Free Excel for beginners course online

Microsoft Office Online offers a free course on getting to know Excel. "Learn how to create a Microsoft Office Excel workbook, how to enter and edit text and numbers, and how to add and delete columns and rows," the site says. The course takes 30-40 minutes.

Editorial Photographers

Editorial Photographers "is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the health and profitability of editorial photography. Our mission is to educate photographers and photography buyers about business issues affecting our industry, and in the process raise the level of business practices in the profession."

Fallacy Files

The Fallacy Files is a collection of examples of bad reasoning. The author says he has spent more than 20 years collecting fallacious arguments from newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and books.

Army sexual assault database proposed

The Army is consolidating a series of databases into a single database on sexual assault:

"Categories of individuals covered by the system: Any individual, military or civilian, who has been identified as the victim of a sexual assault allegedly committed by a member of the Armed Forces. Any member of the Armed Forces who has been identified as the victim of a sexual assault allegedly committed by a civilian. Any individual, military or civilian, who has been identified as the perpetrator of an alleged sexual assault against a member of the Armed Forces. Any member of the Armed Forces who has been identified as the perpetrator of an alleged sexual assault against a civilian. Categories of records in the system: Name, Social Security Number (SSN), date of birth, demographic information, and Service data; investigation related information which may include summary of the assault, data from police reports, DNA processing dates; documents created as a result of the assistance provided; medical records data relating to initial and final treatment dates and aggregate count of intermediate medical treatment contacts with the victim; similar records/reports relating to victim support extended by installation and/or unit advocates; and reports of actions taken by commanders against offenders."

RPad

Rpad lets you create Web pages that do statistics using the R statistical programming language. Here's an example where you hover your mouse over a state and get data on income, illiteracy and other measures for that state, and when you click on the state, it generates a dotchart showing that state's ranking. (You may have to scroll down after clicking on the state to see the dotchart).

Kebberfegg

Kebberfegg makes it easy to set up many RSS search feeds at once. "Keyword-based feeds are great because they can save you a lot of time by automatically updating search results and sending them to your RSS feed reader," writes ResearchBuzz. " ... Kebberfegg gives you one place to set up as many as three dozen keyword-based RSS feeds at a time, in yummy HTML or OPML flavors."

Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence

The Federal Judicial Center offers a series of reference manuals on scientific evidence. These are intended to help judges evaluate the credentials of expert witnesses, but they can help clueless reporters too. They include reference guides to how science works, statistics, multiple regression, survey research, estimating economic losses, epidemiology, toxicology, medical testimony, DNA evidence and engineering practice and methods.

Visualizing Tiger Woods' decline

This is an interesting visualization of golf statistics showing how "despite the supposed improvement in his game," Tiger Woods' "driving accuracy has fallen off much more than his driving distance has increased." The creator adds, "At the same time, the gap between Woods and the mass of his professional competitors is much smaller than it was five years ago ... "

How Much Is That?

How Much Is That? offers multiple ways to compare the value of a dollar today to its value in the past. Its comparisons of purchasing power, exchange rates, inflation, gross domestic product and more go back centuries. For example, it purports to show the price of gold back to 1257, and U.S. inflation back to 1666. These are the work of bonafide economists, but as with all estimates, let the buyer beware.

Skin Deep

The Environmental Working Group's "Skin Deep is a personal care product safety guide with in-depth information on 14,113 products - 991 brands of lotion, lip balm, deodorant, sunscreen and other popular products - and the 6,899 ingredients that form them. With its core of 37 toxicity and regulatory databases, Skin Deep provides safety ratings and brand-by-brand comparisons that can help consumers choose safer products."

Dogpile Search Comparison Tool

The search integrator Dogpile has a search comparison tool that graphically shows you how results from the major search engines differ on the same search. It's a good reminder of why you should try more than one if you're really serious about a search. Of course, Dogpile, which combines the results from all the engines, has a vested interest in emphasizing the differences.

CyberJournalist.net J-Blog list

CyberJournalist keeps a long list of journalism blogs. I wouldn't take it too seriously, though, because yours truly isn't included ... ;-)

Drug Interaction Checker

The Drug Interaction Checker tells you whether your prescription medicines, nonprescription medicines, herbs, vitamins, and supplements play nicely together.

Junk Charts on "Practical statistics"

Junk Charts explains how if you put National Assessment of Educational Progress scores in context, the ballyhooed rise has little practical significance. The data itself can be found at The Nation's Report Card.

