Linear regression is a great tool when your outcome variable is test scores or loan amounts or another continuous variable. But sometimes, your output is a Yes or a No. That type of outcome is known as dichotomous.

You still can do something similar to linear regression because some super smart stats dude awhile back came up with a way to mimic linear regression with a dichotomous outcome variable.

To do logistic regression SPSS, you need to have the “regression models” add-on program. You also have to understand your data and do a little prep work on it.

With resources disappearing from newsrooms, getting the support to build interactive graphics may be an impossible task.

One tool that can help is Many Eyes, a project
of IBM's Collaborative User Experience research group. According to the Many Eyes site, its purpose is to “democratize visualizations.”

What you can do is limited. You’re stuck with the formats and color schemes available – mostly many shade of tan.

“That’s not on computer.”

We’ve all heard that from officials reluctant to release data. But sometimes it really isn’t on computer, and in such cases, creating a database can be torture.

Stealing techniques from social scientists may save you some work.

Pulling a random sample of records for your database will allow you to calculate trends in the larger data set. When The Dallas Morning News analyzed jury selection, reporters pulled a sample of trials for which they obtained juror cards.

The new truck accident data is available from the IRE and NICAR Database Library and, as with any data set, you need to learn the pitfalls of the data. Here are some tips for dealing with the problems in truck accident data and ways you can bulletproof your analysis that I learned working on a 2006 truck safety project at The Dallas Morning News:

Geocoding, the process of turning addresses into points, has long been the bane of many mappers’ existences. We never got all of our addresses to match, which meant enduring the tedious process of finding where the rest of the addresses should be on the map.

We longed for an easier, faster way.

The world is not flat. Although this is no news flash, it’s important to remember when you are using geographic information system programs. Maps attempt to put the round globe on a flat surface, but some do so in different ways. Some maps are developed to maintain the integrity of direction, so that one could sail around the world, for example. Other maps, such as those for land use, require accurate area measures. Also, some maps are better for local use, but not so good on a national scale.