Computer Assisted Research

The crime stats shown between Grahamstown, Johannesburg, East London and Bloemfontein show some interesting results. Firstly the so called sleepy hollow of Grahamstown and its surrounding districts is one crime ridden place! Per capita Grahamstown has the highest incidents in all categories analysed of murder, rape, malicious damage to property and assault with intent. Although Grahamstown has the smallest population, you are more likely to be harmed than in a major city like Johannesburg. Bloemfontein, with the lowest statistics, is the safest place analysed.

Finding the data to be analysed was the trickiest aspect of the assignment. All the information was on government websites like saps.gov and statssa.gov but finding and accessing the information was not as straight forward. One difficulty that I encountered was the name changes of certain places, like Bloemfontein. Finding the populations of the areas was also not as simple to find. This is because all the areas except Johannesburg were coded. So I had to find what the areas were coded under to find out their populations, but luckily for me Galen had already figured this out and showed where to find it. Once I had found all the information, analysing it on Microsoft Excel was fairly easy. The programme is helpful because you only have to do the equation for per capita once and it does the rest of the stats for you. The only problem I found with the spreadsheet was how to label the cities on the pie chart. This was my first time working with Excel so I am unfamiliar with all the functions.

I am happy now that I can say that I have some knowledge of working with Excel and that it is not as daunting as it appears to be (even if I don’t know how to make labels -yet!) I have now discovered that it is a useful tool for analysing and sorting information.

the importance of xhtml for new media journalists

It is important for new media journalists to understand XHTML coding because it improves the quality of their own skills. A journalist in any field should understand and incorporate the medium in which they work with. A radio journalist should understand how the recording equipment operates and how to edit on computer programmes. Such as a television journalist or a photojournalist should know how to operate a camera and the editing skills that are required. For a new media journalist the skills that we require is learning and working with computer literacy and the internet. This means that new media journalists should know computer language and computer jargon. Part of this learning and understanding is working with XHTML. Learning and using XHTML helps online journalists to be more in control of their work because it allows the journalists to edit and manipulate how the information appears on the site. It aids the journalist and the reader because the information doesn’t get filtered through a technician or middle man who might unintentionally change or alter the story. Learning XHTML can only but help the new media journalist because it is a system that others can use and understand. Other journalists can correct or add to a story online by using the coding system. It helps journalists all work on the same site or multiple sites because the coding is universal and not particular to one person. XHTML is important to new media journalists because it helps journalists in the collective.

http://www.shire.net/learnwebdesign/xhtml.htm

http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_syntax.asp


http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-basic/