Teaching the Effective Use of Data in Business Coverage - Reynolds Week 2011
-
Upload
reynolds-center-for-business-journalism -
Category
Economy & Finance
-
view
871 -
download
0
Transcript of Teaching the Effective Use of Data in Business Coverage - Reynolds Week 2011
STEVE DOIGCRONKITE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM
Math and Data for Business Journalism
Students
Donald W. Reynolds National Centerfor Business Journalism
at Arizona State University
Professors Seminar
Math and data
Journalism students are terrified of math and think Google answers everything.
Business coverage demands… Good math skills Good data analysis skills
We need to teach them how to use math to analyze data
Computer-assisted Business Reporting
Internet browserSpreadsheet: Microsoft ExcelDatabase manager: Microsoft Access?Statistics: SPSS?
Business math
Percentage changeCompound interestRatesConsumer price indexProbabilityLinear regressionExotica:
Gini coefficient H-H index Benford’s Law
Percentage change
Measure change over timeNEW / OLD – 1 or (new – old) / oldExample: $8 million profit this year, $5
million last year 8/5 - 1 = 1.6 - 1 = .6, or a 60% increase
Example: $5 million profit this year, $8 million last year 5/8 – 1 = .625 – 1 = - .375, or a 37.5% decrease
Compound interest
Calculates the effect of interest being added to principal over time, thus compounding the return
Future_value = present_value * (1 + i)^ni = interest raten = number of periods (i.e., 360 for 30 year
mortgage paid monthly)Many compound interest calculators on the
Web: http://www.webmath.com/compinterest.html
Rates
Allows comparisons between places/companies of different size, or comparisons across time
Examples: Accident rates, foreclosure ratesExample: Jonesville has 50 of 20,000 homes
in foreclosure; Metropolis has 5,000 of 2 million in foreclosure Jonesville: (60 / 20000) * 1000 = 3 homes per 1,000 Metropolis: (4000 / 2000000) * 1000 = 2 homes per
1,000
Consumer price index
Accounts for inflation; lets you compare prices over time in constant dollars
Price_now / cpi_now = price_then / cpi_thenGet CPI from Bureau of Labor Statistics at
www.bls.gov/CPI/
CPI example: Gasoline prices
CPI now = 216.3CPI in 1965 was 30.8Gasoline in 1965 was $0.30 per gallon.X / 0.30 = 216.3 / 30.8X = (216.3 / 30.8) * 0.30X = 7.02 * 0.30 = 2.11Therefore, gas in 1965 cost the equivalent
of $2.11 per gallon in today’s dollars.
Probability
Most likely use in business journalism would be to calculate the chances of some event occuring.
Also important in understanding p-values in research papers.
Example: WSJ calculated the chances of executive stock options being granted at the best possible time and used the results to show that dozens of companies were backdating option grants.
Linear regression
Useful for spotting outliersCompares how one or more independent
variables affect the value of a dependent variable
Relationship can be seen in an X-Y scatterplotTime-series regression: Time is X-axis
Other business statistics tools
Herfindahl-Hirschman Index: used to measure market concentration
Gini coefficient: measures inequality in wealth distribution
Benford’s Law: pattern of final digits in a collection of numbers can reveal expense account cheating or other man-made patterns.
Web sites your students should know: Company Web sites for industries they cover. Secretaries of State Web sites for incorporation
records. http://www.nass.org Hoovers for company and industry information, (but
it’s a pay site). http://www.hoovers.com Lexis/Nexis. http://www.lexisnexis.com/
Business data
Searching for data
Google (use advanced search)Google Finance: www.google.com/financeBingWolfram Alpha?
More websites with business data
Edgar for SEC filings. http://www.sec.govThe SEC site also contains enforcement data.
http://www.sec.gov/divisions/enforce.shtmlBureau of Economic Analysis for updated
state and regional economy data. http://www.bea.gov
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has even more economic statistics. http://www.bls.gov
The Federal Reserve has much information about monetary policy and banking. www.federalreserve.gov
Still more…
Patent and Trademark Office is sometimes useful. http://www.uspto.gov/
Don’t forget the U.S. International Trade Commission. http://www.usitc.gov/
And the U.S. Census Bureau for demographics. http://www.census.gov
U.S. Census Bureau
It’s much more than headcounting – here’s just a little of what business journalists can find at census.gov: Economic Census – local business data collected
every five years. County business patterns. Minority- and women-owned business data. Building permits. Foreign trade exports by state.
Census business data index page
http://www.census.gov/econ/www/index.html
Foreign trade data
For example, from the Census Bureau, downloadable from its Web site:
IRE resources for business journalists
http://www.ire.org/storeComputer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical
Guide, by Brant Houston.The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook: A
Guide to Documents, Databases and Techniques, by Brant Houston, Len Bruzzese and Steve Weinberg.
Numbers in the Newsroom: Using Math and Statistics in the Newsroom by Sarah Cohen. Part of the IRE Beat Book series.
More IRE resources
IRE Resource Center: www.ire.org/resourcecenter/
Why reinvent the wheel?More than 2,000 tip sheets from IRE and
NICAR conferences, many on covering the business beat and doing investigations.
Searchable database of more than 20,000 stories, both print and broadcast.
More IRE resources
The NICAR Database Library at http://data.nicar.org/
Databases for business journalists: SEC administrative proceedings. Federal contracts data. Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. IRS Exempt Organizations. SBA business loans and disaster loans. Federal Audit Clearinghouse Database. Consumer Product Safety data OSHA Workplace Safety data Wage and Hour Enforcement
Good math resources
Innumeracy, by John Allen PaulosA Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, by PaulosPrecision Journalism (4th ed.), by Phil MeyerMath Tools for Journalists, by Kathleen Woodruff
WickhamCartoon Guide to Statistics, by Larry GonickStatistics Every Writer Should Know (website),
www.robertniles.com/stats/
Excel and web data demonstrations