012/may/08/gay-rights-united-states">complicated Guardian chart</a> he showed during his talk. He seems game, which I think would help more people see the value of keeping things simple. <b>UPDATE (Nov. 13)</b>: True to his word, Chris has already updated the Guardian chart as a small multiple hex map! And then as a second version, too!<br />
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A <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TableauKISS?src=hash">#TableauKISS</a> for <a href="https://twitter.com/guardian">@guardian</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/dataviz?src=hash">#dataviz</a> Gay Rights by US State as requested by <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton">@chadskelton</a> after my <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/data16?src=hash">#data16</a> talk <a href="https://t.co/nlTFeJriI6">https://t.co/nlTFeJriI6</a> <a href="https://t.co/hVAIpMoe2q">pic.twitter.com/hVAIpMoe2q</a></div>
— Chris Love (@ChrisLuv) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisLuv/status/797785588057382912">November 13, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Actually I think I prefer this newer version as it shows regional differences and allows comparison <a href="https://t.co/rENUvHqqvJ">https://t.co/rENUvHqqvJ</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TableauKISS?src=hash">#TableauKISS</a> <a href="https://t.co/frkBgtLHA3">pic.twitter.com/frkBgtLHA3</a></div>
— Chris Love (@ChrisLuv) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisLuv/status/797832291166945280">November 13, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<b><a href="http://tc16.tableau.com/learn/sessions/8381">Advanced Mark Types: Going Beyond Bars and Lines</a> with Ben Neville and Kevin Taylor</b><br />
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This is kind of the anti-talk to Chris Love's presentation. Ben and Kevin went through several cool chart types -- like lollipop charts and hex tile maps -- that aren't in Tableau's built-in "Show Me" menu but can be created with a bit of fiddling in Tableau. Most of the chart types were actually useful, rather than just being show-offy -- and, in some cases, they looked pretty easy to implement. I know I'm planning to use lollipop charts a lot more in my work now.<br />
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<b><a href="http://tc16.tableau.com/learn/sessions/8436">Cross Database Joins: The Unexpected Solution to Tough Analytic Problems</a> with Alex Ross and Bethany Lyons</b><br />
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This was the one and only "Jedi" session I attended and, I'll confess, I only went because I got turned away from the Rapid Fire Tips session I mentioned earlier.<br />
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The material in this session went by really quickly and a lot of it was over my head. But it's a testament to Bethany Lyons' infectious enthusiasm that this session made me want to learn more about how I could "create more data" use cross-database joins to solve gnarly data problems. And she did such a good job of explaining what she was doing that I feel I actually got the conceptual gist of this talk even if I'll have to re-watch the talk in slo-mo to get all the steps.<br />
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In the <a href="https://soundcloud.com/tableau-wannabe-podcast/ep65-data16-preview-panel">TC16 preview podcast</a> I mentioned in an <a href="http://www.chadskelton.com/2016/11/tc16-preview-what-im-looking-forward-to.html">earlier post</a>, pretty much everyone was raving about Bethany as their favourite speaker and now I can see why. (Alex Ross also did a great job summarizing the key concepts.)<br />
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Unfortunately, there were a lot of sessions I was hoping to make but didn't, because I was tied up in hands-on training, like <a href="http://tc16.tableau.com/learn/sessions/3488">Busting the DataViz Myths</a> with Matt Francis, <a href="http://tc16.tableau.com/learn/sessions/3499">Data Journalism: Creating Awesome News Graphics in Tableau</a> with Robert Kosara and <a href="http://tc16.tableau.com/learn/sessions/8332">New Ways to Visualize Time</a> with Andy Cotgreave.<br />
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Speaking of hands-on training, I was really impressed with the calibre of the instructors in all the hands-on training sessions I attended and the quality of the materials (including, for each session, a "web workbook" that you can refer back to at your own speed with all the problems and solutions in it).<br />
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So those are my favourite sessions from TC16. What are yours? Please let me know in the comments below or by sending me a note on <a href="https://twitter.com/chadskelton">Twitter</a>.<br />
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<i>Note: Tableau is paying for some of my conference-related expenses.</i></div>
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Chad Skeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16986292503424513742noreply@blogger.com3