Data In The Newsroom
Fairleigh Dickinson University - Fall semester, 2008
Syllabus - updated 10/2/08
The final project - updated 10/7/08
Introduction to Excel:
Spreadsheets for exercises:
Excel and math for journalists:
More Excel practice:
Intermediate Excel, filtering and pivoting:
More pivot table practice exercises:
homework: Exxon.xls
Advanced Excel:
Tipsheet: String functions and more
Homework:Baseball.xls
Importing data into Excel :
Negotiating for data:
Introduction to database managers:
More Access practice
More practice with summarizing and filtering queries
SQL
Relational joins
More relational joins
Even more joins
The dreaded enterprise join
More data cleaning
Many of the databases, spreadsheets and tips linked above were created as teaching exercises by the very fine folks at IRE. If you visit the organization’s Web site, you can find a plethora of resources for teaching and learning computer-assisted reporting. I am immensely indebted to the work of IRE and the materials they allow me and other educators to use to pass on these skills.