TycheAbout:WhoContributes
Who contributes to Tyche Insights and why?
In the movie Ratatouille there is a line "Anyone can cook" which takes on surprising meaning in the movie; similarly we like to think that "Anyone can tell a data story" and contribute in some manner.
The technical barrier for basic data storytelling is very low. If you have used Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, you too can data storytell. Most data storytelling - importing data, studying it, sorting it, summarizing it, creating charts and graphs - can be done with these tools using + - * / operators, basic spreadsheet formulas and pivot tables.
There is also a place for sophisticated data science and big data manipulation - using Python NumPy & SciPy, Google Big Query and more. You may also be creating sophisticated data stories as a part of your job or research; Tyche is a commmunity that can support you making your research accessible to lay people, which increases the reach of your work.
You may contribute to Tyche Insights for many different reasons. We expect that if you're interested in data storytelling you may want to...
- Learn more about your government and community and how they operate
- Contribute to larger efforts that provide a better understanding of your community
- Assist with making your government more transparent
- Test out your existing technical and communications skills in new ways
- Learn new technical and writing skills
- Create data stories that you can put on your resume
- Learn from and utilize knowledge and thinking from data storytellers in other communities
In addition, when you contribute to a data story you are enabling other people to build on your work:
- Someone in another city may use your story (and its source data, process, analysis, etc) to create a similar story for their community
- Someone in your city may use the public data that you have unlocked to create a new story that utilizes the same public data
- Someone in your city may build upon the research that you have done to dig deeper into the subject, or perform analysis to provide a contraritan or supporting view