Here
at the IAJ we believe one of the reasons people come to newspapers or
broadcast stations is to get the data which, upon analysis, they can
turn into information that helps them make decisions.  Ergo, the
more meaningful data a journalistic institution can provide, the
greater value that institution has for a community.



A good example arrived today thanks to Tara Calishain, creator of ResearchBuzz.  She writes:

** Getcher Cheap Gas Prices on Google Maps

<http://www.researchbuzz.org/getcher_cheap_gas_prices_on_google_maps.shtml>



“Remember
when I was saying that I would love a Gasbuddy / Google Maps mashups
that showed cheap gas prices along a trip route?   Turns out
somebody has already done it —  well, sorta. You can specify a
state, city  (only selected cities are available) and 
whether you're looking for regular or diesel  fuel. Check it out
at  http://www.ahding.com/cheapgas/ “

Would readers appreciate this sort of data?  We think so,
especially if there was an online sign-up and the news provider would
deliver the changing price info via e-mail or IM much like Travelocity
tells us when airline ticket prices change by TK dollars.

Regional Economic Models Inc. cordially invites you to join us on June 7th for a teleconference regarding Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC). 
On Friday May 13th Department of Defense released Recommendations to
the BRAC commission. We feel that a discussion of BRAC studies and
analysis methods would be helpful to a number of communities:



Topics to be discussed include:

– Demographic effects of active military, reservists, & dependents.

– Migration effects of re-alignment or closures.

– Dynamic effects of government spending over time.

– The Impacts of lost or reduced civilian contracts.

– Previous BRAC studies using the REMI model.

– Other topics by REMI Guest Speakers.



A
presentation will be sent out before the call in order to direct and
facilitate discussion. There will be two teleconferences taking place
on the 7th, one at 10am, one at 4pm  EST, hosted by Frederick
Treyz and Jonathan Lee.



There is
no fee for participation, but space is limited.  If you are
planning on joining us or would like to participate in the discussion
please respond to this e-mail, register online at www.remi.com or
contact us by phone at (413) 549-1169.



We look forward to speaking with you in June!



Yours truly,

Frederick Treyz, Ph.D.

Chief Executive Officer

Regional Economic Models, Inc.

306 Lincoln Ave.

Amherst, MA 01002

T. 413-549-1169

F. 413-549-1038

Fredtreyz@remi.com

www.remi.com

The
power of good infographics is that they can greatly aid in the 
upstream aspects of  journalism — providing insight for
journalists to understand what's happening with a particular phenomena
— and then downstream, to help journalists tell the story and for the
audience to understand it.



The Digital Revolution has upped the ante far beyond what good ol' Leonardo was using and envisioning.  One of the innovators in today's datasphere is Alexander Tsiaras.  A recent story in Digital Journal has this to say about Tsiaras's company, Anatomical Travelogue:



“Digital Journal — At ideaCity04, one presenter was so overflowing with
information that host Moses Znaimer had to enter stage right and
patiently sit beside him, a silent reminder to wrap it up. But you
couldn’t ask Alexander Tsiaras to gloss over the wonders of the human
body, from blood flow to cell mutation.

In 2003, his book of images of fetal development, From Conception to Birth, sold 150,000 copies and his latest work is Part Two of this fantastic voyage, The Architecture and Design of Man and Woman. For a chapter on sex, Tsiaras even scanned an employee doing the deed with his girlfriend — all in the name of science.”

Jump into the study of epidemiology with Prof. David Kleinbaum and Prof. Nancy Barker in the online course “Fundamentals of Epidemiology” at statistics.com June 10 – July 15.  Using their electronic textbook “ActiveEpi”, this introductory course emphasizes the underlying  concepts andmethods of epidemiology. Topics covered  include: study designs (clinical trials, cohort studies,  case-control studies, and cross-sectional studies),  measures of disease frequency and effect.



Dr. Kleinbaum, professor at Emory University, is internationally known for his textbooks in statistical and epidemiologic methods and also as an outstanding teacher.  He is the author of “Epidemiologic Research-Principles and Quantitative Methods”, “Logistic Regression- A Self-Learning Text”, and “Survival  Analysis- A Self Learning Text”.  Prof. Barker is a consulting biostatistician and a co-author of the “ActivEpi Companion Text”, and has over 10 years of experience teaching short courses in epidemiology and  biostatistics at Emory and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.



The course takes place online at statistics.com in a  series of 5 weekly lessons and assignments. Course participants work directly with both instructors via a  private discussion board.  Participate in the course at  your own convenience; there are no set times when you are required to be online.



For registration and information:

http://www.statistics.com/content/courses/epi1/index.html



Peter Bruce

courses@statistics.com



P.S.  Coming up June 3 at statistics.com:  “Toxicological

Risk Assessment” and “Using the Census's new 'American

Community Survey' ” and, on June 10, “Categorical Data

Analysis.”

Newsweek says Koran desecration report is wrong

By David Morgan
Reuters
Sunday, May 15, 2005; 7:01 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it
erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at
Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked
by the article. 

