Description
3 pages double spaced
Find a report or white paper or executive summary published online by a community organization or NGO or university research institute that uses data to illustrate the issues they work on. It may be helpful to Google things like “housing segregation white paper virginia” to find reports on topics you find interesting and in the geographic area you care about.
Look for line graphs, pie charts, bar graphs, and other visualizations. Reports that rely on tables are notappropriate for this assignment.
Example of a report: Urban League — State of Black Kansas City https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59c3f63f49fc2b9eb12a6663/t/5d8d739af8f69c0524180f42/1569551275926/ULSOBKC2019.pdf
If your report is super long, you can just focus on one or two sections of the larger report.
In your paper, provide the url link and title of the report you found. Describe the different types of quantitative and/or qualitative types of data that they use. Who and how were the data collected?
Next, describe what sorts of data visualizations are used in the report (describe specific instances of pie charts, histograms, line graphs, etc). In your view, are the visualizations effective means for illustrating the information they are trying to convey? Do the visualizations support the narrative in the report?
Further, critically evaluate* the visualizations. In your view, are they fair representations of the underlying data? Pay attention to the x and y axes, for example.
Finally, talk about the overall value that the data bring to the mission of the authors. How do the data help them understand and address social problems?
*Be fair — the point is not to criticize per se, but to develop data literacy.
