Matt Waite

Professor of Practice | Journalism | Technology

I am a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a data journalist. I build things, analyze data, and teach others how to do the same.

Projects

The Art of Data Journalism

Interactive tutorials teaching data journalism through R and the Tidyverse.

Sports Data Tutorials

Interactive tutorials for analyzing and visualizing sports data using R and the Tidyverse.

Drone Journalism

What you need to know to get a drone license in the US and what separates a journalist from just someone with a controller in their hand.

Blog

Parsing PDFs with Antigravity

code

analysis

Among the wisest things I’ve ever seen written about AI is “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so…

Nov 24, 2025

An R + LLM starter kit

code

analysis

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…

Mar 7, 2025

An academic integrity-friendly code pal for R Studio

code

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…

Nov 26, 2024

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…

Nov 8, 2024

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

code

analysis

Let’s start this with some confessions:

Oct 23, 2024

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.

Mar 28, 2022

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…

Mar 20, 2022

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…

Mar 28, 2021

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.…

Mar 22, 2021

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?

Jun 12, 2018

View Full Archive