Homework and Project Assignments

Learning to use spreadsheets for organizing your non-numerical data and for sane crowdsourcing.

Ask the FBI what they have on the famous and deceased.

Pick 5 data stories from a wide selection, write five short summaries

Use pivot tables to summarize San Francisco crime data

Use pivot tables to compare year-over-year crime data

A introduction to moving around SQL and exporting the data to a visualization.

Practice SQL and find out more about your name using the Social Security Administration's baby name data

Combine several kinds of spatial and boundary data in QGIS to make a map that shows both points and gradients

A warm-up, self-contained exercise on all the SQL Joins you'll need to know for the more real-world exercise.

A hands-on exploration using SQL to learn about Medicare data and controversial practices in Medicare billing, as well as to appreciate the Wall Street Journal's Pulitzer Prize winning data investigation.

Combine your database and data visualization skills to find, filter, analyze, and visualize data as a publishable package for the web.

Research other FOIA requests, get inspired, and send out 5 to agencies relevant to your beat/thesis so that you have something to look forward to in the new year.