Data Literacy: A User's Guide

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SAGE Publications, Jan 29, 2015 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 224 pages
A practical, skill-based introduction to data analysis and literacy

We are swimming in a world of data, and this handy guide will keep you afloat while you learn to make sense of it all. In Data Literacy: A User's Guide, David Herzog, a journalist with a decade of experience using data analysis to transform information into captivating storytelling, introduces students and professionals to the fundamentals of data literacy, a key skill in today’s world. Assuming the reader has no advanced knowledge of data analysis or statistics, this book shows how to create insight from publicly-available data through exercises using simple Excel functions. Extensively illustrated, step-by-step instructions within a concise, yet comprehensive, reference will help readers identify, obtain, evaluate, clean, analyze and visualize data. A concluding chapter introduces more sophisticated data analysis methods and tools including database managers such as Microsoft Access and MySQL and standalone statistical programs such as SPSS, SAS and R.
 

Contents

In praise of data literacy
Chapter 2 CLUES FOR UNCOVERING DATA
Chapter 3 ONLINE DATABASES
Chapter 4 IDENTIFYING AND REQUESTING OFFLINE DATA
Chapter 5 DATA DIRT IS EVERYWHERE
Chapter 6 DATA INTEGRITY CHECKS
Chapter 7 GETTING YOUR DATA IN SHAPE
Chapter 8 NUMBER SUMMARIES AND COMPARISONS
Chapter 10 SPREADSHEETS AS DATABASE MANAGERS
Chapter 11 VISUALIZING YOUR DATA
Chapter 13 CHARTING IN EXCEL
Chapter 14 CHARTING WITH WEB TOOLS
Chapter 15 TAKING ANALYSIS TO THE NEXT LEVEL
AppendixData toolkit
References

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About the author (2015)

David Herzog is an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, where he also serves as the academic adviser to the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. He was a fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute, where he launched OpenMissouri.org, a directory of data held offline by state agencies. Before arriving at the School of Journalism in 2002, he worked as a newspaper reporter at The Providence Journal, The Baltimore Sun and The Morning Call in Allentown, PA. He is a native of Bethlehem, PA.

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