May 15, 2008
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Power Reporting Resources For Journalists

Power Reporting
sample data files

(User note: These are sample data files for Power Reporting newsroom seminars in computer-assisted reporting. Spreadsheets are in Excel format. Save the files to your computer, and open. In Windows, usually the process is to right-click on the file name and choose to save. On a Mac, you press on the file name and choose to save. Or open the text file in your Web browser, save as a text file, and open in a spreadsheet with Excel's text-import wizard.)


500 greatest Rock and Roll songs (an exercise in sorting information from the Web; note: this is not an official list of any kind, just someone's idea of a list, but it's fun to disagree with)
songs1.html (HTML)
songs1.xls (imported into Excel)
songs2.xls (sorted)
songs2.html (back to HTML)
songs3.html (with number of songs per band)

150 most expensive ZIP Codes (2004 median home sales price, from Forbes magazine)
1. zips.xls (spreadsheet, 49k)

Arts grants (in Palm Beach, Fla.)
1. arts.xls (spreadsheet, 5k)
2. arts.txt (fixed-width ASCII text, 2k)

Baseball team payrolls vs. performance (Major League, 2001)
baseball.html (2001 results, HTML, 49k)
baseball.xls (spreadsheet, 28k)
baseball_2000.xls (2000 results, spreadsheet, 28k)
Boston Globe article

City budget (generic)
1. city.xls (spreadsheet, 6k)
2. city.txt (fixed-width ASCII text, 4k)

Coach salaries (Texas high school football, c. 1995)
1. coach.xls (spreadsheet, 87k)
2. coach.dbf (DBASE IV format, 58k)

Deer hunting accidents (Wisconsin)
1. deer.xls (spreadsheet, 128k)
2. deer.txt (comma-delimited ASCII text, 43k)
3. Read the articles, with a later example showing improvement in writing stories with numbers.

Drug searches (Maryland State Police)
1. drugs.xls (spreadsheet, 477k)
2. drugs.txt (comma-delimited ASCII text, 170k)

Electoral college calculator -- predict the 2004 presidential election
1. electoral_2004.xls for the 2004 election (Excel format, 149k)
2. electoral_2000.xls for the 2000 election (Excel format, 148k)

Firefighter line-of-duty deaths (1977-2002, including World Trade Center)
1. firefighters.xls with chart (spreadsheet, 17k)

Forbes 400 richest Americans (Forbes magazine, 2001)
1. forbes.xls (spreadsheet, 108k)

Graphics building tool (tool for pie charts, line charts, etc.)
graphics.xls (Excel 95 spreadsheet, 34k)

Groceries Grocery prices in Chicago suburbs
1. grocery.xls (spreadsheet, 22k)

Home run leaders (career)
1. homeruns.xls (spreadsheet, 27k)
2. homeruns.html (saved into HTML for the Web, with a chart, 91k)

Libraries (large file, 2000 ratings of public libraries by Thomas J. Hennen Jr.;
see details at Hennen's American Public Library Index)
1. libraries.xls (spreadsheet, 1,874k)
2. libraries.txt (comma-delimited ASCII text, 788k)

Movers and stay-at-homes (state populations born in that state, 2000, U.S. Census Bureau)
1. movers.xls (spreadsheet, 5k)

Poverty in school districts, estimated 1995 (large file, from U.S. Census Bureau)
1. poverty.xls (spreadsheet, 1,762k)
2. poverty.txt (fixed-width ASCII text, 1,060k)
3. povdoc.html (documentation and warnings)

Roll-Call-O-Matic, a tool for analyzing a legislative vote
rollcall.html, the explainer
rollcall.xls, the spreadsheet
votechart1.pdf and votechart2.pdf, the example graphics

School test scores (2001, state of Massachusetts)
1. mcas.txt (Explainer and Boston Globe articles, text)
2. mcas.doc (Explainer and Boston Globe articles, Word document)
3. factors.sav (Predicted and actual scores and demographic variables, SPSS file)
4. factors.xls (Predicted and actual scores and demographic variables, Excel file)
5. factors.txt (Predicted and actual scores and demographic variables, text)
6. mcas.xls (Just the predicted and actual scores, Excel)

Snowfall (from U.S. Weather Bureau)
1. snow.html (as it comes on the Web, alphabetical, with inches, 39k)
2. snow.xls (spreadsheet, imported from the Web, 69k)
3. snow2.xls (spreadsheet, in rank order, by feet of snow, 31k)
4. snow2.html (back into HTML for the Web, 88k)

Watchdog-o-matic, Version 2, a voting record calculator for a city or school board (2002)
votes2.xls (spreadsheet, 53k)


Deadly Lessons, a series of articles by Bill Dedman in the Chicago Sun-Times on school shootings. The articles are at http://www.suntimes.com/shoot/ with the text only. Schools seeking reprints also may want to download a file in the Adobe Acrobat PDF format, formatted with all the photos. Warning: This is a large file, five megabytes. It's at http://powerreporting.com/files/shoot.pdf on this site.

You can reach Bill Dedman by e-mail at Bill@PowerReporting.com



COPYRIGHT ©1997-2005 Bill Dedman