Using Popily to Find and Present the Story
In the newsroom, getting the go-ahead to pursue a story can be entirely up to how well a reporter can sum up a lot of information to a rushed editor. That challenge is enormous for data journalists, who might have to begin a pitch by explaining why a standard deviation figure is significant or summarizing an interesting trend in a thousand-row data set.
That’s why Popily was made to be fast and shareable. The process is quick and the results are interactive. We want data journalists to see how it fits in their lives.
The graphics above were made in a matter of minutes, and I’ve already found questions to explore. They’re the results of 271 lead tests on tap water from Flint, Mich., published by the Flint Water Study in December. Seeing raw data displayed like this is a great step in the data exploration and story research process, and after some data fact-checking (is there really a Ward 0?) Popily can create polished interactive visualizations for the readers to explore.
Here were the steps to get from file download to graphs
Step 1: Find the Data (Cleaning Optional)
The XLSX available from the Flint Water Study website has a few quirks that some visualization platforms dislike: the header row has some buttons and there are summary and source rows at the bottom. Popily is smart enough to ignore all that. All it needs is the file.
Step 2: The Six-Click Upload
When you sign in to Popily, click on the “Add Data Source” button. Popily will accept a variety of file formats, including XLS, XLSX, CSV, and JSON, or connect to SQL databases. If the data updates continuously, Popily can also refresh the chart based on new data automatically.
The next two clicks to upload the Flint Water Study data are “Use Excel, CSV, Or JSON” and “Select A File.” Once a file is selected, it automatically recognizes when there are multiple sheets in the document and ask which one to work with. Each sheet can be saved to the user account as a separate dataset.
Then, Popily asks about the formats for each column. This allows it to know what kinds of charts to automatically generate. It will want to average or total columns that are in the number format, for example, but it won’t do that if the column is specified as a category. From there, the next step is to name and make notes about the data, then decide whether or not it should be a public dataset.
Step 3: Explore!
Here’s the fun part! Select a column to explore and Popily displays every way it can think of to compare it to other aspects of the data. Usually it begins with single-variable comparisons, then it moves on to two- and three-variable analysis. When you find one you like, click on it to see a larger version.
Step 4: Share
Popily automatically generates axis and graph titles, so for the sake of coherency, you can change them to reader-friendlier versions. Then you can explore more relationships, interact with the graph, or start sharing.
You have three sharing options. The little photo icon downloads an image of the visualization, which is what appears at the top of this post. You can share a link to the specific graph, which anyone can view even if they don’t have a Popily account and which still hides the other visualizations and data if they aren’t public. Privacy options can be fine-tuned with rules to limit viewers.
And most exciting of all, Popily visualizations can be embedded in HTML documents with a script copy-and-paste! That’s literally all the code you’ll have to deal with in the process. Explore some of embedded Popily charts in co-founder Chris Albon’s post about how he spent his time in the TechStars Cloud program.
A Special Offer for Journalists
If you’re ready to try this out yourself, go to Popily.com and sign up for a trial account. Journalists can email awesome@popily.com with the account username and who they write for (publication, blog, or freelance included!) for a free one-year upgrade.
We want your input, because this tool is made for people like you. If you ever have any questions or suggestions, click on the tab that says “Got a question?” in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and fire away!
See you all on Popily!
