A recent profile of mathematician-turned-geneticist Philip Green is a good-read introduction to bio-informatics, and bio-informatics just might produce some methodologies journalists can use to validate public records databases.

* Using a detailed computational model, [researchers] found
that some kinds of [genetic] mutations occur at constant rates, like the
ticking of a clock, which makes them useful for dating evolutionary events.
Other kinds of mutations occur at varying rates de-pending on the generation
times of the organism. This information in turn makes it much easier to identify
parts of the genome that exhibit different patterns of change over time,
indicating that the DNA in those regions is subject to selection and therefore
playing a functional role. The idea, says Green, is to separate the noise of
meaningless changes in DNA so that the signals of consequential changes emerge
clearly from the background.” 
Journalists could look at which elements are changed in a data base and
how often as a clue for the importance of the data base and the
relative importance of various elements.

* “The main issue [in biology and genomics] is how
quantitative we’re going to be able to get,” [Green] says. “Most people will
accept the idea that we will know qualitatively how things are interacting with
each other. But what you really want is a quantitative result, so that you can
change the levels of one component and predict how it will affect the system.”

*  “Back then, [says a colleague of Green’s] we wondered if
there was a need for mathematics in biology. In the mid-1980s, there weren’t a
lot of data. Biology was about analyzing the notes in your lab book.

   
“In
the last 20 years, biology has become dominated by huge data sets. Now it’s an
exception rather than the rule to publish a paper that does not draw on large
databases of biological information. Mathematical analysis has become a
funda-mental part of biological research. It has turned out to be of equal
importance to experimentation.”

Take a look at the article.  It suggests some parallels of investigation for analytic journalism.

We agree, there can be many reasons not to run a map in the IoP
(Ink-on-Paper) version of a newspaper.  And maps are sometimes run
more as a graphic element in the page design than as a tool to tell a
story in a better way.  (Although this seems to happen less as
“design and information consciousness” has percolated through
journalism thanks to organizations like the Society for News Design.)  
Still, if a decision is made to use a map, then that graphic should
add to the readers' understanding of usually complex data.




Last week, the Palm Beach [Florida] Post
carried a map showing the home county of U.S. troops killed in Iraq. 
The problem is, the KIA map shows the number killed without taking into
account the size of the population from which those troops were
recruited.  Is there a better way?  Of course, and the folks in the newsroom trenches had produced one: a map showing
the KIA's relative to the population of the county where the soldiers
were from.  This one, of course, supplies some of the appropriate
context.  The problem was, the editors decided to publish the
traditional-but-misleading map. 



Sigh.

Here is another on the same topic:
* http://www.obleek.com/iraq/index.html

We're pleased that the PBS program “Frontline” is keeping up the good fight to produce important journalism.  And thanks to the Librarian's Index to the Internet for pointing us to:



Private Warriors

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/

Subjects: Government contractors — United States | Public contracts — United States | Private security services | United States — Armed Forces — Management | New this week


Created by je – last updated Jul 6, 2005

Be sure to drill down to the section, “Does Privatization Save Money.”  A nice example of a reporter asking the right questions.

One
of the foundational cross-over disciplines we think are of value to
journalists is Forensic Accounting, at least that's the term used when
applied in business.  (It's “performance measurement” when talking
about government.)



One of
the basic measurements in forensic accounting is to compare the percent
of dollar distribution by type or sector in one instution to the
percent of dollar distribution in a comparable institution.  So it
is that we were please to see Glen Justice dipping into the forensic
accountants toolbox in Wednesday's NYTimes in his story “For a Lobbyist, Seat of Power Came With a Plate.”  The story is about how lobbyist, and Tom Delay pal, Jack Abramoff apparently used his own restaurant in Washington, Signatures, as a place to meet and greet legislators.  He just forgot to give them a check.



Justice wrote:

“…While Signatures was popular, it struggled to make money, according to employees and documents.

'Mr. Abramoff and his companies invested more than $3 million in
Signatures from January 2002 to May 2003, records show. At the same
time, he and his employees gave away tens of thousands of dollars in
food, wine and liquor, the records show. That includes menu prices for
Mr. Abramoff's own food and drink, as well as employee discounts and
free meals given by restaurant managers and staff, according to the
records. Nationwide, the median expense for marketing, including free
meals and drinks, was about 3.5 percent of sales for expensive
restaurants like Signatures that spend the most on such promotions,
according to the National Restaurant Association. One national
restaurant consultant, Clark Wolf, said the figure can go as high as 5
percent.

'At Signatures, free meals and drinks for managers and guests alone
were about 7 percent of revenues for the restaurant's first 17 months,
according to former employees and financial records. Mr. Blum, the
spokesman for Mr. Abramoff, disputed that percentage.”

Seems
like pretty basic reporting, but more reporters would do well to make
that one more call if they want to establish context in their stories.

Using traffic flow data and models to demonstrate simulation modeling
as a learning tool seems to be akin to the Bunsen burner, i.e. a
fundamental implement everyone uses.  The Wall Street Journal
science section reports this:

We
don't read every newspaper in the U.S. or the world every day, so our
survey of the news media's infographics is, shall we say, a bit
flawed.  That said, we continue to be impressed by the ability of
the NY Times infographic team to consistently come up with ways of
showing a variety of concepts. 



There's a 250-year tradition
of illustrating quantitative data, but taking concepts and turning them
into quantitative is more recent.  Yesterday, the NYT gang worked
its magic on the issue of Sandra Day O'Connor and her votes as a
justice. 



Check out:

“Levels of Agreement” and “A Crucial Swing Vote.”

Journalists, cops and PIs do, essentially, the same thing, just for different audiences.  Tamara Thompson, a licensed private investigator in California, describes her areas of interest as:

“INTERNET: Researching internet news, company background, products and personal profiles.


ADOPTION: Locate any birth parent or child who was born in California, then given up for adoption.


BACKGROUND: I develop deep background on companies and individuals
related to personal habits, interests, activity, assets, business,
political and social associations, employment, litigation and, business
reputation and business ownership.”

That said, her blog, PI News Link, is a good, new resource related to public records.