Excel Web query tutorial

MrExcel.com explains how to pull data from the Web directly into Excel.

How journalists dumb down science

"Don't dumb me down", a British writer for a site called "Bad Science" tells journalists. I especially like what he has to say about us pathetic "humanities graduates":

" ... humanities graduates in the media, who suspect themselves to be intellectuals, desperately need to reinforce the idea that science is nonsense: because they've denied themselves access to the most significant developments in the history of western thought for 200 years, and secretly, deep down, they're angry with themselves over that.

... Science is done by scientists, who write it up. Then a press release is written by a non-scientist, who runs it by their non-scientist boss, who then sends it to journalists without a science education who try to convey difficult new ideas to an audience of either lay people, or more likely - since they'll be the ones interested in reading the stuff - people who know their way around a t-test a lot better than any of these intermediaries. Finally, it's edited by a whole team of people who don't understand it. You can be sure that at least one person in any given 'science communication' chain is just juggling words about on a page, without having the first clue what they mean, pretending they've got a proper job, their pens all lined up neatly on the desk."

Tombstone Birthday Calculator

The Tombstone Birthday Calculator "calculates birthdate from tombstone, death certificate or obituary and age at death. Gives results in a year-month-day format "

The Sports Cliche List

The Sports Cliche List is just that.

Education: The State We’re In

"Education - The State We're In provides a comprehensive, state-by-state snapshot of education today in America. It brings together publicly available data, slicing the numbers in two ways. First, seven of the most pressing issue areas in education are explored in reports encompassing all 50 states. Second, individual state report cards provide a comprehensive look at education in each of the 50 states. In both instances, Education: The State We're In offers some indication of comparative performance by ranking states from first to worst."

WhitePages.com reverse phone lookup

At WhitePages.com you can perform a reverse phone number lookup. Their directory "can search regular phone numbers, toll-free numbers and numbers with characters. For example: (800) 435-9792 or (800) STARBUC." Sometimes it's a good idea to perform a reverse search just to see who else might share the same address. For example.

Has Home Run Hitting Changed in Major League Baseball?

A "scientist/athlete" and professor emeritus answers the question "Has Home Run Hitting Changed in Major League Baseball?":

"I take up the matter of steroids more directly and also such possible influences as 'hotter' baseballs, altered ball parks, smaller strike zone and find them all to be lacking. They do not stand up to verifiable tests or statistics. And they shouldn't because no explanation is required. There has been no increase in MLB home run hitting. Three home run hitting geniuses appeared in a brief time span and will soon be gone. Enjoy them and don't look for explanations when none are required. The law of home runs and extreme human accomplishment that I develop tell us that we never know when this kind of genius will appear, only that it will be rare and intermittent.

On the matter of steroids, it turns out that body builder muscle hypertrophy induces a change in muscle fiber composition that reduces speed and power. Steroid-aided muscle hypertrophy would be conterproductive to home run hitting. More mass is helpful since kinetic energy is proportional to mass. So, the trick is to add a bit more mass without shifting muscle fiber composition from FTb/x to FTa or ST fibers or messing up swing mechanics and timing. The latter are clearly far more important, as illustrated by Babe Ruth's last home run.

The Babe hit one of the longest home runs of his career in his last game, when he likely was already weakened by the cancer that would eventually kill him 13 years later. ... "

ESRI Podcasts

If you're interested in mapping you may want to check out ESRI's podcasts from its conference this summer in San Diego. They include sessions on environmental and business mapping. ESRI makes ArcGIS, the GIS mapping software most used by journalists.

Healthline

Healthline is a new medical search site that promises "The Web's Best Health Information at Your Fingertips":

"Five years in development, and created in collaboration with 1,100 physician specialists, the company's patented HealthMap search platform is powered by an unparalleled medical taxonomy that encompasses nearly one million medical terms and synonyms. Using state-of-the art medical informatics, these terms are matched and compared to the diverse ways in which they are used within the context of human medical conditions to provide much more relevant and precise results than broad, horizontal search engines."

I don't really know what that means but SearchEngineWatch's Chris Sherman likes it: "Healthline is one of the best, easiest to use health information sources I've yet found on the web. The 'patient friendly' interface combined with first-rate, vetted content make it an excellent resource for anyone researching health related information."

Tools for thinking

This is a very large list of thinking tools, but the presentation makes clear the author isn't a visual thinker.

Auto research

Plunkett Research, Ltd. offers a glossary of auto industry terms and statistics on the automobile and truck industry.

