4 examples of computational thinking in journalism - Online Journalism Blog - 1 views
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Simon Knight on 13 Oct 17Nice piece on computational thinking and data journalism. For example... This story, published in the UK tabloid newspaper The Mirror, is a great example of understanding how a computer might 'see' information and be able to help you extract a story from it. The data behind the story is a collection of over 300,000 pieces of sheet music. On paper that music would be a collection of ink on paper. But because that has now been digitised, it is now quantified. That means we can perform calculations and comparisons against it. We could: Count the number of notes Calculate the variety (number of different) of notes Identify the most common notes Identify the notes with the maximum value Identify the notes with the minimum value Calculate a 'range' by subtracting the minimum from the maximum The journalist has seen this, and decided that the last option has perhaps the most potential to be newsworthy - we assume some singers have wider ranges than others, and the reality may surprise us (a quality of newsworthiness).