There comes a time, in the life of every aspiring data journalist, when one must step out of the closet and reveal their nerdiness to the world in all its glory.
The other day, when I found myself watching a video tutorial on how to use an IF statement to remove blank rows in Excel, I realized that the time had probably come to publicly identify as a data enthusiast. After all, there is an election coming and The Sun has a proud tradition of producing a dizzying array of online infographics that tell you everything you never wanted to know about how the B.C. vote broke down. I am here to assure both Sun readers who follow this stuff: Come election night (to quote The IT Crowd, one of my favourite TV shows): Ich bin ein Nerd.
But there is a proviso: This year, the array of graphics will be less dizzying — probably more like mildly nauseating — because they will be produced by my colleague Lori Culbert and me. Apparently it takes two of us to fill the shoes of former Sun data guru Chad Skelton, who took a buyout offer last month (IT’S NOT TOO LATE CHAD, YOU CAN STILL COME BACK). We’ll start number crunching Monday night as soon as we start to get B.C. results, likely around 8:45. Watch this space.
In the meantime, to get the election juices flowing, I made this chart comparing advance poll turnout over the weekend with the number of voters on the list in each B.C. riding. It showed that a good chunk of voters in my hometown of Victoria just couldn’t wait for election day to cast their ballot. (Or, they would rather do that than have the inevitable inter-generational political spat over the turkey dinner.) The three ridings that had the highest proportions of voters turn out in advance polls were all in the provincial capital region. I wrote a story about it here.
Filed under: News, STAFF, The Data Trail Tagged: British Columbia, Canada, Vancouver Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
