Monthly Edition
August Edition: Journalism In A World of Data
Unravelling the complexities of modern life, one bit at a time.
The realisation that data is a double-edged sword can be a hard pill to swallow. From unveiling the behaviour of our communities to creating entirely hypothetical realities, our community here at Towards Data Science has the luxury of viewing data as a resource whose potential is limited only by our imagination.
Such a rosy view, however, overlooks the reality that data is also synonymous with a world of increasing polarisation and complexity. To the uninitiated, the modern data glut becomes an endless source of distraction and confusion. In the wrong hands, data can be used as a veil to keep the world hidden from our eyes. As a result, an understanding of the various ways data informs our perspectives of the world and the responsibilities that come with it is becoming an essential part of the modern storyteller’s toolkit.
In this Monthly Edition, we feature some of our latest discussions on Data Journalism as well as some of the best articles published over the last year on Towards Data Science, uniquely told using a combination of rigorous and creative data-driven storytelling.
From applications of simple data analytics to the latest machine learning models, from politics to culture, these stories show us that data — when used correctly — is always available to bring us a more nuanced, insightful view of the world, one bit at a time.
Yenson Lau, Editor at Towards Data Science.
Python for Data Journalists: Get Your Data from the Web
By Alan Jones — 11min read
Use Python and Pandas to discover, read and analyse data from CSV, Excel spreadsheets on the web
The lost art of data science for understanding
By Hamdan Azhar— 6 min read
There is a tremendous difference between data science for understanding and data science for prediction.
Reading The Markets — Machine Learning Versus The Financial News
By James Baker— 22 min read
An enormous number of financial news articles get published. But only a small number of them will actually move the market. It might be helpful to know which ones. Can Machine Learning point the way?
How to use open source satellite data for your investigative reporting
By Ben Max Techjournalist— 13 min read
Today, we will try to tackle some of the reservations that you might share with your colleagues and teach some basics in accessing, understanding and handling open source satellite data.
3 Lessons from a Data Journalism Intern at a Fin-Tech Startup
By James Le— 7 min read
Find out about the lessons that I learned from interning at a Fin-Tech startup that is using machine learning to revolutionize the credit underwriting industry.
There is no surplus of younger voters in Sengkang
By Hanif Samad— 8 min read
Evidence of a peculiar demographic advantage for the winning Worker’s Party team is scant — and that bodes well for them.
Using Data Science to Study Economic Inequality in the United States
By Andrew Hong— 12 min read
How can we use public data to analyze and understand the challenges Black communities face in the US?
New videos
- DevOps for ML and other Half-Truths: Processes and Tools for the ML Life Cycle | Kenny Daniel
- Explain Yourself! Leveraging Language Models for Common Sense Reasoning | Nazneen Rajani
- AI in Clinical Decision Support: Roadblocks & Opportunities | Niki Athanasiadou
- The ultimate guide to building maintainable Machine Learning pipelines using DVC | Déborah Mesquita
New podcasts
- Solmaz Shahalizadeh — Data science in high-growth companies
- Will Grathwohl — Energy-based models and the future of generative algorithms
- Ian Scott — Data science at Deloitte
- Jakob Foerster — Multi-agent reinforcement learning and the future of AI
We also thank all the great new writers who joined us recently Meghan Maloy, Michael Galkin, Niousha RF, Jocelyn Lutes, Stacey Svetlichnaya, Alex Driedger, Steven McDonald, Mingchu Xu, Guillaume Huet, Tim Sullivan, Eric Schibli, Akash Gautam, Timotej Zaťko, Yen Huang, Roman Studer, Pranoti Pawar, Rob Zifchak, Jonathan Fernandez, Ryan Brown, Mimi Brown, and many others. We invite you to take a look at their profiles and check out their work.
