Table of Contents

Learning Objectives

Why am I doing this assignment?

• The assignment is designed to …
  • help you become familiar with New York City data
  • get inspiration for your pitch without the pressure of having to formulate a hypothesis (note that your pitch has not even been assigned yet)
  • help you practice formulas and pivot tables and plotting in excel, google sheets or the spreadsheet tool of your choice
• While this assignment may take a little bit of time, they’re hopefully relatively low-stress. I’m thinking of this assignment as “night science” (see A Hypothesis Is a Liability). No stress to formulate a hypothesis, just open-ended exploration. You can do something related for all three parts, or something different to explore multiple avenues.

Instructions

Part 1: Read NYC Data Stories

Let’s build a small database of NYC data stories as inspiration for our upcoming data story pitch. Find (at least) one data story about New York City from any news outlet. The form below asks you to quickly summarize the story for your classmates, and categorize it. If the story doesn’t fit one of the categories I mentioned in class, please create your own category and let’s talk about it in class! If you want to submit more than one, feel free!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfhQ6ESvWbmKqI8-ftfn0O-GtAzW8lRmSebrJLD-bmfnotEKQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Here is a link to everyone’s responses! (you can see last year’s responses in there as well for context - try not to duplicate someone else’s answer so we end up with a nice robust database of examples of NYC data stories we’ve all built together)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EzeySKi4CHemhzTuQpwiCOOMf7OfTo71n_-IXL8WxOs/edit?resourcekey=&gid=1334433310#gid=1334433310

Part 2: Explore NYC Data

1. Browse NYC Data (a few sources are linked below) or any dataset of your choice that you think may be related to a topic you’d like to pitch about. You don’t need a hypothesis just yet, just an interest. The goal is to just familiarize yourself with the kinds of data available.

   NYC Open Data Website

   NYC Open Data

   Awesome guide from the library for all kinds of NYC data

   https://docs.google.com/document/d/18j4lgr5E1VX5deiGft8UopQ5I5rIF9uyMAcbmp1aalg/edit

   Note: Here are a few other data archives. You’re welcome to find an NYC-focused dataset (or a dataset with an NYC angle in it) at one of these if nothing in NYC Open Data suits your fancy.

   • Data is Plural (newsletter, spreadsheet) - Jeremy Singer Vine
   • https://data.fivethirtyeight.com/ (Dhrumil built this site!)

2. Pick a dataset and fill out the following form:

   Everyone’s responses will be visible to everyone else here:

   https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EzeySKi4CHemhzTuQpwiCOOMf7OfTo71n_-IXL8WxOs/edit?resourcekey=&gid=598601041#gid=598601041

Part 3: Pre-pitch Open-Ended Interview

1. Conduct an open-ended interview of anyone. Yup, that’s right. Anyone!

It can be about the data, or just about an NYC topic you are thinking of writing about in general. For example, if you’re looking at water quality data, you may want to just poke around and ask some people how their water is. If someone says something interesting, you can follow up with a longer conversation. Come up with a few open-ended questions related to your area of interest and ask them to someone! No hypothesis necessary. No pressure to get something meaningful out of the interview. You’re welcome to do it on background or off-the-record. When you’re done, fill out an interview form (below).

[](<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfJBP15bmPDHLBdP_c5c0NLuU1ydSA__jC48HFKayuYlcMe-g/viewform?usp=sf_link>)