President's Dream Colloquium on Engaging Big Data

Opening and Introduction
00:06 – Opening remarks by Peter Chow-White
1:40 –  Introducing Chad Skelton by Catherine Murray

Chad Skelton’s Talk
5:43 – Introduction
6:10 –  Data Journalism: Common Associations

Examples of Data Journalism Stories
6:19 -  New York Times – Impact of the digital revolution on jobs
6:55 – New York Time’s visualization shows the impact of changes on newspapers jobs
7:04 – Wall Street Journal data visualization - “Infectious Diseases and the Impact of Vaccines”.  Rate of measles infections across the states before and after the measles vaccine was introduced
7:29 – New Scientist - “Your Warming World”. Locations in the world according to changes in temperature

Expanding on the definition of Data Journalism
7:51  - Potential of Data Journalism.  Answers that data journalism provide and which regular journalism doesn’t: An Answer and Your Answer.
8:38  - Scientific Approach versus Journalistic Approach. How does Data Journalism change this dynamic.
9:52 – couple important caveats of Data Journalism: the world is complex and data isn’t perfect

Examples of questions Data Journalism can/cannot answer
10.35 - Case with the crime rate in Surrey
11:58 - The impact of new rules introduced by the city of Vancouver in the potshots across the city
12:59 –The probability of car owners (white versus black) to be searched by the police
13:57 – Remark by Chad: Data Journalism can provide “your answer”. Tailored made answers to the users
14:28 – Violations in daycare story in Metro Vancouver (questions unanswered)
16:10 – Special Needs and Second Language Students by Vancouver Sun
16:57 – Housing Affordability in Metro Vancouver by Vancouver Sun
17:53 – “Dollars for Docs” project: Payment that Pharmaceutical Companies make to doctors
18:20 – “How fast is LAFD where you live”
18:34 –  Locations of Starbucks:  An example of “fun” Data Journalism
20:19 – “Up Close on Baseball’s Borders” visualization

“Nitty gritty” of Data Journalism

20:40 – Conceptualizing data journalism as a tool, rather than type of Journalism.
21:09 – What drives data journalism in the light of recent changes? 1) More Data 2) More Tools
21:27 – Chad remarks about the opportunities for any citizen can engage with data
22:07 – “More Data” – the first factor that drives data journalism.
22:22 -  Strategies for acquiring data
24:36 –  Example of strategy in practice: BC ambulance service.

Examples: Stories that did not require complex data acquisition
28:05 – “Income based on your attributes”.
30:22 – “Commuting Patterns” visualization.
31:04 – “Are you Over the Hill?” visualization
31:32 – “Popularity of Baby Names” visualization

Where to Acquire Data: Sources for Open Data
32:11 – Open data. Chad guides us through the sources for open data
32:50 - Stat Can website. National Household Survey – how to access the open source dataset
37:36 – How to download datasets using different formats. Introducing IVT file format opened by the program Beyond 20/20
40:45 – Chad provides a link to all open data resources that he talked about (bit.ly/sfuopendata)
40:50 – types of files to work with data. XLS, XLSX, XSV, TSV. Geography files (KML, SHP, (SHP,SHX,DBF)
42:46 – CANSIM datasets – crime data, business data

Data Visualization Tools

46:47 – Introduction to data visualization tools
47:51 – List of visualization tools
48:18 – Data wrapper
51:09 -  Tableau public
53:30 – Fusion Table

Question Time
57:46 – Fred introduces Question Time
58:01 – Question from Mandy on the validity and integrity of datasets used as a source for the articles
1:01:04 – Question from Ann on the future of data journalism and internet of things
1:03:33 – A joined question by host students Mandy and Ann
1:04:58 – Fred Popovich remarks

Questions from the Audience
1:06:28 – Q1: What tool that is possible missing and would be useful in working with data.
1:08:30 – Q2: Considering that journalism is in decline and newspapers are struggling , what role will data journalism play in this context? What disadvantage would citizen-journalist face from not being affiliated with newspapers?
1:12:03 – remarks by Catherine Murray
1:13:38 – remark by Carla Graebner, librarian for Data services and Government Information at SFU.
1:14:49 – Q3: Tools for handling data and visualizing networks.
1:15:57 – Q4:  On questions that should be asked when there is a lack of good data. How to ask those questions?
1:17:42 – Q5: How to deal with literacy issue in terms of visualizations and data analysis?
1:19:26 – Q6: On working with statistics from the journalistic perspective (average, standard deviation).
1:22:25 – Q7: Ethical Dimension in working with and presenting data (in the light of Chad’s presentation on special needs kids)

Final Remarks
1:25:13- Closing remarks by Catherine Murray
1:25:24 – Presenting a gift to Chad Skelton
1:25:58 – Final remarks by Fred Popovich and announcement on Edward Snowden’s lecture and final presentations by the students