Agenda for Monday, Aug 27
Review Homework
Student Loan Navigator Website
Rates and Ratios
Excel Exercise on FBI Data
Quiz Wednesday on Excel
Homework Due Saturday, 11:59 pm
Follow and complete the tasks in the Exericse 2 of the NICAR copurse pack, analyzing change in tuition. Use the University of Arkansas data from the College Navigator website.
Submit Excel spreadsheet and a brief two-paragraph discussion highlighting your findings on a WordPress blog. Answer these questions.
Analyze the estimated tuition, fees and living expenses data for students to help you answer the questions below.
1) How much would an in-state student expect to pay for the 2017-2018 school year?
2) How much would an out-of-state student expect to pay for the 2017-2018 school year?
3) How much more did out-of-students pay in 2017-2018 than in-state students?
4) Which category increased the most from the 2014-2015 to the 2017-2018 school years? Raw change? Percent
change?
5) Write a lead for a story based on your analysis.
6) What other information and/or sources would help you finish this story?
Numbers in the Newsroom
Sarah Cohen, Math Diva
Sarah Cohen’s “Numbers in the Newsroom” is a classic in journalism numeracy. She is a Pulitzer-winning journalist at The Washington Post, a data journalist at The New York Times and has taught at Duke University and now at Arizona State University.
* Limit yourself to 8- 12 digits, including dates such as 2012, in a single paragraph.
–This allows us to stress the most important numbers
–Simplify using rates, rations or percentages. “One in four” = ratio or rate. “Forty percent” = ratio or rate. 235 deaths per 100,000 is another.
*Memorize some common numbers on your beat: Population of Fayetteville. Population of Arkansas. Population of the U.S. Per capita income Arkansas and U.S.
*Round off! Unless you’re dealing with really small numbers, decimal points may not be meaningful. “I’m a big fan of rounding,” Cohen said.
* Portion of whole – For example, at the time of the Million Man March in 1995, a turnout of 1 million black men would have represented 1/12th of all the black men in the country at the time.
Review: —Review Numbers in the Newsroom, through p. 25
Relative Risk
“Black applicants are denied mortgages at twice the rate of whites with similar incomes.”
if 20 smokers per thousand contract cancer, and yet non-smokers have a cancer rate of only 10 per thousand, the relative risk of smoking is 2.
“More than” or “less than” = compute difference between the smokers, an extra step
Review: Rates and Ratios
Gather the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, Data For All Arkansas Cities, All Crimes
https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/Local/OneYearofData.cfm
Fill in the gaps of the population data using the 2014 Census Figures from this table:
Question #1: Using the four corners test, describe
—The number of cities
—How is the crime rate organized?
Question #2: Sorting.
Fayetteville is ranked what statewide for total property crime because of which type of crime?
Question #3: Calculations
Calculate a violent crime rate per 1,000 people and a property crime rate per 1,000 for all Arkansas places
Answer these questions
–The place with the highest violent crime rate in Arkansas in 2014 is xxx with a violent crime rate of xxx per 1,000
–The place with the highest property crime ratein Arkansas in 2014 is xxx with a property crime rate of xxx per 1,000
–Fayetteville’s property crime rate is XXX per 1,000, PLACING It # statewide.
–Fayetteville’s violent crime rate is xxx per 1,000, PLACING It # statewide
Quiz Wednesday
Basic Excel. Topics entering data, cursors, formatting, sum, average, median, change, percent change. Practice using change, percent change and sorting
Homework, Due 11:59 pm Tuesday.
–Reading.
Look at the student loan readings on the class blog. Pick at least three articles, write three paragraphs on common themes among these articles. Include any questions or suggestions for story ideas for our class project. Post your comments on the blog with your name, date and class assignment in the title of the blog post.
Thank you.