Education
Data Toolkit Workshop Series
We at the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs believe that effective public policy should be informed and based on accurate analysis and understanding of hard data. A key objective of the Policy School is to increase awareness about great sources of data and provide training on innovative tools for organizing and visually presenting data in compelling ways that deepen understanding.
The Data Toolkit Workshop Series provides students and faculty with a "toolkit" of policy analysis and presentation tools. Each month, a speaker will present both a training session on the use of a specific data set/analysis tool and an example of how that data tool has been used to address an urban policy issue.
Starting in October 2009, we will offer a monthly workshop series on various data sources and tools.- October 6, 2009
- November 3, 2009
- December 1, 2009
DATA TOOLKIT WORKSHOP SERIES #2
Sustainable Energy to Broadband for All"
November 3, 2009
4:00 to 5:00pm
Frost Lounge, Ell Building
rsvp by emailing t.dolan@neu.edu
Director of MassGIS
Commonwealth of Massachusetts Office of
Geographic and Environmental Information
DATA TOOLKIT WORKSHOP SERIES #1
including introduction to two software tools
that facilitate analysis and presentation of data
October 6, 2009
4:00 to 5:00pm
Frost Lounge, Ell Building
rsvp by emailing t.dolan@neu.edu
Dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs
Director, Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy
Stearns Professor of Political Economy
Graduate students, researchers, and faculty are invited to a professional development workshop on using census data to analyze urban issues, with a particular emphasis on analysis that leads to solutions.
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of census data?
- What is the difference between the Decennial Census and the annual Current Population Survey?
- In addition to the U.S. Census Bureau itself, what are other sources of census data?
- What are good practices and tools for organizing census data and showing the relationships between different variables?
The workshop will include an introduction to two tools: the Boston Renaissance Resource Kit and the Urban Experience Resource Kit.
The Boston Renaissance Resource Kit, created by Dean Bluestone and Hamilton Analytics, Inc., is a state-of-the-art interactive web and CD-ROM based multimedia which allows easy manipulation and presentation of data including all of the data from the Greater Boston Social Survey, a comprehensive survey of over 1,800 households in the region carried out in the mid-1990s, and data from the U.S. decennial censuses for all 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts from 1950 through 2000.
The Urban Experience Resource Kit, developed more recently as part of a new urban textbook, contains census data from 1970 through 2005 for every city and town in the United States.
Both Resource Kits include data analysis engines which allow anyone to create literally thousands of charts and tables with a few simple clicks of the mouse. Dean Bluestone will demonstrate how these Resource Kits can be used to analyze and present income and housing market trends in Greater Boston and the nation.
The Boston Renaissance Resource Kit can be downloaded for free at www.neu.edu/dukakiscenter.
Developed by the