Database on 527s

The Center for Public Integrity has updated its database on 527s.

"A 527 is a non-profit organization formed under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, which grants tax-exempt status to political committees at the national, state and local level. Over the past several years, the term has come to refer to a new form of political organization operating in a gray area of the law. These groups actively influence elections and policy debates at all levels of government, but do not advocate explicitly for election or defeat of candidates."

You can search for recipients and donors by name, company or group and find summary information on committees, contributions and expenditures.

NPPA: Cost of Doing Business Calculator

The National Press Photographers Association has a "Cost of Doing Business Calculator" that calculates how much it costs to be a freelance photographer.

Negative news search

LexisNexis has begun offering "Negative News Search." It searches more than 13,000 news sources for "articles in which the name of the person or business appears in close proximity to mentions of criminal acts, bankruptcies or illicit behavior."

Writeboard

Writeboard is a free service that lets you create online documents that you can work on with others. You just email whoever you want to share your document with, and you can edit it together on the web. You can compare and keep track of changes, and roll back to previous versions. The site says "Writeboard is perfect for... Authors, journalists, PR folks, editors, and publishers ... Bloggers or freelance/independent writers ... Letter writers, songwriters, poets, comedians, creatives ... Students, professors, and groups collaborating on a paper."

Framing the story

This paper by two academics explores how the way a news story is framed determines how people understand events. They presented people with news reports on the late 1990s Kosovo crisis that either stressed the need for U.S. intervention or emphasized reasons for staying out of the conflict. "We argue that seemingly subtle differences in the presentation of identical information in the news media can affect the organization and recall of information and influence the political judgments of ordinary citizens," they write. The study was discussed on the Political Behavior Blog.

U.S. Government Manual

GPO Access just published the 2005-2006 edition of the U.S. Government Manual. The "official handbook of the Federal Government" offers "comprehensive information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. It also includes information on quasi-official agencies, international organizations in which the United States participates, and boards, commissions, and committees."

PR Newswire RSS feeds

Just what the overworked journalist needs: More press releases. PR Newswire now offers RSS feeds. You can get them all, or any one of dozens of categories.

Mapping crime hot spots

The National Institute of Justice has issued a new report called Mapping Crime: Understanding Hot Spots. It explains what crime hot spots are and which tools you can use to map them. Last year The Courier-Journal published just such a map of the city's homicides.

Newratings.com

Newratings.com reports new market predictions by investment banks and research firms.

BlogPulse Trend Search

BlogPulse offers a "Trend Search" where you can generate a graphic showing how often a particular name, word or phrase is mentioned in the - I hate this term - blogosphere. I'm sure you'll be impressed to know that I have been mentioned in as many as .0012 percent of all blog posts - as clear a demonstration as any of my influence. This tool was brought to my attention by a blog post on the waning influence of New York Times columnists since the newspaper hid them behind an expensive wall.

FoodieView

FoodieView is a recipe search engine. "We scour the web to find the best recipes on the web's most popular recipe sites," the site says. "You can save your favorites in your own personal recipe box."

NewScientist.com: Statistics could have spotted mass murderer

NewScientist.com reports on a study that says statistics could have caught Britain's most prolific serial killer, Harold Shipman, who murdered as many as 245 patients.

The Chronicle of Higher Education on "The Number That's Devouring Science"

The Chronicle of Higher Education writes about the pernicious effect of the "impact factor," which grades scientific journals on their influence. The story by Richard Monastersky explains how the rankings, which one professor calls "a pox upon the land," distort faculty hiring and research. "Journal editors have learned how to manipulate the system, sometimes through legitimate editorial choices and other times through deceptive practices that artificially inflate their own rankings," Monastersky writes. The story includes an explanation of how the impact factor is calculated, and a list of the highest impact journals. Journalists play their role - the story also notes how media publicity about particular studies can help raise a journal's score.

Google Reader

Google now offers an RSS reader, although you must have a Google Account to use it.

Num Sum: Web Spreadsheets

Num Sum lets you create free "bite-sized web spreadsheets" you can share with others online. It requires no software downloads or plugins. You can also create "throwaway spreadsheets" anonymously, without registering, that the site promises to keep around for at least 7 days.

The Noguchi Filing System

The Noguchi Filing System is a method of filing documents that has a built-in way of sifting the important from the unimportant.

