I’ve decide to based my story off five different data sets
examining trends in motor vehicle fatalities in BC.
These data sets are available on the provincial government’s
open data portal, and examine fatalities by region, gender, accident type, involvement
of alcohol and drugs, and what month the accidents occurred. All the sets cover
data from 1996 to 2012.
I believe this will be a good basis for a news story because
at a first glance the data seems to show a decline overall for fatalities in car
accidents, but with that decrease there are an increases of individual trend as
well (number of motorcycle deaths for example). Asking an expert about variation
in certain trends may prove useful, but also finding a more human element to
the story should be important.
As far as the actual data is structured it is fairly
straight forward, however how some of the criteria are formatted by year will
be tricky to tidy up.
Questions I would like to answer this data:
How has motor vehicle fatalities increase or decreased? What
year had the most fatalities and which year has the least?
What region has the most fatalities? Which region has the
least? What region has decreased the most? Which has increased the most?
Which gender has the most fatalities? How has that changed
over time?
Which months have the most and least fatalities? How has
that change over time?
Hey Chloe! This is an interesting angle to take for your story as far as the data you will be looking at. Individual trends will be interesting to look at, I like that you're looking at motorcycle fatalities given the increasing popularity of motorcycles in our society. It will also be interesting to look at the race and gender aspects of fatalities to see if they play into our societal conceptions about 'bad drivers' and 'bad driving'. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteGood story. One question popped up as I was reading your data though and it was that you're going to have a lot of tinker with. Cars and motorcycles and drugs and gender each are on their own almost a story in themselves and to throw it all together is going to take some data finesse :) Good Luck.
ReplyDeleteI love this data story because I think the data speaks for itself. I think it will be very hard to do this story by yourself. I would try to narrow down your story to just one topic like, fatalities with the involvement of alcohol and drugs, or fatalities by region. I agree that talking to an expert would be a great way to support your story.
ReplyDeleteHi Chloe! Great data story! Trends in motor vehicle fatalities is an important topic to cover and it will be interesting to see the questions answered with the data you found. I also agree that interviewing an expert about variations in certain trends will be useful for your story.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of people would be interested to see the results of this data analysis. There's definitely a lot to think about with this type of information. The first thing I thought of was that cars are getting a lot safer, which probably has a lot to do with the decline for fatalities.
ReplyDelete