This is Hongyu Liu, Wisconsin Watch’s new data investigative reporter. 

If you’ve ever been confused and even intimidated by statistics and other numbers, I feel you. 

I was in the same boat three years ago while interning at a newspaper in Quincy, Massachusetts. 

When gas prices soared, my colleagues and I made weekly calls to every gas station in town, asking for price updates. It was an effort to help readers who were not familiar with gas price apps to learn where to fill up their cars more affordably. But we were soon drowning in data. Each week, we posted a lengthy list of individual prices, which were already one day old when reaching the readers’ doorsteps. We didn’t quite know how to look at the numbers in a more thoughtful, useful way.

Had I the analysis skills I’ve since developed, I would have approached the assignment differently. I would have looked for trends that may have inspired stories about how the higher gas prices might tighten the budgets of residents. 

My eagerness for understanding the world of numbers prompted me to pursue a master’s degree in data journalism at Columbia University. There, I found my niche is where data analysis, web design and journalistic storytelling intersect. I went on to spend almost two years in Charleston, South Carolina, as a data reporting fellow at The Post and Courier, becoming the newsroom “data nerd.” I used data skills to sift through drug prescription records to find evidence of identity theft and understand how loosened regulations led to a surge in sea turtle deaths from dredging near ports.

Now I’m eager to do similar reporting for Wisconsin, using data to provide rich context to our journalism that aims to make communities strong, informed and connected. That includes finding investigative leads rooted in data and producing visualizations that explain the issues we cover, such as through our DataWatch series.

We live in a world with ever-increasing reams of raw data that, if understood and analyzed, can help us better understand our communities. I’m stepping in at Wisconsin Watch to take the lead on how we use data in our journalism — and to understand how actors across the state are representing or even misrepresenting data trends.

I want to hear from you. If you have ideas for data we should analyze and visualize, or if you have questions about data in a government report, email me at hliu@wisconsinwatch.org and share your thoughts.

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Digging into data that explains Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.