     “Editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately reported
that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention
facility in Cuba had flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet.

     “The report sparked angry and violent protests across the
Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured,
to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza. In the past week it was condemned in Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League….”

Here's Newsweek's own telling of the tale:
How a Fire Broke Out
The
story of a sensitive NEWSWEEK report about alleged abuses at Guantánamo
Bay and a surge of deadly unrest in the Islamic world.

And we wonder why the public doesn't trust us?

The past eight days have presented
Americans with two extremes of Analytic Journalism, the bad and the good. 

The bad is Newsweek’s’ cover
story that hit the stands on Monday, May 9, 2005, boldly headlined “2005 American’s Best
High Schools: Ranking the Top 100.” 

Inside, we are told that “Public schools are ranked
according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement
or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at a school in 2004
divided by the number of graduating seniors.”   The table accompanying
the story also includes a second variable: percent of the student body
“eligible for free and reduced lunches, an indicator of socioeconomic status….”

But the backstory is even
stranger.  Remember, Newsweek is making
a semi-big deal out of the fact that Washington Post reporter Jay Mathews
“devised” the ratio.  Yet Mathews himself
wrote something somewhat different on December 27, 2004 in a piece headlined “Are
Bonus Grade Points for Hard Courses Unfair?”

Here is Mathews quoting from his own story [emphasis
ours], which quotes a large-sample study on AP/IB testing conducted by Saul
Geiser and Veronica Santelices of the University of California at Berkeley.

“Here is the news story I wrote about it last week.
For those who don't have time to read the whole thing, this quote from the
report sums it up well:

“’The
main finding . . . is that, controlling for other academic and socioeconomic
factors, the number of AP and honors courses taken in high school bears
little or no relationship to students' later performance in college. The
study is based on a sample of 81,445 freshmen entering the University of
California (UC) [including eight campuses] between 1998 and 2001. While student
performance on AP examinations is strongly related to college performance, many
students who take AP courses do not complete the associated AP exams, and
merely taking AP or other honors-level courses in high school is not a valid
indicator of the likelihood that students will perform well in college.’”

So then tell us again why
the percent of students who merely take the exams is indicative of the “best”
high schools?  Mathews is an experienced
reporter who has covered education for a number of years.  We wonder just how much direct involvement
he had with the editors over at Newsweek.

We appreciate, however, the
editors at least showing their secondary data, if not the raw numbers.  (The online version ranks more than 1,000
U.S. high schools.)  Where we disagree
with Newsweek and Mathews is the use of any single variable to describe
something as complex as measuring the quality of education.  Here’s why:

·         
This index only
measures test-taking; it says nothing about performance, either on the
exams or once the students get to university. 
In fact, any graduating senior willing to pay $82 per AP test
would be counted in the Mathews index. 
Ergo, should a school district want to rise in the ranks, it would
allocate the funds to pay for 12 percent of its graduating seniors to take the
AP exams and, presto, it becomes the No. 1 high school in the nation.  [The No. 1 school reported 10.755 percent of
its graduating seniors took the exam(s).]

Unlikely?  IAJ fellow and former high
school teacher Pat Mattimore reports: “A chairman of one of the ‘ranked
public high schools’ back East e-mailed me that at her school classes are
bribed with things like harbor boat cruises to get 100% participation on the
exams as a result of Mathew’s ranking system.” 
[Click here
for Mattimore’s essay on the topic.]

·         
This kind of
“journalism” is only a step or two removed from the “Best Of
…” lists so beloved by ad sales folks. 
Anybody can vote and vote often for their favorite pizza restaurant.  For Newsweek to pull some cheap shot like
this — aided and abetted by an experienced reporter from the WP — only
compounds the Best Of… promotional sins and adds to the perceived shabbiness of
journalism.  Newsweek even misses opportunity with this approach: its
website, that has the school rankings, has no search engine so readers can find
their schools of interest (or NOT find their schools).  This is just the kind of stats that cries
out for a GIS server that would draw appropriate maps and attach “drill-down”
data, the kind of thing USA Today and other newspapers have used to present voting results.

·         
More serious is that
this single-index approach also feeds into the public's instinctive longing for
a magic-bullet method of analysis and decision-making.  There are few, if any, social phenomena that
can be adequately described by one or two indices.  This sort of Newsweek thinking supports simplistic solutions,
e.g. the way to stop excessive drinking or abortions simply is to pass a law
against them.  The way to make people do
the right thing is to post The Ten Commandments in prominent public
places. 

Responsible journalism in the Digital Age (aka, the Age of Data Access) should
be trying to not over simplify but explain/illustrate complexity and the work
required to understand highly complex issues like “educational
quality.”

Good work at The Times

Fortunately a week later, The New York Times opened what may prove to be a fascinating series, “Class
in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide” 

“This series does not purport to be all-inclusive or the
last word on class. It offers no nifty formulas for pigeonholing people.
Instead, it represents an inquiry into class as Americans encounter it.”


