Top 5 Visualisations that Made History

To show the extent to which data visualisations empower people to not only understand but also take charge and transform their environments, Tableau created the following presentation. It features five historical visualisations that got us thinking a bit differently about otherwise embedded paradigms.

The 5 most influential data visualizations of all time from Tableau Software

Event: DataIQ Masterclass. Insight: Can we apply consumer journey mapping concepts to data journalism?

Sure we can, we just need to be mindful of the ground shaking effect it can have on newsroom cultures. 

In very simple terms, from the moment we wake up, every time we use our phones, for every journey we take, whenever we scan our club cards or as we head to the post office to send that belated card, we generate rows and rows of data. 

In part all this has been labelled Big Data. 

But while the concept of Big Data is growing older by the day, its applicabilities and the realm of possibilities they open are yet to be discovered.

Last Thursday a Data IQ masterclass in 'Driving the Customer Data Journey' aimed to shed some light on what's possible around Big Data. 

Companies including Telefonica UK, Teradata and the DMG group shared some of the data processing, modelling and analysis they completed on such data as well as their results. 

But I won't bore you with the details of the presentations. 

Instead I want to look at how, and if, some of the concepts raised regarding consumer journey mapping would reflect on data journalism. 

Telefonica's Head of Business Intelligence, Andy Day started the evening by discussing the Big Data explosion we are witnessing and the challenges it raises. Right up front he said that complexity aside, now it's the time to (1) find a path through the data and (2) create value from it. In a similar fashion a data journalist's job is to quickly cut off the garbage data, single out the story and convey it to readers in such a way that 'valuable' change is enabled. Notice any differences? Me neither. 

Further on, underlining the need to be "enabled by technology, not driven by it", Mr Day made a bold statement: "Analysts should be at the front of house." Wow, indeed. In a newsroom this would undoubtedly be a ground-breaking shift. For journalism to be led by insights, for investigations and research and why not, interviews, to be driven by data analysis, history could be made made day in day out, and, what is more, the fourth estate would be enabled to thrive again. 

Mr Day then introduced a dear idea to him, that data analysis is the "Art of the Possible" thus opening the doors to constantly identifying best practices. But added that boards of directors leading today's businesses respond to growth rather than experiments; so he went on to give the example of how Telefonica used data analysis techniques to identify the reasons behind a £12,000 monthly loss the company was incurring per one single customer. Once the model was applied they found out this particular customer found a glitch in the system and was tacking advantage of one of their bundle offers. He purchased an iPhone then took the sim out and was calling himself pretty much non-stop. The package he was on allowed this, so all Telefonica had to do was cancel that package. Long story short, Mr Day had the board's attention to bringing analysis to front of house because he was able to say 'this will save you that much money', which as stated before is what board directors respond to. 

What does this mean for data journalism? Journalists need to identify what is it that makes editors itch and then identify how data journalism can scratch that. Easier said than done right. Take an imaginary example of a typical editor who wants original, ground-breaking news on the fly and at no expense. Our typical editor thus responds to a solution that saves time and money while delivering on the story. Instantly, this adds two more dimensions to the requirements of a typical board director, but nevertheless the concept remains. If this editor had a team of analysts front of house working alongside the reporters, they could for instance shed some insight into story patterns and identify the next more likely to occur story before it develops or provided reporters shared resources in a common newsroom database a team of analysts could identify when it is best to arrange certain interviews, what does a dataset tells us in relation to others, how long it takes each reporter to produce a piece to the best of his/ her abilities on a given patch and thus enable the editors to assign the best journalist any given pitch, and the dream can go on and on...

The following speaker, Teradata's Enterprise Sales Director Peter Duffy shared some of their discoveries around social media data. As it turns out, their research shows "enjoyment drives sales" and the more fun a customer has with a product or a brand the more inclined he/she is to purchase. According to Mr Duffy there are three things a brand can do on social media to drive sales: develop games, run contests and produce fun apps. Can this be applied to journalism? Certainly if enjoyment can drive sales it should drive a good amount of eyeballs to one's story as well. But can we still tell serious stories in an entertaining way? For decades already we celebrity journalism for example has been labelled infotainment, so how can a serious data journalism story elude that? The best example that quickly comes to mind is Reading the Riots. That said it's clear newsrooms need to invest in some of these resources before benefiting from them. It requires getting to grips with business and entrepreneurship, concepts that seem to have perpetually failed when applied to our trade. 

But let me finish this on a positive note. Challenges lie ahead no doubt about that, but despite the great achievements of the likes of the Guardian, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Flowing Data, le Journal du Web, and so on, data journalism is still just dipping its toe into the realm of possibilities available. It is by far an excellent time to experiment with journalism regardless of your background. We are faced with an enormous canvas that awaits to be drawn on, the only question remaining is how are we to fill it?  

Visualised: Breast implants funded by the NHS more often than breast reductions

Following on from yesterday's case study, the chart below compares the number of breast implants with the number of breast reductions funded by the NHS in England between 2007-2009. These are operations taken in NHS hospitals or commissioned for the independent sector.



More up to date data is yet to be available, although the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care said in a Freedom of Information request that hospital incidents of such procedures were published on HES Online here, here and here.

According to the NHS Information Centre, "breast reconstruction may be carried out following an injury, or for medical reasons or for cosmetic reasons." But as procedures get logged in by codes and since within one surgical operation more than one procedure may be carried out, the NHS said extracting this information from HES Online might bring up duplicates. Still with the various types of codes it uses to log operations, which have also been changing several times over the years, this information is rather hidden from our view, at least for the time being.

