Blog – Matt Waite’s Collection of Miscellany

An R + LLM starter kit

code

analysis

AI

I’ve written before, I am at best an enthusiastic amateur when it comes to AI, LLMs and R. But I’m braver/dumber than most, so for a talk I’m giving to NE-RUG – the Nebraska…

An academic integrity-friendly code pal for R Studio

How to plug in an LLM to help – but not too much – in a world that wants to cheat

AI

code

r

education

One of the struggles on campus these days is all about where to draw the lines when it comes to AI in the classroom. There’s no end of discussion about students using…

Nebraska’s season long slide on offense

code

football

huskers

If you’ve been following Nebraska’s football season, you’d be forgiven if you thought it started out great and has slowly driven into a ditch as time went on. Even after a…

A simple example of AI agents(?) doing journalism(?) work

code

analysis

AI

Let’s start this with some confessions:

Another year, another attempt, another bracket disaster

code

analysis

Once again, I attempted to predict the outcome of the NCAA tournament using machine learning, and I had a class-load of students try the same.

Nebraska is not the best worst team in basketball again. They’re third best worst.

huskers

code

analysis

Last year, this post may have suggested that Nebraska would be better this year than last year. That Nebraska was the best worst team in college basketball, and with major…

Is Nebraska the best worst team in college basketball?

huskers

code

analysis

Nebraska fans haven’t had the best time watching basketball lately. The last two seasons have featured only seven wins in each season. This season they only won three games…

How I (poorly) filled out my NCAA bracket with machine learning

code

analysis

I do not know a lot about college basketball. I follow the travails of my employer and a little about the Big Ten Conference as a whole, but at best it’s surface knowledge.…

Choosing a World Cup Team to root for in each match: An algorithmic approach.

The World Cup is here. For a large swath of the planet, we do not have a team in the tournament, which raises a question: Who do you root for game by game?

I wrote a data journalism manual for my college in 1997. They never used it, but they kept it.

data journalism

retro

In October 1997, I was trying to graduate from college. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications told me that I needed 19 credit…

Using Lego to teach data visualization

Today in my data visualization class, I made students visualize meaningful differences between this year’s Super Bowl teams, the Seattle Seahawks and the New England…

Everything I Know About Data I Learned From 70s Album Rock…

data journalism

talks

Everything I Know About Data I Learned From 70s Album Rock Radio, my Newsgeist 2014 Ignite talk.

A classroom experiment in Twitter Bots and creativity

This semester, I’m teaching a class in Story Bots, which is really a programming class disguised as a journalism class. I’m teaching students enough programming that they…

UNL CoJMC students: Two data/programming/future courses for the fall

If you’re a UNL CoJMC student looking for courses in the fall, here’s two I’m teaching you should take a look at:

A 5-step NICAR recovery plan

First time at NICAR this year? Awesome. Welcome. This was my 15th conference. I started in 1997 in Nashville. I was a senior in college, desperate to find a job, and NICAR…

A small step toward solving the our curriculum is too full problem

One of the arguments used to push back against adding new things into journalism school curricula is “Our curriculum is too full! We can’t possibly add anything more! What…

Unconference panel pitch I will someday make

I want to solve a journalism problem with a MakerBot. What is it?

The Minimum Viable Participant

In any software development project, you have a line in the sand called the Minimum Viable Product. It’s the point where you’ve got it working well enough and with enough…

Replacing Reporters With Robots I Might Be

Replacing reporters with robots? I might be trolling a little, but robotics and programmatic bots are going to play a greater role in reporter’s futures than you might think.

Here Is John Keefe And I Talking About The Near

Here is John Keefe and I talking about the near field future of sensors and journalism at the Tow Center’s Sensor Weekend. We gave the second keynote of the day.

A new way for data journalists to thwart newsroom IT: the Raspberry Pi

One of my old jokes is that newsroom IT puts the No in Innovation, so I’m always on the lookout for ways to get around them. And I’ve been playing around with a good one: The…

Adventures in prototyping

Things we have done today in my office:

Writing stories with code, part 2: conditional leads from trends

See part one here. Get the code, such as it is, here.

Writing stories with code

There’s a lof of interest and attention right now around the idea of computers writing stories from data. As newsrooms shrink and business models implode, managers are…

Drones Soldering Irons Micro Controllers

Drones, soldering irons, micro controllers, multimeters, code … I reject your notions of what a journalism education must be. How journalists gather information, how it is…

Numeracy

Reading the paper this morning, I was interested to read two stories. The first was about the University of Nebraska Board of Regents approving at 3.75 percent tuition…

Help me plan a hacker space/drone lab

I’ve got an opportunity to build a hacker/maker space + drone lab in a journalism college. I’ve been asked to come up with requirements for the room. Square footage…

If you were teaching a course in data visualization…

… what would you include? I’m developing a course in data viz over the summer and am in the brainstorming phase now. Here’s what I’ve got. What would you do?