Reporters Janny Scott and David Leonhardt do a
fine job in the opening article addressing – and illustrating – the complexity
of understanding the role of class in the United States’, or any, society.  They write:

            “The series does not purport
to be all-inclusive or the last word on class. It offers no nifty formulas for
pigeonholing people or decoding folkways and manners. Instead, it represents an
inquiry into class as Americans encounter it: indistinct, ambiguous, the
half-seen hand that upon closer examination holds some Americans down while
giving others a boost.

     “The trends
are broad and seemingly contradictory: the blurring of the landscape of class
and the simultaneous hardening of certain class lines; the rise in standards of
living while most people remain moored in their relative places.”

No “nifty formulas”? 
Perhaps not yet in the story, per se, but the first-rate infographics, innovative
ways of presenting the data
and analysis. 
supporting the story sure draw on a lot of data, data analysis and provide some

The bottom line: Top-notch analytic journalism from
The Times that informs readers while illustrating the complexity of the
topic.  Oh, but had Newsweek been
able to invest in the same effort, what a good week it might have been.■

“Positive Deviance”
Has
a nice ring to it, don't you think?  In fact, the concept has been
batted around for 14-plus years and has evolved enough to have its own
physical and virtual place in the universe at the Plexus Institute and Tufts University Positive Deviance Initiative.



“Positive
Deviance … demonstrates that isolated examples of success
can be tapped to benefit an entire community or organization.
Accomplishing this requires a radical departure from 'benchmarking' and
'best practices' strategies of change….The PD approach builds on
successful but 'deviant' (different) practices that are identified from
within a
community or organization. It is based on the observation that in every
group there are certain individuals whose uncommon, but demonstrably
successful practices or behaviors enable them to find better solutions
than their neighbors or colleagues who have access to exactly the same
resources. Its use was pioneered in developing countries and has led to
sustainable improvements in seemingly intractable organizational and
social issues.”

We also like the approach because it is an example of how the high-level concepts of complexity studies and Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) can
move from the theoretical to the experimental and on to application
state.  Again, something that journalism, and expecially
journalism educators, should be thinking about.

We have long admired and appreciated the work of Dartmouth Professor J. Laurie Snell and his colleagues at the CHANCE project.  (There are some terrific online lectures on all phases of statistics and probability at the Chance Lectures)



We received the following recently:

In order to give Chance News the chance for a longer life we have changed it to
a ChanceWiki. The new url
is

http://chance.dartmouth.edu/chancewiki/



For the ChanceWiki we
are using the software developed for the very successful free Encyclopedia
Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/



The wiki software makes
it easy for anyone to add an item or to make changes in an existing article
(hopefully an improvement) in the current Chance News.



On the Main Page
of the ChanceWiki you will find links to the current Chance news and “How to
submit a new article or edit an existing article”.



We hope you will try
making a contribution. If you have any questions I will be happy to try to
answer them.



J. Laurie Snell



jlsnell@dartmouth.edu

A
talented band of coders in St. Petersburg, Russia has put together a
nifty simulation modeling application written in Java.  Anylogic™ “supports virtually all existing
approaches to discrete event and continuous modeling, such as process
flow diagrams, system dynamics, agent-based modeling, state charts,
equation systems, etc. With this incredibly rich toolset you are not
limited with the technology anymore – analyze the problem, identify the
best approach, and find the solution!”

The
package is relatively affordable, especially if one can qualify for the
educational discount.  It could make for a handy tool to model
and/or illustrate a variety of dynamic aspects in an urban setting —
ambulance response time, crowd movement during an anti-war
demonstration.



Today, too, the roll-out of the LA Times re-designed web site includes an intuitive interactive map of freeway traffic flow
— real time — of the greater LA basin.  Perhaps some
enterprising news organization will figure out a way to tie these maps
from SigAlert into the dashboard-mounted GPS navigation devices.  Or will SigAlert itself deliver those goods?

The IAJ is always interested in people who are applying
methods and technologies in some totally unanticipated manner.

The current issue of WIRED magazine carries a short about
archeologists in Mexico using sophisticated technology developed by physicists
to learn more about one of that nation's major pre-Columbia pyramids.

“Cosmic Secrets of the Pyramids” reports:

“…They're peering into the pyramid with muons,
subatomic particles created when cosmic rays hit Earth's atmosphere. Traveling
at nearly the speed of light, muons have enormous penetrating power – able to
pierce half a mile of solid rock. (Researchers are using them to map lava tubes
in active volcanoes and to try to find nuclear contraband in shipping
containers.) Physicists with the National Autonomous University of Mexico are
using muon density levels to scan Teotihuacán for cavities, perhaps the tombs
of the mysterious civilization's rulers. Preliminary experiments suggest their
detectors can find voids larger than 2½ feet across.“

Might a good county government reporter find “voids
larger than 2½ feet across” at the next board of supervisors meeting?

Click here for still more on the topic.