Click here for the Google spreadsheet (draft). 

Visualised: Cosmetic procedures at Barnsley PCT 2011-2012

Barnsley PCT spent over £1m on cosmetic procedures between the financial year 2003/04 and the time they replied to my FoI enquiry on February 7 2012. 

They write: "The earliest data held on our records are from 2003 up to the end of the financial year 2011.

Procedures are carried out at Sheffield Teaching Hospital."

Below is a visualisation of the latest data received from Barnsley PCT completed in Many Eyes. For the full data set click here.

Case study: “I was 5ft 1in and had 32FF boobs.”

Even with some Primary Care Trusts spending as much as £1m a year on cosmetic surgery patients like 25-year-old, hairstylist, Lydia Buist, still choose to take the private route.

Lydia started having severe back problems due to her large breasts when she was still in school. “When I was 14 I was big,” she says. “I was 5ft 1in and I had 32FF boobs. Nothing fitted me and I was always self-conscious.” 

When she turned 18, Lydia asked her GP about breast reduction but was told she had to wait. “My doctor said to me: ‘You will be accepted, but they want you to become an adult and get comfortable with being an adult before that happens.’”  

Lydia did wait for five more years only for her back problems to get worse: “It was a long stressful few years. It really ruins your back. I used to wear a bra all the time, except for when I would take a shower. I was so depressed about it too. It’s crazy to me why people get implants. I have no idea why they do it.”

The NHS gives the example of breast reduction procedures conducted due to severe back pain, depression and confidence issues on their website when explaining why they fund cosmetic surgery in the first place. It reads: “In rare cases, cosmetic surgery may be provided on the NHS if it’s required to protect a person’s health, for example, a breast reduction operation, if the weight of a woman’s breasts is causing her back problems.”

Still the waiting times and budget cuts put Lydia off asking her doctor about funding again. “I have a friend who is a 30HH and got refused on the NHS because of the budget cuts. She is struggling to raise money for her reduction now,” says Lydia.  

“Knowing her made me feel really bad when I had my operation,” she explains, “because I was not near the case she was. But I feel so much better now. It’s like I’m free.” 

“I also didn’t go on the NHS because it takes so long and it was only thanks to my parents that I got to have it when I did. Plus private hospitals are so much better and the medication and aftercare is great,” adds Lydia.

FoI Data Mapped: Primary Care Trusts delay response to cosmetic surgery query

How much does the NHS spend on cosmetic surgery? Which procedures are financed more often? Which are the most expensive? Which body parts get "adjusted" on the NHS the most?

Eight in ten Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in England failed to share such cosmetic surgery data requested under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act. Just 15.33% of the PCTs in the country  have responded fully* and in a timely manner to an FoI asking for the number and cost of cosmetic operations they fund.

Over 150 NHS individual PCTs and clusters were asked in January for any "information" held on "hospital episodes of cosmetic surgery" including, but not restricted to, the following:

•  types of cosmetic operations that were conducted;
•  details of reasons for carrying out the operations;
•  any details on the operations;
•  a breakdown of costs;
•  a list of hospitals they were carried out in. 

Five months on, most failed to provide this data.

According to the NHS website, cosmetic procedures are rarely funded. Coupled with the "clinical reasons" requirement (that any individual seeking such an operation would need to fulfil) it made for the most common explanation provided by PCTs in their replies.

As such, since cosmetic surgery is funded only in exceptional circumstances and for clinical reasons (never cosmetic), the FoIs came back saying that the NHS doesn't "routinely" pay for such procedures and in some instances an additional internal policy outlining the conditions needed to get such a procedure on the NHS was attached.

The map below shows which PCTs did provide the required data, in a reasonably accessible format and in a timely manner. You can access the Fusion Table behind it here. Please note that a few PCTs are not represented on the map as no kml files were found for their boundaries. If you come across these, please contact me so we can update the map. The full record of complete (Y) and incomplete (N) responses can be viewed in this spreadsheet (draft).

Further posts will outline more results from this data.
As always ideas, feedback and comments are much appreciated.





*i.e. Provided reasonably acessible figures (data)

Comment: We're surrounded by data, but is it a new field or just a trend?

Whether we like it or loathe it, data is all round us. We are increasingly leading our lives in a binary context with infinite data-sets flowing around us and code-lines designing our lifestyles, so why is it that data journalism is still regarded as a new field?

This was especially underlined with the launch ofthe latest Data Journalism Awards at the end of January. "We often see this sort of journalism awarded in very different categories, and we felt the domain of data journalism is yet to be recognised properly as a standalone discipline," said the Deputy Director for the Global Editors Network, Antoine Laurent.

"We're still only seeing the beginning of this,” added the Director of the European Journalism Centre, Wilfried Rutten “but data journalism is going to be very big. People used to ask me, 'what is this crazy stuff you are working on?', but with the support of Global Editors Network and Google they can't ask that anymore."

The Guardian made quite a big, yet factual based, claim that their data journalism practices date back to the 19^th century. Indeed their example is impressive, but it also makes me wonder whether we’re putting too much weight on data journalism today.

As with all industries journalism has segmented heavily in the past century, but if you really think about it haven’t reporters always been required to make sense of figures and base their stories on them? How is this different then? Can we straightforwardly define data journalism and, if so, would we just end up with more new fields (finding data, crunching data, visualizing data, etc.)?

I’d like to start this blog by asking if data journalism is a new field. The poll will be up for a week at the end of which I’ll check the results. Please be sociable and vote or leave a comment below :-)