Getting the data ready for a conversation.
“Data will talk to you, if you’re willing to listen to it”
Jim Bergeson
Step 2: Building the data set
The data was not ready for an in-depth conversation.
The best analogy I can think of when getting data ready to tell a story is what I imagine great authors do when profiling their characters. Each has so many attributes and backstories that make them who they are, but they may never appear in the novel.
To develop our data further, we needed to link where the activity took place and what municipality it was located in. GIS (Geographic Information System) to the rescue. GIS is a large topic, but for our needs, we needed to put a pin in the street map and elaborate on its location.
We were able to leverage cross-street information and zip code together to do just that. Using an addressing service, we were able to get latitude and longitude coordinates for each incident and then overlay census maps to evaluate what municipality that incident occurred in.
The need for coordinates was foundational, but unlocking the correct additional dataset to get the municipality was where domain knowledge and specialty tooling paid dividends.
It was time to talk. Our first conversation was plotting all the incidents on a street map by year. The results were eye opening...
Step 1: Understanding the data
Step 2: Building the data set
Step 3: Quality control
- What are we doing in Texas?
Step 4: Presentation of insight
Step 5: Lessons learned.
By: Patrick Grant, Director of Public Sector Sales
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