Toward a solution to the more tech in J-school problem

journalism

education

manifesto

rant

First, lets state some general conditions and agree to them:

Using Python to access tweets from the command line

Here at the Harvard of the Plains, I teach a class in digital product development I like to call Programming as an Act of Journalism. Lots of people ask me about it and I’m…

A completely arbitrary list of takeaways from two unconferences

This past weekend, I attended Spark Camp: Data, an unconference in Austin focused on using data to tell stories, whatever they may be. A month before, I was at News Foo, an…

A word of advice for Code Year participants

A whole herd of people are learning to program this year through free weekly lessons via email from Code Year. Some, like me, are interested in new lessons and approaches.…

Data journalism class description: your thoughts?

I’m teaching a data journalism/investigative reporting class for the first time this spring. I’ve got the class pretty well mapped out – I know what I’m going to teach – but…

Thinking out loud: The management wisdom of Battlestar Galactica

I’m going to News Foo in Phoenix in a few weeks, and I’m thinking of proposing an Ignite talk there called the Management Wisdom of Battlestar Galactica. I’m a huge fan of…

Help me refine an incomplete idea

The McCormick Foundation and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies are funding specialized reporting institutes in 2012 and are taking applications now. I saw this and had…

Journalism students vs. tech-focused students

Here in my first semester on the faculty at the Harvard of the Plains, I get to work with students in both the College of Journalism and Mass Communications and the Raikes…

News nerd rage: the trouble with conferences

I’ve been having somewhat of an existential crisis of late. I’ve been a speaker at multiple journalism conferences a year for more than a decade running now and I have…

Me vs. 130 Journalism 101 students: The epic Q&A

journalism

future

manifesto

politifact

A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communication’s Journalism 101 class taught by Professor Scott…

Some very smart posts about killing your CMS

journalism

data

Since I wrote my opus hating on legacy CMSes, I have been kicking the idea around in my head here and there, pondering just what this thing would look like, from backend…

Take A Few Minutes And Watch This And 1 Tell Me

research

journalism

future

Take a few minutes and watch this and 1) tell me we’re not living in the motherflippin’ future and 2) this bad boy couldn’t be used for some very, very cool journalism.…

What would you want out of a class taught by a journalist-programmer?

journalism

education

You know journalism is in trouble when you know this: I’m being invited to teach a class at a respected journalism school. The fun part, and not a very surprising part given…

The key lesson I learned building PolitiFact: Demos, not memos

journalism

django

politifact

newsapps

So there was a little news around here lately. PolitiFact won a Pulitzer Prize. To say I’m still in shock is an understatement. A week later, it doesn’t seem real.

Telling the Google Bot no

newsapps

On every web project I’ve worked, one of the key/top/vital priorities was to make sure that Google could index every single last word of the site so that if someone was…

Build something or STFU

journalism

newsapps

This blog has been quiet of late because I’ve been working in every spare moment I have on a couple of projects that are going to launch soon, good lord willing and the…

Twitter, marketing and the devil

newsapps

twitter

marketing

Everything you need to know about using Twitter for marketing and PR is at this very descriptive url:

Data = Content: Content = Data

journalism

data

content

platforms

newsapps

Mark Potts had some nice things to say about the new version of PolitiFact that we recently launched. But one of the things he wrote I wanted to amplify:

How not to be a Wordpress hero

journalism

There’s a group of fellow journalists who are getting really sick of what we’re calling Wordpress Heroes. What is a Wordpress Hero? Back home, we’d call them All Hat and No…

Thoughts on Everyblock and context

data

journalism

newsapps

First, the grains of salt:

Molten content, data ghettos and why your CMS problems are an excuse, not a reason

journalism

data

newsapps

The other component of the data ghetto that bothers me is that you can’t find that data outside the ghetto. Please, someone point me to a place where there’s dynamic content…

Data ghettos

data

journalism

newsapps

rant

One resolution for this year: Post more often. Starting now.

Why the journalist in programmer/journalist matters

journalism

newsapps

In a comment, Ben asked how PolitiFact went from idea to PolitiFact.

Announcing PolitiFact

politifact

journalism

data

newsapps

It’s been quiet around here for a while. There’s a good reason. It’s called PolitiFact and it marks a major shift in my career.