An introduction to Microsoft Access?

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Permalink Reply by Zac Echola on January 22, 2008 at 9:55pm

Yes. I'd be super interested some tutorials about this as well. Spreadsheets can lead to some great database driven journalism sites. If you have developers on staff, being able to show them pretty much exactly what the imporant data is in relation to other data is a huge step towards creating some great long-term projects.

Permalink Reply by Jeff Thomas on January 23, 2008 at 1:18pm

Tip: Don't let the technology decide your next step. Let your questions decide your next step. Think of data as a human source, someone with knowledge about a topic in which you're interested. What question would you ask that person? You can ask the same question of the data.

The nature of the question will determine your next move. Example: Which local resident gave the most money to the mayoral candidate? That's a grouping, summing and ranking question; you need to add up all the individual contributions made by each person, then sort them from greatest to smallest. The maneuvers you'll do in a spreadsheet or database manager will be very specific to those tasks.

In general, the spreadsheet skills you want to learn fall in this order:
Entering formulas, including percent change
Totals
Averages
Sorting lists
Filters
Pivot tables (aka crosstabs)
Conditional (IF) statements
Graphing
Importing data (a discipline unto itself), including the concepts of delimiters and fixed-width files

Check out my response to Greg on his earlier post. There are a few links there to IRE and NICAR that will lead you tons of (free!) worksheets and tutorials written especially for journalists.

Permalink Reply by Maurreen Skowran on January 24, 2008 at 3:06am

"The Reporters' Cookbook" is a wiki about computer-assisted reporting, mainly by Derek Willis. It includes an Excel tutorial that can be downloaded. (I have piddled a little on the wiki and haven't used the tutorial.
http://forjournalists.com/cookbook/

Permalink Reply by matt king on January 24, 2008 at 5:14pm

Jeff,

Interesting you put importing data last, because it could also be first. I'm a just-learning CAR guy (going to mini boot camp in a month to learn Access) who has this debate with a more knowledgeable friend. He says learning how to ask for data and set up a spreadsheet or database is step 1. I agree with him, but I also tell I think those are advanced skills.

Permalink Reply by Jeff Thomas on January 24, 2008 at 5:30pm

Obviously, there is no ironclad rule here. When you go to NICAR training, they walk through all the other steps so you can understand how data are organized in a spreadsheet and learn something about their properties. This make the leap to importing data easier. To start with importing isn't impossible, of course, but importing frequently involves making distinctions between text data and numerical data or date-format data, and that can be confounding unless you've played a little bit with those types of data in a spreadsheet.

The whole idea of delimiters, too, is grounded in the understanding of how spreadsheets must keep fields of data in the same column to be of any use. Again, this is not an impossible concept to grasp if you've never opened Excel, but practicing a bit with Excel provides the hands-on how-spreadsheets-work context that makes contemplating delimiters easier.

Importing data also means dealing with data in bulk, and it helps to have hand-built some copious data in a spreadsheet to grasp the idea that importing data in bulk can save you tons of time.

And there is the very mundane reason that, at a NICAR boot camp, you will be trained in formulas, sorting, etc., before you get to importing.

It's not magic, just logic. But there's no penalty for starting with importing.

Permalink Reply by David Poulson on January 28, 2008 at 2:42pm

Jeff Thomas is right in that you shouldn't let the technology decide which software to learn next. Let the question do that. Can you find the answer to your question with the software you know? If not, learn a new one.
That said, knowing what software is capable of helps prompt the questions. If you can't go to a NICAR full or mini boot camp, you can get a great introduction to Access in Brant Houston's Computer-Assisted Reporting: A practical guide. It's available through Investigative Reporters and Editors at https://www.ire.org/store/formengine.php?form=books&status=1
It includes tutorials and access to crunchable data.