Lots of media houses today take advantage of the power of Google in Fusing Tables to create interactive maps of data. It helps web viewers gain insight into information available on the map by fusing a geographical border file and data organized by those same geographical units. » Read more
DataWrapper is an online tool that helps anyone to create embeddable charts in minutes. The main advantages of using data wrapper are:
a) It is easy to use. It saves on time needed to create an embeddable chart.
b) User has full control. It is free software. You can choose to use their online hosted server or download and install on your PC.
c) It is easy to customize. Users can customize layout, fonts and colors to match their website. » Read more
A new report from UNICEF identifies Kenya among the top two countries, along with Central African Republic, in reducing the prevalence of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). While Kenya is a leader, the data also reveals that remaining victims are younger, more severely brutalized and isolated to a few ethnic communities in rural areas.
1. Go to www.geocommons.com and search Kenya_counties and download the file in KML format onto your desktop.Open Gmail. Open Google Drive. Click “Create” and select “Fusion Table.” Upload the KLM file you just downloaded . Click “Next.” And “Next.” And “Finish.” » Read more
There is no greater joy for a mentor than seeing his or her mentees blossom and develop confidence. I was pleasantly surprised when the five Internews data journalism fellows who only a few weeks ago were reluctant to analyze and find stories in data volunteered do a post mortem on the coverage of the preliminary report of the second Kenya AIDS Indicator Survey (KAIS 2012), a day after it was released.
If you are a woman living in an urban area, there is news for you. Pay more attention if you happen to be living in a town in Nyanza region and you have completed secondary education. » Read more
Data visualization is the presentation of data in a graphical or pictorial format. Because of the way the human brain works, in processing information, it is faster for the human brain to understand many data points when they are displayed in visuals (charts or graphs) rather than going through many spreadsheets or pages and pages of reports. Let’s say for example you have thousands of spreadsheet reports that you need to understand in a short time to make a decision that is informed by the data. To make that data-informed decision, you need visualization. » Read more
Simple visualizations make large amounts of data easy to understand at a glance, allowing readers to engage more directly with the data. Choropleth maps are an iconic example of presenting data using colour intensity to illustrate prevalence rates. For example, blue signifies the high chance a child raised in the bottom fifth rose to the top fifth while red shows low chances.
But the process of making these maps is not straight-forward for non-developers. The journalist needs to evaluate the amount of detail given and whether the designer followed these steps in deciding what data to include in the map. » Read more
A pivot table can be used to quickly summarize and analyze data in a worksheet. Pivot tables have functionality including sort, count, and total and can even be used to create another table to display the summarized data. Pivot tables are an alternative to functions or formulas in Excel e.g. SUMIF, COUNTIF. Pivot tables can help to quickly change the views to explore your data. » Read more