Month: January 2018

Article, Comment, Opinion

[Repost] Reflections on the talk by Prof Ikhlaq Sidhu on Artificial Intelligence

dataXhkbu_2018masterclass_1

Prof Ikhlaq Sidhu on the DataXHKBU workshop on 26 Jan (by Xinzhi Zhang)

Note: This post was originally contributed as an entry to the Communicar Journal Blog on 28 Jan 2018. The author would like to repost it to the D&N Society]

Reflections on the talk by Prof Ikhlaq Sidhu on Artificial Intelligence

“Will AI help the film directors to make better movies? – Yes! But will AI replace the film directors and become directors? – No!” – Prof Ikhlaq Sidhu.

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Announcements, Event

Call for participants: Working with Civic Exchange, Covering Hong Kong Open Space

Screenshot: Carine Lai’s presentation on “Unopened Space”

Civic Exchange (思匯政策研究所,“CE” hereafter, a think tank) would like to collaborate with HKBU JOUR to make series of investigative reports on the issue of open space in Hong Kong. Basically, CE will share several datasets, and provide guidance on how to harvest other public data and how to interpret it, whereas the student teams will conduct reporting on this theme. Data journalism and data-driven storytelling are potential formats.

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Announcements, Event

Mario Game Workshop on Feb. 3rd, 2018

Event information

  • Date: February 3rd, 2018 (Saturday)
  • Time: 09:30 – 12:30
  • Venue: FSC901CD, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong [Map]

Mobile games are fun to play and also fun to build. You will experience building a mobile game in this workshop using Corona SDK. Corona SDK is an easy-to-learn Software Development Kit for building cross-platform games.

No programming background required.

Register here: [Mario Game Workshop]

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Event

Workshop recap: Use Arduino to Collect Water Quality Data

1. What is the workshop about?

The Computer Science department and Data & News Society have invited Shan He, a Guangzhou-based civic scientist as well as the project director of Chinese NGO Greenovation Hub, to hold a workshop on harvesting water quality data through simple chemical test kits and DIY water monitoring device for environmental investigation on the 18th of January, 2018. A dozen of mixed students from computer science and journalism background and some interested citizens attended and worked in groups.

Ms. Shan He
Shan He, a Guangzhou-based data scientist, as well as the project director of Chinese NGO Greenovation Hub and science community Public Lab, held the workshop on DIY water monitoring.

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Tool, Tutorial

Use Kumu To Make A Relationship Graph For Les Misérables

This tutorial demonstrates how to use Kumu to make an interactive relationship graph for character co-occurence network in Les Misérables.

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Resource, Story

Data News of the Week | Visualising the Blockchain

The Rise and Rise of ICO in late 2017

If you still don’t know what is “blockchain” or what is “bitcoin”, The recent work from Max Galka will assure you this is the high time to do some self-study, or you will miss the birth time of “another Internet”. The idea of ICO, Initial Coin/Chain Offering, is an analogy of IPO. With the inception of “smart contract” capability, fundraising, a process to exchange currency to certificate, can be done in a distributed manner. The “currency” in the chain world can be Ethereum, NEO, BitCoin, … The “certificate” in the chain world is called “token” so the ICO process is also referred to as “token sale”. The convenience of ICO gains rapid growth with crazy capitals pouring into this field. Just check out this interactive/ animated token sale history.

Screenshot: The ICO Market Cap to date (Nov 2017)

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Resource, Tutorial

My First Application of FOI in Hong Kong

It was new for me when I heard anyone can acquire almost any data from HK government for legitimate reasons under that Code on Access to Information.

This code is a response to the notion of “FOI” (For Our Information; Freedom Of Information), which calls for citizens’ free access to government information so that the transparency of government management can be ensured and citizen rights can be protected.

According to Wiki, In 2006, nearly 70 countries went through relative legislation. Among these laws are USA’s FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and, of course, Hong Kong’s Code on Access to information.

Despite the code in place, a practical question remains. Will those government officers fulfill their duty and do give reply to every single data request? So I decided to give a try on Accessinfo.hk.

Accessinfo.hk is a website positioned as a platform for citizens to post their information requests to authorities and receive feedback. It was initiated by a group of Open Data activist, including Guy Freeman, who is currently data scientist in HK01. The website publishes every question and answer to everyone, and, at the same time, monitors the process. Before localizing the Alaveteli system ( http://alaveteli.org/ ) to Hong Kong, its sister site WhatDoTheyKnow ( https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/ ) had already seen wide application in the United Kingdom.

accessinfo

Screenshot: accessinfo.hk

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Announcements, Event

Workshop | Harvest water quality data for environmental investigation — DIY monitor with Arduino

Data is the key for environmental investigation and monitoring. However it is very hard for ordinary citizens to get access to. Let water quality be example, which is associated closely with our daily life. When serious environmental disasters break out, with limited information disclosure from government, general public can hardly know the truth in time. The motivates us to organise this workshop that enables you to make DIY monitoring devices with open technology.

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General, Resource, Story

Data News of the Week | US Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

On December 22, 2017, President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. How does it matter to the companies and citizens?

Tax is one of the crucial parts of the country’s economic. Under the globalization, US tax policy might relevant to your life. The economic trends could affect you and the steps you might need to take so you can profit from it. Moreover, there are lots of data in the tax policies which could turn into some good data news. This week we will share some Trump’s new GOP tax cut plan data news.

What is the Tax Cuts about?

☞Trump’s Tax Plan and How It Affects You [Link]

The whole tax bill cuts the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and the top individual tax rate will drop to 37%, which used to be 39.6% in 2017.

The following chart shows the progressive tax rate before and after the bill, in one Table. We find that table is an effective way to display data with high density. It seems the tax will be deducted for everyone except for the lowest income bracket.

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Read more: Corporate Income Tax: Definition, History, Effective Rate

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Gallery, Tutorial

Tech Review of Urban Noise Project

The project of Urban Noise is a interactive report concerning the urban noise issue in China, presented as a single web-page hosted on Github and integrated with multimedia attempts to visualize information. The team consisted of three journalism students and the production period took for around two weeks. This article is a brief tech review of the Urban Noise project, walking through how it was built up and what tools were used.

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