AreaConnect Yellow Pages White Pages and City Guides

AreaConnect calls itself "Your one stop for local Yellow Pages, White Pages, search, directories, news, weather and more!" The site says it "is committed to making the local city search easier for you. We offer you the ability to search multiple local yellow pages, white pages, local directories and a whole lot more - in thousands of US cities. We help you search faster by filling out most of the forms for you, and search smarter by collecting the search forms for you in a local home page." One of the things it returns is an age, and attempts to entice you into buying more detailed background information from a record vendor. It will also generate a vCard to easily add a name, address and phone number to your contacts.

UK journalists in the CAR slow lane?

Colin Meek at journalism.co.uk wonders why at the recent Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Amsterdam "there were fewer participants from the UK than from South Korea." He notes that unlike in Britain, computer-assisted reporting "is catching on in European countries where investigative journalism is thriving. ... In the Netherlands and the Nordic countries there are now data analysis specialists who only do investigative stories and teach CAR skills through association meetings and conferences. CAR is now gaining momentum in Germany, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia. Grasping what CAR means is about understanding the full potential of the internet as a tool for journalists."

What Lawyers Can Teach Investigative Reporters

Casesoft makes makes software for lawyers that some journalists have also found useful. It includes outlining software, called NoteMap, software to make timelines, called TimeMap, and software to organize documents and facts, called CaseMap. Casesoft's CEO has written a series of articles on how lawyers can better prepare cases for trial that could help investigative reporters organize their research more effectively too. These include "Chronology Best Practices" and "Making the Most of a Cast of Characters." The articles don't focus on the company's software - only on better ways to analyze facts.

Data on Flood Damage in the United States

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research has reanalyzed National Weather Service data to produce flood damage estimates for every state from 1955 to 2003. There's also national data back to 1926. You can download the data, in inflation-adjusted dollars, as an Excel spreadsheet. Above is an SPSS chart made from the Kentucky data. The gap in the line is because there's no data for several years in the early 1980s.

ROLLYO

ROLLYO lets you create a personal search engine. "Ever wish you could narrow your search to sites you already know and trust?" the site asks. "With Rollyo, you can easily create your own custom search engines, and explore and save those created by others. ... Rollyo puts the power of Yahoo! Search in your hands, by giving you the tools to create your own personal search engines - with no programming required. All you have to do is pick the sites you want to search, and we'll create a custom search engine for you."

Placeopedia.com

Placeopedia.com uses Google Maps to link Wikipedia articles to places mentioned in them. It promises to make the geographic information it gathers in that effort freely available to anyone who wants it.

Chat Slang and Acronyms used in chat rooms, IM, and email

Apparently this page has been pulled from the Web, and some of you who tried to go there from here may have been directed to a placeholder page with some offensive links. My apologies.

CNET Does SNA

CNET is experimenting with what looks a lot like Social Network Analysis to serve articles on its Web site. Social Network Analysis, or SNA, is an attempt to bring mathematical rigour to the examination of the relationships between people and organizations. CNET is using the same kind of spider web visualizations used by SNA to link stories, topics and companies. I don't know that they have anything more in common that their visual style, but it's an interesting way to serve content nonetheless. CNET's software comes from Liveplasma.com, which does the same for movies and music.

3D Visualization of the Levees Around New Orleans

"A spline is a mathematically-described line that smoothly connects points on a curve or surface," according to this article. The article explains how splines were used to enhance 3D images of the levees around New Orleans without distorting them - a technique that's at least of potential value for news graphics.

The Scoop on Crime Analysts

Derek Willis, a database editor at The Washington Post, attended the annual conference of the International Association of Crime Analysts :

"What I came to learn over the course of the conference is that newsroom CAR people and police crime analysts have a lot in common: both of us are the geeks of our workplaces (outside the IT department) and both of us realize the importance of information.

The men and women who spoke at the sessions I attended mentioned topics familiar to any CAR person: GIS, medians, intranets, databases. They use a lot of the same software and tools. And they face many of the barriers within their agencies that CAR people face - a lack of awareness and training, non-technical colleagues and a parochial view that results in all of us providing technical support rather than analysis."

Building shareholder value, one flight and one round of golf at a time ...

The Wall Street Journal's Mark Maremont made entertaining use of the USGA golf handicap database and flight records to show how top executives are using corporate jets for expensive golf outings (unfortunately, you must be a subscriber to read the story). A research and consulting firm estimated that one Illinois-California flight by Motorola CEO Edward Zander cost more than $46,000 round trip. You can search the golf database by name and it returns the country clubs the golfers belong to, the dates they played, their scores and their handicap.