HUMBER DATA JOURNALISM TRAINING – Oct 29-30 and Nov 5-6

David McKie
1-613-290-7380 (cell)
Email: davidmckiec@gmail.com

David and Fred are co-authors of
“The Data Journalist: Getting the Story“

David, Fred, Rob Cribb and Dean Jobb are co-authors of
Digging Deeper Third Edition

David McKie and Jim Bronskill are co-authors of
Your Right To Know: How to Use the Law to
Get Government Secrets

The aim of the Excel, Tableau and ArcGIS training sessions is to allow you to become proficient enough to use these tools to help make sense out of simple data sets.

Excel

Though Google Sheets has many advantages, Excel is superior, especially for its ability to handle larger datasets.

What you will learn:

Finding and assessing open-data portals and Statistics Canada
Downloading data from open-data portals
Devising a checklist when first looking at the data in Excel
Filtering, sorting, simple functions
Pivot table

Tableau

There are many visualization programs. For instance, DataWrapper has become the program of choice, especially now that Google’s Fusion Tables has been consigned to history’s dust bin. That being said, Tableau has many advantages over many of its competitors, especially the ability to create interactive dashboards with just a few mouse-clicks.

What you will learn.

How to import Excels files into Tableau.
How to create simple charts.
How to create an interactive dashboard.
How to export and embed your visualization.

Video Tutorial

Video one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urk-XR05bg4&feature=youtu.be

PDF Tutorial

Tutorial one: Using Tableau to Visualize COVID_updated.pdf

Practice Data

Dataset for Tableau Practice Session: The Public Agency of Canada’s COVID-19 DATA with a cleaned up date column

Additional Tutorials

Getting data into Tableau:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrt8hyOaZRI

Working with data:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7nuVSsXWeM

Building dashboards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es50LH0Pbiw

Datasets

One

ArcGIS Online

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is the need to see where trends are happening. An event’s location conveys crucial information such as an outbreak in a low-income neighborhood or farm with temporary foreign workers, or how the vote counts are progressing in the hotly contested U.S. presidential election.

As long as you have data with geographic information such as longitude and latitude and a layer that contains boundaries such as neighborhoods, health or electoral districts, mapping becomes much easier than you think. As they say, sometimes seeing is believing.

We will be learning ArcGIS Online, Esri Canada’s power geospatial cloud-based platform, a space where you can make maps to visualize trends, collaborate and map.

What you will learn

How to assess the value of datasets and shape files with geographic coordinates that can be mapped.
How to import Excel tables and shape files.
How to create colour schemes for your map.
How to configure pop-up menus and use special markers like stick pins to identify key locations.
How to export and embed your map.

PDF Tutorials

ArcGIS PDF tutorial_part one_updated.pdf

ArcGIS PDF Tutorial two – Creating thematic maps.pdf

Resources

Each of the first three sessions will be set up with an instructional video and a tutorial that will be uploaded to this site a day in advance. Ideally, that should give you time to download and watch the tutorial and use the accompanying handout to repeat the steps you’ve just learned using live data. Our live sessions will cover much of the same ground, answer questions and explore further ways the data can be analysed. The ArcGIS Online tutorials will only be in PDF format.

Since we are still in the middle of a pandemic, we will be using related datasets from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and because you are in Toronto, the Toronto Public Health and the accompanying neighbourhood boundary file.

The Data Journalist is a textbook that I co-authored with University of King’s College professor Fred Vallance-Jones. The book is a handy reference for your library, which contains chapters on spreadsheets, data visualizations and mapping. If you want to ensure you have a copy in time for our sessions, you can download The Data Journalist e-book. You’ll need a Kobo device or reader (reader available free for Android, iOS, Mac and PC).

Attached to each of the textbook’s chapter are tutorials that contain many of the exercises we will be using.

Additional ArcGIS resources

Introduction to ArcGIS Online
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/0bdde1dc046541b6af8b4d3a528491ca

Sharing your maps
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/69d5030927764b23ba19cd0cb8b922d0

ArcGIS StoryMaps
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/1fe82b574bcd4f07a9c803bb42067652

Learn ArcGIS
https://learn.arcgis.com/en/gallery/#?t=path&p=agol

ESRI Canada Media Program
https://cdn-mediaprogram.maps.arcgis.com/home/index.html

Getting Started with ArcGIS Developer Subscription
for Journalism Students
http://www.davidmckie.com/IntroArcGISOnline_media.pdf

ArcGIS Online Tutorial
http://www.davidmckie.com/ArcGISOnline_tutorial-FINAL.pdf

Open Data Portals

A list of open-data portals
http://www.davidmckie.com/open-data-portals/

Statistics Canada

To obtain the Statistics Canada tutorial on using data tables, please click here.

StatCan release schedules

Statistics Canada’s data tables

Canadian economic growth cools to 1.2% in August
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-economy-gdp-august-1.5783102

Gross domestic product by industry, August 2020
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/201030/dq201030a-eng.htm?HPA=1

Police-reported crime increases in 2019
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/201029/dq201029a-eng.htm?HPA=1

Incident-based crime statistics, by detailed violations, police services in Ontario
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3510018001

Statistics Canada said it will collect race-based crime data
https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2020/07/15/statistics-canada-said-it-will-collect-race-based-crime-data/

Population estimates, July 1, by census metropolitan area and census agglomeration, 2016 boundaries
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv.action?pid=1710013501

Population estimates on July 1st, by age and sex
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710000501

Canadian Statistical Geospatial Explorer
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/2020010/71-607-x2020app-eng.htm

Census Profile, 2016 Census
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm?Lang=E

Population estimates, July 1, by census metropolitan area and census agglomeration, 2016 boundaries

2016 Census – Boundary files
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/geo/bound-limit/bound-limit-2016-eng.cfm

Gross Domestic Product by Industry – National (Monthly) (GDP)

Retail trade sales by province and territory (x 1,000)

Gross domestic product (GDP) at basic prices, by industry, monthly (x 1,000,000)

Statistics Canada’s incident-based crime statistics by detailed violations data