News & numbers

Journalists need to be able to explain complex numbers to their audiences, for example, a percentage rise in taxes proposed at city hall, or a margin of error in a polling sample.

The basic tool is usually Microsoft Excel or Open Office spreadsheets.

Each square is a cell, and each one has a special name based on its coordinates (Numbers from top to bottom, Alphabet from left to right).

There are three basic things you can do with a single cell in a spreadsheet:

  1. You can type in a label.
  2. You enter a number
  3. You can enter an equation

With a list of numbers, you can 

  1. Add, subtract, multiply, divide, and average, and lots more, but this is good for now.
    1. Always start with the equal sign (= ) then use the cell coordinates.  So Cell A1 plus A2 is:   =A1+A2.
    2. Use parenthesis to indicate order of operations. So   =A1+(A2*3)
    3. Use a colon to show the range of numbers you want to include:   =AVERAGE(A1:A22)
  2. Sort alphabetically or by number size (smallest to largest, or largest to smallest)
    1. The “sort” command is on the top line
    2. Highlight the area you want sorted and be sure you sort all columns not just one

Try these operations on the Virginia APA list of law enforcement expenditures by municipality APA.2019.LawEnforcement  (Excel file). This is simplified from the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts comparative reports 

 Making charts in Excel  

  • Change over time / Line chart: Create two or more data rows of data, and also a row of categories (years, months,  etc)
  •  Percentage of a whole / Pie chart:  Create one line of data
    Then …
  • For both of these, on the main menu, go from “Home” to “Insert”
  • Highlight the data cells
  • Click on “Recommended Charts” and select one
  • Copy the chart and open a new file in Gimp or Photoshop
  • Save it as a png, jpg or gif for web display
    • Or Save as a tiff for printing

Math for journalists:   

  • Calculating percentages
    • New minus old, divide by old, multiply x 100  = %  change
  • Know the difference between mean, median and mode; which is the best measure of “average”

Reporting on polls